Greens want to tighten climate protection law: “No more slender feet”

When it comes to climate protection, the Greens’ slogan in this election campaign is: “Stay the course.” What do you mean by that? The expansion of renewables must continue at least at the same pace as before, said Felix Banaszak, co-chair of the party star. However, “staying the course” does not mean simply continuing the traffic light policy. “When it comes to climate protection, we want to emphasize the responsibility of the individual sectors again,” said Banaszak.

The Greens are aiming to change the climate protection law. In the coalition with the SPD and FDP, the party grudgingly agreed to a far-reaching change: Previously, responsible ministries had to present emergency programs if individual sectors missed their climate targets in a year, such as the transport or building sectors. Various FDP politicians had described this as a “planned economy”, and Transport Minister Wissing even threatened driving bans if this was not changed.

Since the change passed by the traffic light, compliance with climate targets is no longer checked retroactively, but rather looks into the future over several years – and above all: across sectors. Environmental associations and climate activists saw the change as a weakening of climate protection.

“At the instigation of our coalition partners, the cross-sectoral consideration was included in the climate protection law, which was a hard compromise for us,” says Banaszak today. “That’s why the FDP transport minister could rest on the fact that Robert Habeck had exceeded the climate targets for energy and industry. This must not be a template for the next federal government.” The transport sector in particular must contribute more to achieving the goals.

The Greens are not interested in returning to the old climate protection law, originally passed by the grand coalition. This was not convincing in many places, for example because it only checked measures to see whether they had worked in the past. “But we want to go back to sectoral responsibility so that no one can get a slim foot anymore,” said the party leader.

According to Banaszak, this means for a new transport minister that he or she must accelerate the transport transition. “Switch to climate-friendly cars more quickly, more e-charging stations more quickly, and the expansion of rail must also be accelerated.” A Green transport minister would also implement a speed limit on motorways, he added.

The party leader is thus concretizing a demand from the preliminary green election program that the party presented in mid-December. It says that they want to increase dynamism in the transport sector by intensifying the expansion of the railway and accelerating the switch to e-mobility. “To ensure this, we will, as legally required, evaluate the current climate protection law and accordingly strengthen the responsibility of sectors in which there is not enough progress in climate protection.”

At the end of next week, the Greens will meet in Berlin for the party conference. The final election program for the early federal election on February 23rd is to be adopted there.