Climate protection and social issues are together a dream team


Climate protection and social issues
Together a dream team, individually vulnerable

By Katja Kipping

A dispute about what is more important, social security or climate protection, is a pure waste of time – or a transparent diversionary maneuver.

After a flood of historic proportions and fires around the Mediterranean, the issue of climate protection has come back into focus. But for how long and how sustainable? Let’s approach the topic from a different perspective, from the side of its opponents: If proof had been needed as to why the commitment to climate protection and social security are inseparable, the Initiative New Social Market Economy (INSM) has it in theirs current publication – albeit inadvertently.

The new INSM brochure has a sophisticated sounding title “Program for the Federal Parliament Election 2021”. On page eight of this document, the INSM suddenly began to worry about the situation of low-wage earners, specifically on the subject of the energy transition. High electricity prices would particularly burden the low-wage earners, “since the share of electricity costs in the total expenditure is higher for people with low incomes”.

Anyone who knows the INSM rub their eyes in amazement. After all, this initiative prepared the ground for the social cuts in Agenda 2010 and for Hartz IV. And after all, this INSM program is really not about the social interests of people who have little. Rather, the initiative explains why the minimum wage should not be increased significantly (p. 20) or why it is absolutely necessary to continue to have time limits without any objective reasons (p. 12). This commitment to good work and higher wages is to be expected, after all, this initiative is mainly financed by the group. When it comes to long-term care, too, the initiative promotes the retention of co-payments without considering the interests of low-wage earners (p. 24).

So where did this change of heart come from? Well, it is not about a change of heart, but a classic example of how employees and poor people are pushed forward when it comes to raising the mood against the necessary climate protection. Because their concern for the low-paid does not lead to a proposal for a social electricity tariff, but rather to criticism of the energy transition.

Opponents of consistent climate protection like to bring the so-called common people’s worries about ecology into position. Anyone who wants to advance climate protection must know about these methods. The worst possible reaction to this would be to underestimate the social needs and insist that climate protection is more urgent.

Social and ecological tipping points

Because anyone who thinks that the poor can still be given more money in ten years’ time is not going to burn anything, is very wrong. Certainly, the distortions caused by distorted résumés, solidified poverty, lack of prospects and the feeling of not counting cannot be measured as easily as rising sea levels. But even in the lives of the marginalized and the poor, there are decisions that are difficult to reverse.

The consequences of social division can be just as destructive for societies and democracy as greenhouse gas emissions can be for the climate. A lack of prospects and fears of relegation, i.e. the worries of people who still have something to lose and to whom poverty in society shows how deep their fall could be, sometimes form the breeding ground for inhuman propaganda. Even if there is no excuse for racist positions, it is important to know the conditions in which anti-democracy thrives in order to be able to counteract it. In this respect, we also have to speak of social tipping points.

Sustainable climate protection must take into account those who get far too little, who work hard, have long commutes and are concerned that consistent climate protection will make their life, which is not easy anyway, even more complicated.

It is also a question of fairness that it is not precisely those people who keep the shop running with their work who have to bear the burden of climate protection, but rather the corporations, which are the largest emitters of CO2 emissions, responsible belong. In addition, it is also a question of sustainable enforcement: Anyone who wants to win majorities for consistent climate protection in the long term must ensure that this does not only mean a poorer social situation for them, but rather goes hand in hand with improvements and simplifications. Anyone who neglects the social tipping points makes it easy for the anti-ecological counter-movement to mobilize against climate protection.

Climate protection is a deeply social issue

Anyone who thinks that climate protection is a luxury problem in view of the social hardships is just as wrong. Because there is no doubt that time is of the essence. Experts point out that we probably still have a maximum of ten years before the ecological tipping points are reached, at which even decisive changes in direction can no longer stop the climate collapse. How existential the consequences of extreme weather conditions, of subsequent floods on the one hand and heat waves on the other, can be, will be brutally demonstrated to us in Europe this summer as well. The journalist Carolin Emcke is therefore right when she appears in the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” writes: “We would have to mourn for all the lost years that we already knew better, but still haven’t changed anything”.

In addition, the consequences of a climate catastrophe and environmental pollution hit the more vulnerable and poorer people in particular. In this country, too, the poor suffer particularly badly from the consequences of environmental pollution. The Federal Government’s Poverty and Wealth Report comes to the conclusion that households with low incomes are often exposed to higher levels of pollution from environmental problems such as air pollution and noise.

The more extreme weather conditions occur, the more it will hit us all. Climate and environmental protection are both a social necessity and a question of the safe life of all of us. A dispute about what is more important, social security or climate protection, is a pure waste of time – or a transparent diversionary maneuver. Rather, it is crucial to strengthen those measures that promote both. Climate protection and social security. Separately, they can each be attacked, but together they are a dream team.

Katja Kipping is the social policy spokeswoman for the left parliamentary group in the German Bundestag and a former chairwoman of her party. In weekly alternation with Konstantin Kuhle she writes the column “Kipping oder Kuhle” at ntv.de.

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