Climate protection: Coca-Cola is cutting back on efforts – that’s consistent, unfortunately!

Two US sociologists developed the broken windows theory in the 1980s. After that, a broken window pane has to be repaired quickly, otherwise more panes would quickly be broken and the whole area would fall into disrepair. Because the first pointless attack immediately triggers copycat effects. The inhibitions to destruction fall.

We are currently experiencing a kind of broken windows scenario in politics worldwide. Inhibitions about casting doubt on the impending climate catastrophe are falling everywhere. US President Donald Trump threw in the first punch in 2016 when he, now the most powerful man in the world, canceled the Paris climate agreement with great fanfare. His absurd justification: The idea of ​​climate change was “invented by and for the Chinese in order to harm the competitiveness of industry in the USA.”

Apparently Trump’s words have had a disinhibiting power. Since then, more and more influential politicians have been throwing bigger and bigger stones. In 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin openly endorsed Trump’s climate denial. People like the then head of state of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, actually the guardian of the rainforest, followed him. In the EU, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán agreed. The FPÖ chairman Herbert Kickl, who won the Austrian parliamentary election despite the catastrophic flooding with several deaths and thousands of flooded houses, also joined in. Marine Le Pen from the French Rassemblement National (RN) acts similarly. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni talks about “ideology” and wants to leave the European “Green Deal”, the path to climate neutrality.

In Germany, the AfD is particularly raging against all climate protection efforts and has now reached almost 20 percent of Germans. In the draft election program for 2025, she states that climate change has existed at all times and that the human contribution is scientifically unclear.

Other German politicians are taking a more nuanced, cleverer approach in order to pursue a similar goal: scaling down efforts. They serve their resistance to climate protection in smaller bites because the consequences of climate change are now so noticeable that they can no longer be completely denied. At least that’s what the non-governmental organization “Center for Countering Digital Hate” says, which examined 12,000 YouTube videos for rhetoric.

In Germany you can easily follow the trend on talk shows. FDP leader Christian Lindner disguises his aversion to a consistent climate protection policy behind appeasing demands such as “technological openness”, which means nothing other than that oil and gas can continue to burn. CDU leader Friedrich Merz, who announced in 2023 that “the world will not end tomorrow” because of global warming, has recently taken a position against wind power and is talking about nuclear fusion, which is still in its infancy worldwide.

The perpetuated statements are highly infectious. The power of repetition is already reflected in research. According to a new Ipsos survey, almost two thirds of Germans (61 percent) believe that they are already doing everything they can to protect the environment. At the same time, however, they continue to buy combustion cars and install new oil and gas heating systems in their houses.

You could say: So be it. Finally, other surveys show that Europeans in particular still fundamentally support the energy transition. But the broken windows effect has long had serious consequences in real politics. This was painfully evident at the recent World Climate Conference (COP29) in Azerbaijan. There was no longer any progress in global climate protection. The results are extremely disappointing.

What’s almost worse is that inhibitions are also falling in the economy, which has long presented itself as exemplary and responsible. Just over a week ago, an attempt in South Korea to conclude a UN treaty on environmental pollution from plastic waste failed. As a result, Coca-Cola, one of the world’s most energy-hungry plastic users, has drastically scaled back its ambitious climate goals. The group actually wanted to make at least half of its packaging – around six million tons per year – from recycled material by 2030. Now it should only be 35 to 40 percent – and not until 2035. At the same time, Coca-Cola has reduced its own recycling efforts by a quarter.

The German election campaign is getting dirty, they say. You can take that quite literally. Because if the CDU, FDP, AfD and BSW continue to throw stones at windows on climate issues in order to get votes, then Germany will certainly abandon its path to climate neutrality in 2045. Then the Germans will further reduce their commitment to a future worth living. Party representatives are therefore urgently advised to exercise moderation. No one should carelessly distort climate truths in campaign speeches. To say it with the popular astrophysicist Harald Lesch: “Climate change has been researched, we have to act!”