Green chairmen Robert Habeck (left) and Annalena Baerbock as well as SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz and FDP leader Christian Lindner: There are still numerous conflicts to be resolved in the coalition negotiations
(Photo: dpa)
Berlin The Greens get help from Glasgow: While the final declaration is being fought at the World Climate Conference, environmental organizations and Fridays for Future activist Luisa Neubauer appeal primarily to the SPD and FDP to increase their climate policy ambitions. “Climate protection is not something that can be passed on to a single, former opposition party,” said Neubauer, a member of the Greens himself. “It would be the least that all parties equally start to claim the topic for themselves.”
Greenpeace Germany boss Martin Kaiser also called on the negotiators of a traffic light coalition to tackle climate protection “as an overall task of the government”. The gap between claim and reality is still “huge”. It is therefore important to move away from the theoretical level and into concrete action not only worldwide, but also in Germany.
Germany has pledged to exclude the financing of new coal-fired power plants abroad. As a result, there is a clear mandate for the new government to fundamentally reorganize the KfW development bank and the export credit business in a way that is geared towards climate protection, said Kaiser.
Christoph Bals, political director of the environmental and development organization Germanwatch, called on the SPD, the Greens and the FDP to organize a “one-stop global climate policy”. As an example, Bals cited the partnership with South Africa announced at the World Climate Conference to support the country in the energy transition. South Africa currently still gets almost 90 percent of its electricity from burning coal – the most polluting of all energy sources.
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Several countries, including Indonesia, Pakistan, Thailand and Rwanda, had knocked to enter into such a partnership with them, Bals said. In Glasgow, the last few meters are struggling to find out how ambitious the global community’s call to get out of coal is.
In the morning, Greens boss Robert Habeck had increased the pressure on the traffic light partners SPD and FDP. If the parties could not agree on measures to meet the 1.5-degree target agreed in the exploratory talks, “then we have failed in the coalition negotiations,” said Habeck on Friday on the RBB information radio.
The question arises as to what the SPD and FDP have achieved so far in the negotiations with a view to climate protection. Starting next week, negotiations will continue in a large group, and “then we will try to cut the knot”. According to Habeck, “everything can dissolve with good will and, above all, provided that there is a confrontation with reality”.
Last week, party leader Annalena Baerbock wrote a letter to the heads of various environmental protection organizations and asked them for support. The exploratory paper “unfortunately still lacks the necessary clarity”, the Greens would now work in the coalition negotiations to “achieve what is necessary”, wrote Baerbock and asked the addressees for support.
The 22 working groups set up for the coalition negotiations between the SPD, Greens and FDP had submitted their results papers to their respective party leaderships on Wednesday, thus laying the basis for the coalition agreement. The numerous conflicts, many of them on the subject of climate protection, should be resolved from Monday.
More: Coalition negotiations: The discussion about personnel issues is picking up speed.