Climate change energy supply
CO2 emissions car industry
awful devastation from floods technology transfer
nuclear energy the Diesel emissions problem
to be climate neutral
She's been talking about it most of her political career: German Chancellor Angela Merkel is
no stranger to the science of climate change.
But this summer, climate change became a reality in Germany itself. Flash flooding killed more
than 200 people and caused billions of euros worth of damage.
As Merkel visited the devastation, she linked the floods to global warming - and admitted
Germany would have to become far more ambitious on climate policy.
We will take a stand against this force of nature in the short-term but also the mid-
and long-term, with policies that take nature and the climate more into consideration than
we have done in recent years. That will be necessary.
Chancellor Merkel has been in power for 16 years – and there she was in the final months
in office, at the scene of the disaster, urging swifter action. It sounded like an impassioned
plea.
But what does that message say about her responsibility for climate policies over the past two decades?
And Germany’s responsibility as a leading industrialized nation?
Angela Merkel has, I think, understood better than most other politicians what the climate
issue is all about.
She has an incredibly mixed record on climate change, on climate policy. And if you just
look at the numbers, if you just look at the CO2 that Germany is emitting, then I think
that should be the dominant narrative.
The reality is: we’ve seen Merkel take very different approaches to climate policy:
Let’s have a look at the various faces we’ve seen:
Three chancellors, three paths, and three sets of results.
The diplomatic leader who persuaded her global counterparts to promise climate action...
The chancellor beholden to her country’s powerful car companies and business interests...
And a crisis manager trying to catch-up on protecting the climate as the clock ticks
down on her time in office
This was Angela Merkel's first major climate moment as chancellor. She took her environment
minister to the ice sheets in Greenland -- on the frontlines of global warming.
That I could see here again the urgency with which things are progressing, that will again
give me the energy to - along with the environment minister - fight hard for action.
This message wasn’t new from Merkel. Back in the 90s, she served as environment minister.
As a scientist, it was a role she relished – and one that helped put her on the political
map.
In 1995, Merkel hosted the first UN climate conference in Berlin -- getting fellow environment
ministers from around the world to work together.
She carried that climate momentum into her first term as chancellor.
She used the G8 meeting in Germany for two important steps -- getting industrialized
nations to commit to cutting global CO2 emissions in half by 2050 -- and to agree that climate
change is man-made.
These were significant achievements – progress on a global level. This is when German media
started calling Angela Merkel the climate chancellor.
Internationally, I think it is fair to say, particularly in the rich world, that Merkel
was the climate chancellor. She brought something new to these discussions and she helped convince
some of the rising figures like George W. Bush.
Merkel was keen to focus on climate at home in Germany, too. She ditched a previous government's
plans to close nuclear power plants and decided to keep them running.
Nuclear energy is low carbon, so it would help the country reach its emissions targets.
But in 2011, a catastrophe on the other side of the world changed her mind. In Japan, a
tsunami hit the Fukushima nuclear power plant and caused a meltdown. In Germany, Merkel
made a remarkable policy turnaround.
We will step by step completely renounce nuclear energy by the end of 2022.
This was a big transition. Merkel went from keeping nuclear power plants open in order
to reduce carbon emissions....to shutting them down because of Fukushima. And on top
of that, she launched a new plan:
the Energiewende – or energy transition. This was a roadmap to supply the entire country
with 100 percent renewable energy. And this was the chancellor reacting to events at a
moment of opportunity - to reach a political goal.
It's difficult to clearly differentiate conviction and calculation in Merkel's political approach.
I think climate policy is a good example of that. It's a topic where on the one hand,
she’s convinced of its importance, and where you can also see that she only really indulges
that conviction or pushes for a breakthrough when she sees a political window of opportunity.
Merkel's government introduced a scheme to pay anyone -- individuals or companies -- for
producing renewable energy and feeding it into the electricity grid.
That helped create a boom in solar power - it became one of the cheapest energy sources
worldwide.
But there were global setbacks. At the Copenhagen summit in 2009, Merkel and world leaders pushed
for an agreement on stricter emissions targets... and failed. One of a row of disappointments
for developing nations looking to wealthy nations like Germany to lead - by example
and on the world stage.
