She used to be a warrior against CO2-killers, a queen of world climate, a chancellor with a mission. It was not long ago that Angela Merkel seemed to have no other more important topic than climate. But today we are suffering from the severest financial crisis in 80 years and it obviously puts things, even the world climate, into perspective. Lars Seefeldt, reporter for ZDF, a German TV program under public law, recently hunted down the issue, and it is his interviews I am here referring to.
It was only last week, that the European Spring Summit Conference of Heads of States and Governments took place in Brussels. Most important topic was the financial crisis. All newspapers, TV, and other media were filled with interviews, statements, facts and figures brought up in that conference. All focusing on how Europe now decides to deal with the problem. But what happened to topic climate? What happened to the approved financial support for environmental protection in China and India? The German Chancellor: “It is important that we establish a tactically reasonable bargaining position.
Currently we now also need the commitment to reduce [CO2 emission] from the other participants of the [climate] conference.” It appears that world climate has become an endangered mission in times of financial crisis. Is it just too tempting to first care for the survival of banks and safeguard employment and care for the climate only later? Whenever it suits the economic situation better?
“This is a wrong consideration,” so Prof. Dr. Ottmar Edenhofer, Chief Economist for Potsdam-Institute for Research on Consequences of Climate in an interview last week. “It is a fatal trap. It just cannot be, that now being in the need to face short term problems we neglect to solve the long term ones. I like to compare it with this image: The fact that things are not liven up in the Titanic Casino, does not mean, that the Titanic is not colliding with a block of ice. And we already know that we are heading for the block of ice and thus we must urgently steer against it.”
The question yet remains: How can we deal with the financial crisis and not break up with our efforts of fighting global warming? How can we save the world economy and at the same time save the world climate? How can we satisfy two essential global needs when they in a way seem to oppose, maybe even exclude one another? It is obvious, that the green house effect and global warming cannot be cushioned if China and India commit the same fatal failures and repeat the Europeans’ earlier sins. To prevent this from happening, these countries need incentives, they need money. Environmental activists like Regine Günther of the WWF Germany, have a quite precise picture of these: “Until 2020 Europe is to contribute an amount of 35 billion Euros (46,5 billion US$). Thus an estimated 7 billion Euros (9,3 billion US$) for Germany is appropriate.”
Can Germany afford that? Now? In times of financial crisis? Ecologists agree, that yes, Germany can because it must. What is agreeable for banks must not be impossible for climate.
Wäre die Welt eine Bank hättet ihr sie längst gerettet – Greenpeace (If the world were a bank you’d have long saved it – Greenpeace). If Germany is ready to spend big money anyway, then it better do it the way that it also helps its environment. This means to intensify efforts in renewable energy and energy efficiency.
As a matter of fact however Germany in facing the financial crisis seems to preferably invest in old infrastructure, in roads, in bigger cars, in rewarding those, who buy new cars etc. These have just no synergy effects at all, meaning it might help ease the financial crisis, but is counterproductive to the climate crisis. The better strategy would be to see the financial crisis as some kind of motor for climate protection.
Pursuing it that way, linking the two problems, developing solutions that fit both in one go and performing well on this issue it can turn out to be a valuable chance. For Angela Merkel it is a chance to show profile, but truth remains that there is a lot more than just that at stake, as this is for sure: The world climate is of world relevance.