opinion
On December 14, 2018, around 150 schoolchildren will meet in front of the Reichstag building in Berlin. It is a gray Friday, the coal commission of the federal government in Berlin and the UN climate conference in Katowice, Poland, are still meeting. The posters on the young people say "There is no Planet B" or "End Coal!", They skip school to demand a better climate policy. It is the first major demonstration by a young protest movement called "Fridays for Future". And no one knows what the young people are kicking off there.
After a year of continuous protests, a group of renowned climate researchers warns at the end of November 2019 that the earth system is approaching dangerous "tipping points" at which the previous ecosystem could slip into a new "hot period". You can see this risk of changes that can no longer be stopped when the ice melts in the Arctic and Antarctic, when thawing permafrost, when coral reefs and the Amazon forest die.
The social tipping points have been exceeded
This year, German society did exactly what science in the global ecosystem warns of: tipping points were exceeded, switches flipped. In the past few months, Germany has received a climate package (as scientists evaluate the plans, read here) that sets CO2 reductions every year; coal combustion will end in 2038 at the latest; From 2021, practically every tonne of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide that is emitted in Germany will be priced. The new EU Commission is presenting a "European Green Deal" to consistently convert the continent towards a green market economy and to be climate neutral by 2050 (you can find out exactly what the Commission is planning here).
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In 2019, climate policy has moved more in Germany than in the past ten years. Climate change, long elusive in political and social discourse, controversial and ignored, has moved to the center of the social debate. And he will stay there. As a perennial favorite.
After many years of simulated climate policy, no federal government can now go back behind the climate protection law, coal phase-out and CO2 price. Similar to the 2001 Renewable Energy Act or the phase-out of nuclear power, new rules cause tectonic shifts that work - slowly but surely.
Despite all the attention paid to climate protection: emissions continue to rise
The course the world is taking is by no means determined. Once, in 2007, climate protection had a momentum. At that time the pioneering report of the IPCC came and the participating researchers received the Nobel Prize. But the hype culminated in an economic crisis and the failed climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009. Even today, CO2 emissions continue to rise, although they will have to halve in the next decade if the two-degree target of the Paris Agreement is to remain within reach. And the economic powers in the United States, Brazil, and Australia are fighting with all their might against a new system. The UN is powerless and underfunded, as the failed climate conference in Madrid has just shown (read here how the climate conference failed).
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But the changes in the environment can no longer be ignored, the alternatives to coal, oil and gas are becoming cheaper every month, and more and more investors want to protect their money from climate shocks in the long term. Large parts of the economy are already working to say goodbye to fossil fuels, to "decarbonization". And with all upcoming extreme weather, the question now always resonates: "Is that still bad weather or is it already climate change?" From November onwards, the United States alone could provide a global tipping point for more cooperation, climate protection and reason with every president who is not called Donald Trump.
In 2020 the debate about the future will really start in Germany, and not only on Friday: Companies like Bosch want to become climate neutral and demand reliable framework data. The car manufacturers are aggressively pushing their new e-mobiles onto the market because otherwise they fear fines of billions from Brussels. Large financiers such as the European Investment Bank (EIB) withdraw from fossil securities (read more about the plans here).
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The young generation measures the government against its own promises
In Europe, the climate is still high on the agenda: we will argue in the coming year how the EU's "Green Deal" will be financed. The "Fridays for Future" will continue to professionalize and strike more concentrated. In cooperation with the protest groups "Ende Terrain" and "Extinction Rebellion", the young generation will continue to do what they do best and what hurts politics the most: measure them against their own promises.
There will also be unrest that in 2020 many of these areas will have an ecological oath of disclosure. The future is not only gambled away with the climate. The same applies to land use, biodiversity, breathing air in cities, nitrate pollution in groundwater, packaging waste or the elimination of billions worth of environmentally harmful tax subsidies.
The long-running climate crisis may turn from a brush fire to a smoldering fire. But a few strong winds will quickly rekindle him. The "climate year" 2019 was just the beginning. It is becoming increasingly clear that we actually have everything available to solve the multiple crises from climate to sustainability: technology, knowledge, money, political majorities, even flank protection for the financial sector. What is often lacking is the political will to bring together this potential for real change.
This will has shown itself in 2019: at the "Fridays", in science, in some companies, with pioneers in the parties. The pressure from hot summers, heavy rain, hailed balance sheets and lost elections will not ease in 2020 either. The struggle for the urgently needed new course for the future has only just begun.