Environmental groups have delivered a devastating verdict on the decisions of the coalition committee on climate protection. The managing director of WWF Germany, Christoph Heinrich, spoke on Wednesday of a “frontal attack on the climate protection law”. With the results that have now been achieved, “under the leadership of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who operated as ‘Climate Chancellor’ during the election campaign, the federal government has given up its claim to progress,” Heinrich said.
The “traffic light” had decided to intervene in the climate protection law the day before. Instead of the hitherto strict annual emission targets for individual areas such as energy, industry, transport and buildings, it should be possible to compensate for missed targets in one sector in another. This applies, for example, to the transport sector, which has so far failed to meet the climate targets – and for which the FDP-led Federal Ministry of Transport is responsible.
The managing director of the non-governmental organization Campact, Christoph Bautz, criticized the coalition “amputating the only effective climate protection instrument from the days of the grand coalition”. If every minister and every ministry is no longer responsible for its own sector when it comes to climate protection, “the law will become a blunt sword”. Bautz expressed incomprehension that the Greens agreed to this.
The environmental organization Germanwatch also looked disappointed at the results of the marathon coalition committee. “For climate protection, this is more backwards than progress,” criticized Political Director Christoph Bals. The coalition now wants to significantly weaken the rules for achieving the climate goals and thus create loopholes.”
The chairman of the Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND), Olaf Brandt, directed his criticism primarily at Chancellor Scholz: “Two weeks after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s drastic warning, there was no sign of the self-proclaimed ‘Climate Chancellor’.” The coalition is wasting “valuable time in the fight against the climate crisis”, the climate protection law is being “softened”.
Massive criticism also came from the economist and energy expert at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), Claudia Kemfert. She described Scholz on the Phoenix broadcaster as a “climate catastrophe chancellor”. The “traffic light” is “really not a progress coalition, but rather a standstill coalition”. With the current resolutions, the coalition is giving the transport sector “a free ride”.
