Focus on climate crisis
All articles | More information
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" has been initiated by the Columbia Journalism Review and the Canadian newspaper "The Nation", with more than 200 media companies worldwide 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
Federal Environment Minister Svenja Schulze (SPD) has threatened ministries with sanctions if they fail to achieve the goals set out in the climate protection package. "There is a clear mechanism: Those who do not deliver must expect the sanction that they have to deliver," Schulze said at the NRW-SPD party convention in Bochum. This safety net is most important to them.
The leaders of the grand coalition had agreed on a climate protection package on Friday. The Federal Republic of Germany should reliably achieve its binding climate targets for 2030: by then, greenhouse gas emissions are expected to fall by 55 percent compared to 1990 levels.
Especially in the transport sector, she considers the reduction targets to be "overly optimistic," said Schulze. The implementation is reviewed by experts every year. "So far, the Minister of the Environment has always been responsible for everything, now the entire government is responsible," said Schulze.
The government's climate package envisages putting annual CO2 budgets into law for transport, industry, agriculture, buildings and other sectors. If an area fails to achieve its goals, the federal minister responsible should submit an "emergency program for follow-up" to the Climate Cabinet within three months after the CO2 emissions data have been confirmed by the experts.
Chancellery head: "We want all people to change their behavior"
The central element of the climate protection package is a price for climate-damaging carbon dioxide (CO2). She would have liked a different CO2 price, Schulze said, pointing to criticism that the agreed CO2 price was too low. Nevertheless, a lot has been achieved. A year ago no one would have thought possible a price on CO2, Schulze said.
Chancellery head Helge Braun also defended the climate protection package. "We want all people to change their behavior, that they behave more climate-friendly, but we want them to do it voluntarily and we also want them to make the transition well," said the CDU politician on Deutschlandfunk. "Everyone should change gradually, but we will not force anyone to restrict his mobility from now on."
Leading environmental and economic researchers consider the coalition's agreements to be too small-scale and too limited in their effectiveness, and the opposition and environmental organizations have been harshly critical. (An analysis of the climate protection package can be read here, a comment here.) However, praised is the agreed mechanism to check whether the measures are working. Schulze wanted to fly to New York on Saturday for the United Nations Climate Summit.
You want to answer the Sunday question for the covenant? Vote here:
How does the Civey method work?
The opinion research institute Civey works with a multi-level fully automated procedure. All representative real-time surveys are played in a Germany-wide network of more than 20,000 websites ("Riversampling"), so it is not only users of SPIEGEL ONLINE interviewed. Anyone can participate in the surveys online and will be included in the representative result with their answers if they have registered. From these users, Civey draws a quoted sample that ensures that it matches the population, for example, in terms of age, gender and population density. Finally, in a third step, the results are weighted by other attendees' socio-demographic factors and attitudes to correct distortions and prevent manipulation. More information can be found in the Civey FAQ.
Why is a registration necessary?
The registration helps to weigh the answers, thus allowing a result for the surveys, which is representative of the voting population in Germany. Each participant is asked for their gender, year of birth and place of residence. After that everyone can give their opinion in further surveys on different topics.
How do the results become representative?
The answer of each participant is weighted so that the result of a survey is representative of the population. For the Sunday question and the government monitor, this population comprises the population entitled to vote in Germany. The weighting is done fully automatically on the basis of the personal details at the registration as well as the history of earlier answers of a user. More methodological details can be found in the Civey whitepaper.
Will you reach enough participants online?
Opinion polls are usually conducted by phone or online. The significance of the results depends on how many people can be reached and how many actually participate in a survey when they are approached. Internet connections and landline connections are currently about equally widespread in Germany - with about 90 percent of households, mobile phones even 95 percent. The willingness to participate in all methods in the single-digit percentage range, especially experts estimate it for telephone surveys.
Thus, in both methods there is a group of people that can not be reached because they either have no connection to the respective network or do not want to participate in the survey. Therefore, a significant number of people must always be approached for a meaningful result. Civey surveys are currently in addition to SPIEGEL ONLINE in more than 20,000 other websites involved, including various media. This ensures that as many populations as possible can be reached.
How do I recognize the quality of a result?
Until the result of a survey becomes representative, enough different people have to participate. Whether this is already successful, makes Civey transparent, in that for each survey result a statistical error probability is specified. The number of participants and the interview time are also published for each survey.
What does it mean when the colored areas in the graphics overlap?
In our graphs, the statistical error is shown as a colored interval. This interval shows the uncertainty associated with a poll score. For example, on the Sunday question, one can not say exactly how many percent a party would get in a poll, but specify an interval where the outcome is likely to be. If the intervals of two survey values overlap, then strictly speaking no statements about the difference can be made. For the Sunday question this means: If the poll numbers of two parties are so close together that overlap their error intervals, it can not be derived from which would currently perform better in the election.
What happens with my data?
The personal data of the users are stored encrypted on German servers and remain secret. Civey employees use only user IDs for reporting and can not associate users with their votes. The main purpose of the users' personal information is to weigh the answers and to ensure that the surveys are not manipulated. To prevent this, Civey uses both statistical and technical methods. In addition, Civey works with external partners who create audiences. Only when users have accepted the privacy policy of both Civey and an external partner, may your responses be used by the Partner to model those audiences. However, a partner does not receive information about your political and religious attitudes as well as those with which you can be identified. Civey users are also not ads based on their answers. You may object to the distribution to partners at any time here as a logged in user. More information about privacy at Civey can be found here.
Who is behind Civey surveys?
At this point, readers in the app and on the mobile / stationary website have the opportunity to participate in a representative Civey survey. Civey is an online opinion research institute based in Berlin. To compile its representative surveys, the software of the company, founded in 2015, merges websites into a nationwide survey network. In addition to SPIEGEL ONLINE include, among other things, the "Tagesspiegel", "World", "Wirtschaftswoche" and "Rheinische Post". Civey was funded by the ProFit funding program of Investitionsbank Berlin and the European Regional Development Fund.