Dear reader,
Wording that suggests a promise that is malleable enough that it can never actually be kept is popular with campaigning politicians.
Even for those who are just starting out.
At the presentation of the government program of the traffic light coalition in November, Climate Minister Robert Habeck used a wording that had appeared several times in his party's program for the federal elections: With the coalition agreement, the new government is "on the 1.5 degree path," according to the Green Party .
Even then, one could have guessed that this expression gave the impression that the government plans coincided with the limit from the Paris climate agreement, according to which the earth should not warm up by more than 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial times - but also one could justify a considerable failure to meet the target.
A good six months after the coalition started its work, it is now becoming increasingly clear that the latter will probably be the case.
In the middle of the week, the German Advisory Council on the Environment (SRU) presented a new calculation that shows that Germany's current climate policy is more likely to lead to a path of 1.75 degrees.
At least if you are striving for a fair global sharing of the burden of climate protection.
Germany should be climate neutral by 2031
This is made possible by calculating a so-called CO2 budget.
This gives a guideline for how many tonnes of greenhouse gases the world community can still release into the atmosphere without breaking certain thresholds in temperature development, the 1.5-degree limit, for example.
This total amount, reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), can then be broken down into individual countries depending on the number of inhabitants.
According to this calculation, according to the SRU, there are still 3.1 gigatonnes of CO₂ left for Germany to have at least a 50 percent chance of not breaking the 1.5-degree threshold.
Assuming that emissions would fall linearly from now on, the Federal Republic should no longer emit any net CO₂ by 2031.
It can be said quite soberly that this goal will never, ever be achieved.
For comparison: The federal government is currently planning to be climate-neutral by 2045, and this plan will only work if the energy transition in terms of electricity, heat and transport runs like clockwork.
The Germans will therefore go into the climate control system - the global targets will only be met if other countries emit significantly fewer greenhouse gases than they would actually be entitled to according to the budget calculation.
Delayed energy transition as a cause
After all, the figures from the government advisors show that Germany could just about make its contribution to a mark of 1.75 degrees warming - which would still mean that politicians would still keep the hard Paris limit of limiting global warming to "well below two degrees". .
"Germany must become independent of all fossil fuels, not just those from Russia," says Wolfgang Lucht, Head of the Department for Earth System Analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and member of the Council. "The remaining CO2 budget is melting away rapidly.
This is primarily a consequence of the recently delayed energy transition in Germany.«
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stay confident
Yours, Kurt Stukenberg