Germany is one of those countries in the global north that emit the biggest. They’re one
of the countries responsible for the biggest emissions. We’re also expecting that there
should be leadership that comes from that area because developing countries they can
provide the tools we need for us to see that we attain the climate justice we need.
And then a different crisis took the spotlight. You might remember the crippling Eurozone
debt crisis. Leaders made saving economies their top priority. It became clear just how
powerful the forces driving Germany’s economy actually were.
Mercedes, Volkswagen, BMW.... Global names, industry giants - crucial to the German economy.
Cars give Germany a robust domestic manufacturing base, and a mighty export balance sheet.
German car companies and suppliers employed more than 800,000 people in 2019, and posted
earnings of 436 Billion euros. They are also some of the biggest political cross-party
donors in the country. Merkel, like all chancellors before her, had to take their needs into consideration.
A Europe that is looking for a source of growth at the moment cannot put a lid on its own
source of growth. And the auto industry is part of growth and innovation.
Germany has a complete blind spot when it comes to this cause, it's got this reputation
as being very progressive country on climate issues. But when you look at kind of one of
the cornerstones of its economy, building cars that burn fossil fuels. Then you see
that a lot of it is really just spin, but essentially Germany has been very reluctant
to stand up to the car lobby.
In 2013, the auto industry’s lobbying group wrote a pointed letter that started with the
informal greeting “Liebe Angela...” dear Angela.
They insisted the chancellor couldn’t let carmakers be regulated to death.
They were worried about an EU proposal to regulate emission standards for cars. Merkel
slammed the brakes on the proposal.
You remember that German media had celebrated Merkel as the Climate Chancellor? Now, many
of them criticized her for allowing carmakers to wield power, money, and influence.
But their needs and their contribution to the German economy cannot simply be dismissed
-- something Merkel's former environment minister acknowledges.
The political world has to create a balance between climate protection and the maintenance
of prosperity in Germany - and with the fact that auto production needs a certain amount
of time to change, and cannot do so from one day to the next. That's how it is.
The biggest trade union in Germany says many auto workers support efforts to decarbonize
the economy. But the changes that will require are triggering deep uncertainty.
More than 200,000 people are employed here in Germany to manufacture the classic internal
combustion engine. It is foreseeable that in a relatively short time there will be no
more new vehicles. We will be able to get by with internal combustion engines until
2035. But that means what for many? And what prospects do I have? What do I do with my
vocational training? What do I do with my qualification? How can I change into another
one? Do I have any chance at all to apply for a job in another production sector? What
qualifications do I need? This uncertainty naturally bothers people.
It's clearly a juggling act. One that got more complicated when the Volkswagen emissions
scandal broke: Europe's biggest car maker had been rigging its diesel engines to dupe
emissions tests.
This was a clear case of cheating. Cheating their customers, the government, the rest
of the world, in effect, because this is about their missions and kind of pretending that
their vehicles were cleaner than they actually were.
That cheating had an impact. The diesel emissions scandal appeared to damage Merkel's faith
in the auto industry.
I think that really disillusioned her, and perhaps meant that since then she's given
a little less weight to the wishes of the auto companies. But yes, she can't exactly
drop them completely. Because she'd have to fear the economic consequences of that.
Balancing the power of the car industry and the pressure to clean up its emissions put
her in a difficult position. So did another big polluter: coal.
Germany stopped mining hard coal in 2018, but operations like this - digging up lignite,
or brown coal - are not due to close until 2038.
Germany is the world’s biggest producer of brown coal. And it’s one of the dirtiest
fuels in the world.
Remember that Merkel phased out nuclear energy? That left a gap until renewables catch up...
and Germany has turned to fossil fuels like coal in the meantime.
Brown coal is important in the former East Germany, where big lignite mines provide thousands
of jobs.
But Fridays for Future activists say the bigger picture is simply far more important.
We have some of the largest sources of CO2 within Germany, that is our coal mines. We
are building more roads, even though this entire country is covered with roads. We are
expanding the car industry. There is still complete villages being destroyed in favor
of the coal industries. So it's madness, honestly, what is happening in this country.
