What is a success and what is a failure is always relative at climate summits. After the two weeks in Glasgow, is the planet’s salvation in sight? Unfortunately, no. Have the states outgrown themselves in the face of the climate crisis? Barely. Is there any reason for hope? Yes.
Many saw something like the last chance in the fight against global warming in Glasgow. You will be disappointed. Others have wished for steps on the way out of the greatest planetary crisis. These steps are there. Because the conference opens a new chapter in international climate protection. The states are moving away from the controversy over the small print towards very concrete steps. How the chapter ends is uncertain. But it describes a departure.
The fight over the fine print would be over for now
It starts with the rules of the Paris Climate Agreement now finally in place. How concrete progress in climate protection can be compared, how often the states submit new plans, how they cooperate with each other – the conference in Glasgow was able to clarify all of this. Rules are the conditions for a fruitful coexistence, regardless of whether between people or states. Global climate protection also needs rules if words are to be reliably followed by deeds.
This clears the field for the real Herculean task of the Paris Agreement: saying goodbye to coal, oil and gas. After the battle for the small print, now comes the battle for the big deeds.
Nothing reflects this better than the final hours of the conference – which revolved around a paragraph on the coal phase-out. Judging by where the states come from, this dispute alone is a sensation. Many still get a large part of their energy from coal and continue to plan and build power plants. Until a few years ago, coal was sacrosanct even in Germany. The exit is now accelerating, in Europe and around the world.
Climate protection – threat or business model?
The Paris Agreement, its mutual promise of climate neutrality, is increasingly developing its own strength – and not only in the states, but also among industrial groups, banks and shareholders. The “race to net-zero” has begun: the race for climate neutrality. Climate protection is becoming a business model.
In Glasgow this is evident in the many initiatives and alliances that have lined the summit. States and companies that jointly say goodbye to internal combustion engines or fossil investments, who want to shift capital or protect forests – these are alliances that will come to the fore in the future. These alliances, if they are meant seriously, can develop their own dynamics. They can put pressure on those states and companies that stay away from them. And they bind everyone who has joined them. They will have to be accountable for what they do or what they fail to do. The more critically society views these alliances, the more powerful they can become.
This new chapter marks the beginning of a critical phase in international climate protection. Glasgow can go down in history as the conference that began the displacement of fossil fuels, as the dawn of a future beyond coal, oil and gas. Or as another missed opportunity, as another act in the global illusion theater of climate protection.
Germany can do more – if it wants to
How it happens, that cannot ultimately be left to the actors of voluntary alliances. This requires states that see climate protection not as a burden, but as an opportunity for modernization. And who, beyond modernizing their own economies, are also thinking of those countries that can no longer base their own development on coal and oil because industrialized countries have long since eaten away at the global carbon budget.
In keeping with the hot phase of its negotiations, the climate conference has a number of messages ready for the budding coalitionists in Germany. This country is internationally recognized for its climate policy, but it has long since ceased to be a leader. The energy transition is stalling, politics is sticking to the internal combustion engine, the country has only just joined another pipeline that supplies it with fossil gas. We now need a few clear directional decisions for a Germany that can cope with the 21st century, with clean, green energy in the power grid, on the streets, in boiler rooms, in industry; and with an agriculture that protects soils, moors and biodiversity. Germany can do more if it only wants to.
No climate conference alone can solve this crisis, and none is the last chance. Because whether the world collectively gets the curve is the sum of individual decisions, by citizens, but above all by governments. The big message from Glasgow is addressed to them: Get to work!