Germany vs. the Reality of Climate Change

In late 2019, the German government announced that it is ready to spend one billion euros on sustainable mobility in India. During the joint declaration, both governments demanded more support from political leaders around the world for the fight against climate change. While this is undoubtedly necessary, Germany and India are also missing their climate goals by a large margin.
Ambition vs. Tradition
Germany has more ambitious climate goals than the European Union and than most other countries in the world. German politicians pride themselves in emphasizing the importance of strong climate policies abroad and in setting ambitious goals for themselves. Consequently, many members of the international community see Germany as a role model for the use of renewable energy sources and environmental protection in general.
But for German politicians, many of these green policies are harder to sell at home, where some of them go against local traditions and the German lifestyle. After all, the average German produces five times more CO₂ than the average Indian and is, therefore, harder to convince of a more sustainable lifestyle. Humans generally hate giving up a luxury that they got accustomed to — even if that luxury is not environmentally or socially sustainable.
The traditional German cuisine is full of meat, and the car is the preferred method of transportation for most citizens. Because Germans love meat and meat production is one of the biggest contributors to global warming, the country could avoid emitting around 37 million tons of CO₂ per year just by switching to a vegetarian diet (the source is in German). This annual saving potential is larger than the sum of all CO₂ emissions produced by Denmark.
Just like in many other countries nowadays, German citizens, who love eating meat or driving really fast, fear that their lifestyle is in danger and are consequently more susceptible to disinformation campaigns confirming their fears.
Right-wing political groups, ranging from the far-right to members of Merkel’s conservative party, are using these fears to their advantage. These political groups often claim that environmental policies are designed to take away the freedom of the German people.
According to this narrative, a country-wide speed limit becomes a plot to take away your car, and a vegan day in German kindergartens becomes an affront to the German culture. Other campaigns were created to frame a CO₂ tax as a political move to disown Germany’s middle class or as a foreign plot to dismantle the German car industry.
Excuses vs. the Facts
It is evident that Germany is deeply divided when it comes to discussing climate change. Farmers are protesting for as well as against more environmental protection, depending on their political views. Climate activists are publicly insulted by conservative politicians, and climate-change-denying voters are effectively excluded from any private political discussion.
Serious concerns are mixed with political extremism on both sides and therefore become harder to differentiate for someone without a scientific background or interest.
The biggest reason for the divide is that the discussion is rarely about the facts. While there is no doubt among scientists that the climate is changing and that we need to do something about it, there are still many Germans who believe that there is no scientific consensus on the issue. Similarly, many politicians claim that there is no consensus on how to become more climate-friendly once we acknowledge the problem. Some also argue that it is impossible to switch to renewable energies for several reasons, even though there are many viable ideas on how to do it.
One idea that is not viable, but still used as an argument by those who are against renewable energies, is that Germany should just use nuclear power to satisfy its energy needs.
But nuclear power is also not a viable solution for a country like Germany.
Even if we ignore the radioactive waste produced by nuclear fission, substituting fossil fuels would require entirely new reactor types. Germany is not only one of the largest energy consumers in the world, but it also gets most of its energy from fossil fuels. Getting all of this power from nuclear energy sources instead would not only require an incredible investment in new reactors, but it would also be a finite solution. After all, radioactive materials that can be used for nuclear fission are not a renewable fuel source.
The Will of the Lobbyists
In either scenario, however, Germany needs to invest billions of euros into its energy infrastructure. There are not enough cables to transfer substantial amounts of energy from the north to the south, for example, which is true regardless of the energy source.
This is especially surprising because Germany was off to a good start. In the late 1990s, Germany was the market leader in wind energy and could have been independent of most fossil fuel sources by now.
But because the government effectively defunded the development of the industry, it slowly started to collapse, and, a little later, the German solar power industry reached the same fate. Thousands lost their jobs in these industries, but Merkel’s government decided to put a higher emphasis on saving jobs and company fortunes in the coal industry. After all, coal production is a long-lasting tradition in Germany and consequently tied to lots of votes — even though the number of coal mining jobs is surprisingly small.
Instead of taking away the fears of former coal miners and executives by showing them a path to a new occupation and by supporting them financially during the transition, Merkel’s government once again took the path of least resistance: Creating populist policies to ensure the vote of the coal-industry-dependent voters, while ignoring their actual issues at the same time.
While coal companies certainly have a strong lobby, they are not the primary reason for Germany’s environmental policy stagnation, though. The bigger culprit is the German car industry, which has collectively slept through the last 10 years of mobility trends and is now trying to catch up.
When Tesla showed a potential path to electric mobility, German car companies decided to bet on more efficient combustion engines instead — against the advice of nearly every credible expert on the planet.