At home, Angela Merkel the Industry Chancellor was battling to protect jobs and Germany’s
economic success. But on the international circuit, she maintained her reputation as
a visionary climate chancellor.
She played a key role in negotiating the 2015 Paris Accords - when industrialized nations
committed to keep global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius. Still, the increasing urgency
of global warming would force her into catch-up mode.
In her last years in office, climate change would become a central theme again – internationally
and at home in Germany.
2017 saw extreme weather and climate events come thick and fast – devastating hurricanes
in North America; alarming heatwaves in Europe; record wildfires, even in icy Greenland; global
sea levels reaching new highs. And then, one of the world’s biggest emitters
– the US – left the Paris climate accord.
It was a blow to Angela Merkel and her counterparts. They did manage to seal a recommitment to
the Paris climate agreement targets. It was seen as a major success. But at home, there
was a setback.
For the year 2020 we had planned to reduce our CO2 emissions by 40 percent, and we must
say with great probability that this target, which we had planned in 2007, unfortunately
will not be achieved.
It was a failure of wealthy nations, felt by climate change campaigners around the world.
It is a two-way thing that as we adapt in Africa to the climate change crisis, the global
north, of which Germany is one of it, needs to be able to mitigate the impact. We shouldn’t
play politics with climate change because it’s going to consume us.
Merkel's cabinet announced Germany's first national climate law in 2019. It included
measures to get households and companies to reduce emissions -- using a carbon pricing
system.
And the climate law DID set targets for different economic sectors like transport and industry.
But environmentalists and activists insisted that even with the law, the burden on future
generations to cut emissions was too heavy.
Their criticism isn’t surprising, if you look at the bottom line: Germany hasn’t
reduced its overall emissions enough the whole time Merkel’s been in charge. In fact, emissions
from the transport sector – including the auto industry – have hardly changed at all.
People demanding significant action decided politicians weren’t helping.
Young climate activists took their arguments from the streets to the constitutional court...and
won. The judges ruled that the burden on future generations was too high and the climte law
partly unconstitutional.
The chancellor and her cabinet had to react. They hastily accelerated their plans, pushing
forward the deadline to reach net zero emissions by five years.
It was a significant moment that showed the chancellor playing catch up in her final months
in office. Critics say she’s trying to polish her climate image – but also, responding
to increased public awareness of climate change. Especially as the effects are hitting home.
Climate change marked the start and end of her time as chancellor. So what will her lasting
impact be? Putting climate change on the agenda in her early years? Playing to the car industry
and powerful economic forces for too long? Or her last flurry of action to put Germany
on the path towards net zero?
Angela Merkel certainly gets credit for having raised climate policy as an issue on the international
stage, even as early as 1995 when she was Environment Minister. Her failure, on the
other hand, is, I think, that we in Germany did not dare to implement the necessary consequences
over a long period of time.
The Chancellor's legacy in climate policy will be that the preparatory work that we
have also done as Germany and in Europe with the European Union is actually sustainable,
that the United States has come back into the climate protection agreement. So far,
no country has withdrawn, no other country.
She has an incredibly mixed record on climate change, on climate policy. And if you just
look at the numbers, if you just look at the CO2 that Germany is emitting, then I think
that should be the dominant narrative.
Everyone will be impacted by the climate crisis, rich or poor. So that’s why we need to act
now. I need to start seeing Germany leading also as one of the developed countries. Walking
the walk. Not just coming to speak to us. Walking the talk for us to see that something
is being done.
What does Merkel herself have to say? What is her scientific analysis of how she's done?
At her final formal press conference as chancellor, she offered this assessment...
I believe that I have devoted a great deal of energy to climate protection. And always,
especially during the time that I was party leader, in the CDU, very much advocated not
losing sight of climate protection and always consistently pushing it forward. And yet I'm
sufficiently equipped with a scientific understanding to see that the objective realities require
that you can't continue at this pace, you have to speed up.
And the crisis is growing. The UN now says global warming will reach that critical 1.5
degree threshold far earlier than previously expected. The climate will affect everything
- and the new chancellor will have to build that into everything she or he does.