17
The trials of Robert Habeck: is the world’s most powerful green politician doomed to fail?
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2023
17 points (100.0% liked)
Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.
5212 readers
707 users here now
Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The German government as many other governments as well, as basicly made massive promises and did not pass the necessary laws to actually meet any sort of climate goals for a long time. The 1.5 degree goal of the Paris agreement was effectivly already unachievable when the current government came into office as 75% of primary energy was still fossil fuels and Germany needed net zero by 2030 to make that.
It is really important to say this, but the current heating bill is actually pretty radical, as it includes existing homes. Home heating makes up about half of Germanys natural gas consumption, so the gas lobby was not going to take this without a fight. Hence the massive media backlash. Basicly if a climate bill is not controversial, chances are it is not radical enough. At the same time the 2035 combustion engine sales ban in the EU was a very hard hit for the oil industry and the German Greens pushed for it very hard. Also they got the EUs emissions trading system enlarged and laws to increase renewables generation in Germany and finally agreed on a plan to set up hydrogen power plants in Germany to fix the intermittence issue of renewables.
So basicly what the Greens have created is a decent framework, which puts Germany above the 1.5 degrees of the Paris Agreement, but still under the 2 degree mark, which is in all honesty a really good thing. If they kept nuclear, it would have been better, but it still is some actually good governing.
Obviously the fossil fuel industry does not agree with that and is using everything they have to kill the Greens right now. The conservatives are partly willing to govern with the Greens and the moderate ones propably will not kill what the Greens have created. The social democrats want to keep it too, so the only real option is to get a far right government in to kill all of that. So thats what we currently see. A media storm to make all of it stop and a massive onslaught on the left. All of that works well in Germany and unfortunatly also abroad.