Their lobby groups blocked efforts to build the charging infrastructure necessary for electric vehicles as well as other meaningful policies. At the same time, German politicians used their influence within the European Union to block similar attempts by other European nations and to get more subsidies for fossil fuel companies.
What Now?
In 2020, Germany still lacks a meaningful charging infrastructure, and a genuine shift in the mindset of the car industry still remains to be seen. The first electric cars released by most German brands are SUVs, which still requires you to move a vehicle that weighs more than a ton, just to transport an 80 kg human. As mentioned above, Germany also gets most of its energy from fossil fuels, so many of the electric vehicles are effectively driving on coal or gas, as well.

The situation looks less than optimal, and it is noticeable that more and more people are fed up with inaction. Senior citizens are starting to get concerned about the world they leave behind for their grandkids, and children have been on a school strike every Friday since late 2018 when Greta Thunberg inspired many young people around the world to act on climate change. Especially the fact that many right-wing politicians fearfully frame her as a villain indicates that her movement is taken seriously.
When the Coronavirus pandemic started to break out in Europe and many saw the devastation this would bring to climate-unfriendly companies like airlines and cruise ship operators, opponents of Fridays for Future were quick to declare the movement irrelevant. After all, the Coronavirus would make sure that global CO₂ emissions decrease substantially.
Unfortunately, this idea has nothing to do with reality. We damaged our environment and the climate of our planet so substantially that it would take years of low emissions to get back to normal — if that is even possible. Many experts believe that we have surpassed the point of reversibility and will have to live with permanent damage to our environment in the future.
The Political Environment
With a general election coming up in 2021, changes within Germany’s political landscape are on the horizon. For the first time in 16 years, there will be a federal election without Angela Merkel.
During her time as chancellor, she has served as a voice of reason in the center of Germany’s political landscape. While this has certainly deescalated some controversial discussions during her reign, it has also resulted in extraordinarily little change and created lots of tensions within German society and her right-leaning party.
Consequently, voters are asking for more extreme political agendas on both sides, and especially nationalists and racist right-wing extremists have thrived during the past decade. Many Germans, including myself, are now afraid that the problems I listed in this article will fuel extremism even more and ultimately benefit fascist politicians, such as Björn Höcke.
At the same time, though, the Green party, as well as independent environmental movements, gain traction within all layers of society. Germany’s Fridays for Future movement is bigger than it has ever been and even traditional German industry associations, such as the ADAC (a German automotive association), have started to correct their rhetoric in favor of a more climate-friendly approach. It remains to be seen, however, whether these positive changes are enough to make a meaningful impact by inspiring more progress.
To me, the most realistic as well as effective legislative approaches would be to put higher taxes on CO₂ emissions, meat production, and shipping. At the same time, the government should subsidize the switch to renewable energies for private citizens as well as for businesses to make sure that market forces are working towards the same goals.
In order to make this shift possible, Germany should invest much more in new technologies again and introduce a universal basic income, which could minimize the fear of social change for many German citizens — especially during and shortly after the Coronavirus pandemic. But it is unknown whether the election in 2021 will bring all or even any of these potential solutions closer to reality.
The Coronavirus Pandemic as a Chance?
Social, economic, and legislative improvement in Germany is mostly declined because of one of two arguments (and slight variations of the two):
- ‘Radical’ changes are not possible in Germany
- ‘The economy’ will not survive the changes we need to make
Thankfully, the Coronavirus pandemic has shown us that both arguments are mostly false.
If properly explained, Germans are happy to support radical changes if necessary. Being a scientist herself, Angela Merkel did a great job in explaining the dangers and security measures to the German people and only very few Germans are unhappy with her work in this regard.
At the same time, it became clear that any industry can survive in Germany, as long as the government wants it to survive. The industries deemed essential by the government received sufficient help and now the selection of essential services just needs to improve. Medical professionals still receive next to no help with the much more intense circumstances, while Lufthansa and the German car industry already had private meetings with the government to find a solution.
Of course, it would have been smart to use the hardship of otherwise powerful lobbies to make them agree to more sustainable business goals as part of their Coronavirus stimulus packages. But Merkel’s government is only smart when it wants to be, so it is very likely that Lufthansa will have to lower their emissions in the future to get money from the government, while the car industry can still use taxpayer money for their purposes without any meaningful condition to it.
But most of these deals are not finalized and it remains to be seen whether the upcoming stimulus packages will be used to enforce a more sustainable lifestyle in Germany — basically like the lifestyle German politicians push other countries (such as above-mentioned India) to implement.
We Need to Act
The Coronavirus pandemic is still much less predictable than we would like it to be and nobody knows how and when it will end. The only thing that we do know is that climate change will not wait for Germany — or any country — to get over the virus and to decide what to do.
We still need to act quickly and diligently to ensure that future generations can live on the planet we inherited from our ancestors.