Focus on climate crisis
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Reporting on climate change is one of the major journalistic challenges of our time. The climate crisis is also one of the most important issues of humanity for SPIEGEL. For this reason, we support an international initiative that seeks to take a look this week: "Covering Climate Now" was initiated by the Columbia Journalism Review and the Canadian newspaper "The Nation", with more than 200 media companies around the world, including the Guardian, El País, La Repubblica, The Times of India, Bloomberg or Vanity Fair. SPIEGEL is dedicating the cover story of the current issue to the climate crisis this week and every day pays special attention to mirror.de
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No authority is better suited to convince a Christian party than the pope. So it is understandable that the authors of the draft resolution for the climate concept of the CDU begin their work with a quote from Pope Francis. There is nothing less in climate protection than "the defense of Mother Earth". And also for the Protestant followers there is a Christian admonition: Climate protection is "conversion to life", they give the title of a memorandum of the Evangelical Church of Germany again.
The two authors, Andreas Jung (CDU) and Georg Nüßlein (CSU), follow a clear calculation. They aim at the ecological instincts of a conservative clientele. This prefers to speak of the creation to be preserved rather than of nature. But the same thing. It's just a small semantic variance. At least, she seems to be back to the Union by now.
"For too long, ecologically speechless"
Unfortunately she was not there for many years. The last CDU politician with a green profile was Klaus Töpfer. He became known for his courageous leap into the Rhine, which he thought was clean enough again after the many environmental scandals in the chemical industry. That was in May 1988. After the end of the Kohl government, Töpfer said goodbye to the Uno Environmental Agency Unep in Nairobi. He remained an ecological thinker, highly respected and revered in the environmental movement - but not in his own party.
Voice # 113 - Is Angela Merkel really the "Climate Chancellor"?
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A big mistake, as it now turns out, where the students march every Friday, the forests dry up and the Amazon burns. A few months ago analyzed Töpfer in an interview with the SPIEGEL relentlessly the deficiencies of his party: "We have been ecologically speechless for far too long, and that can not be changed quickly," said the now 81-year-old. The striking students of "Fridays for Future" had his party "surprised and caught on the wrong foot". Now you urgently need "faces for this important topic".
Still in the early summer was in the CDU Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer intended for this function, after all, she was once office manager of Klaus Töpfer in Saarland, and he advises them today in questions of ecology. But then she was surprisingly Secretary of Defense, because just because an office had become vacant.
Not unlikely that now self-proclaimed environmental inventor and Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder jumps into this gap. He just said in an interview that doing nothing for the climate is "sin". Or the co-author of the already cited climate paper, Andreas Jung, takes over to strengthen the ecological profile of his party. For climate protection in Germany and in the world is only important: the main thing, there is even anyone in the Union for this task.
Why the Union is the key
The Union is the key to resolute climate protection in Germany. Already from pure power arithmetic: For the coming years, hardly a government constellation is realistic, in which the CDU / CSU is not relevant. But also in terms of content, there is a lot to be said for the Union to judge it. The same applies to climate protection as it did to the Agenda 2010 of the SPD: Only the comrades were able to pave the way for the Hartz reforms, which are crucial for the German labor market and the economic upturn.
Gerhard Schröder and Franz Müntefering managed to persuade the trade unions against all opposition. The same is likely to happen with the Union and its ambitions for climate protection: it must produce a personality that manages to integrate the right wing of the economy, which could halt resolute climate protection reforms. Angela Merkel did it when she put her CDU in the middle to tie the urban, progressive milieu to the party.
More about the climate crisis
Similarly, the party must now be able to regain the bourgeois milieu in town and country, whose ecological awareness is now so pronounced that it chooses green instead of black. Hardly anyone has noticed this development as closely as Andreas Jung, whose Constance constituency lies in the south of Baden-Wuerttemberg. "For the first time, the cities chose Winfried Kretschmann as prime minister, and when he was re-elected it was the citizens of the rural districts," he says. The success of the Greens shows just how big the social class has become that wants to enjoy its prosperity while maintaining an ecological lifestyle.
So far, the CDU lacked courage
For the Union, these milieus are the key to returning to old heights in the electorate's favor. Angela Merkel understood this connection. Late, but maybe not too late. Once she started as climate chancellor, then she let the topic grind. In spring, she issued the slogan in the parliamentary group that climate protection must end with "Pillepalle".
On Friday she can prove that her party is capable of major environmental reforms. Then the Climate Cabinet meets and sets the cornerstones of a climate protection law. In addition to a bundle of incentive measures, such as for electric cars or trains, pricing for climate-damaging carbon dioxide should be agreed. Climate economists have long been calling for that, but the CDU has lacked courage so far.
Angela Merkel wants to decide on this probably most meaningful instrument for climate protection and with this decision then travel to the special summit of the UN next week in New York. For them, it's about the place in the history books. For her party to return to old strength. And for Germany, a climate protection that can finally be called rightly so.
