DID WE SPEAK UP?

PERCUSSION TRIO

Commissioned by: Repercussion Trio with the friendly support from DGArtes - Ministério da Cultura Portuguesa. Premiere: Coimbra, Salão Brazil, 23.05.2025

For three percussionists with tom-toms, metal plates, electronics, and real-time video.

Duration: approx. 9 min.

Program notes:

- Around 200 years ago, Joseph Fourier was the first to describe the greenhouse effect, without which the Earth would have a cold and hostile climate.

- In 1873, Italian geologist Antonio Stoppani recognized the *growing* influence of humans on the =environment= and coined the term “Anthropozoic era.”

- Even before the end of the 19th century, Svante Arrhenius mentioned for the =first time= that *humans* were increasing the CO_2 content of the atmosphere.

- Canadian Guy Steward Callendar, who investigated the extent to which CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere had increased in the 1930s, concluded that the Earth was warming by 0.005 degrees Celsius per year.

- A few years later, in the midst of World War II, the young German meteorologist Hermann Flohn was working at the Reichsamt für Wetterdienst on the question of how humans alter the climate.

- In 1971, the German Physical Society made its first statement after an exciting lecture by Hermann Flohn at its annual congress. It *warned* that climate change could be =irreversible=.

- The first global *summit* on =climate= took place in February 1979, at that time under the leadership of the World Meteorological Organization.

- In 1985, the German Physical Society spoke out for the second time - this time more clearly. It warned that the sharp increase in greenhouse gas emissions could cause the global average temperature to rise by several degrees and sea levels to rise by five to ten meters over the next 50 to 100 years.

- Climate change became a topic in the media when Der Spiegel magazine devoted its cover story to the “climate catastrophe” in October 1986.

- It is only in the IPCC's fourth assessment report in 2007 that climate change is *really* considered a given and no longer refutable.

- On March 31, 2025, Cory Booker speaks without interruption for more than 25 hours before the US Senate as a form of protest against Donald Trump's policies, particularly against cuts in funding for environmental policies. Did we speak up?