Saturday, November 6th, 2021
On the way to the 1.5 degree goal
Baerbock calls for a “climate check” for laws
Germany committed itself to the 1.5 degree target in Paris in 2015. So that this can also be achieved, Greens co-leader Baerbock wants to measure every new law in the future government by its contribution to climate protection. Meanwhile, the BUND increases the pressure on the traffic light parties.
Green co-leader Annalena Baerbock wants to make climate protection a touchstone for all laws of the future federal government. “Just as we check whether projects can be financed, we also need a binding climate check,” she told the newspapers of the editorial network Germany (RND). The environmental organization BUND warned the Ampel partners to be ambitious when it comes to climate protection.
“If a federal government decides to do everything to ensure that Germany comes on a 1.5-degree path, then it cannot be that you close your eyes when a ministry presents laws that are clearly different from it,” said Baerbock to the RND newspapers. She was referring to the Paris Climate Protection Agreement of 2015. This provides for the limitation of global warming to well below two degrees, ideally 1.5 degrees, compared to the pre-industrial age.
Fulfilling the Paris climate protection agreement is “the responsibility of all three parties,” said Baerbock, referring to the coalition negotiations between the SPD, the Greens and the FDP. “The task has to run across all departments. No ministry should avoid it.”
The Federation for Environment and Nature Conservation Germany (BUND) called on the traffic light partners to initiate a “comprehensive transformation of economy and society”. There is “no more time for sham solutions,” said the organization with a view to the world climate conference in Glasgow. At the Federal Delegate Assembly of the BUND, the participants had reportedly appealed to the traffic light parties on Friday to present a coalition agreement “which describes a comprehensive transformation of economy and society within the planetary boundaries”.
“It takes a guiding and supporting state and the active participation of its citizens in order to comply with the ecologically necessary absolute limits,” said BUND chairman Olaf Bandt. “The coalition agreement should express this idea.”