Opinion
Driving bans on weekends
Full coverage, Mr. Wissing – here comes your boomerang!
Prefers to write letters rather than immediate climate protection programs: Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP).
© Kai Nietfeld/dpa
Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) is threatening driving bans on weekends. The climate goals could not be achieved otherwise. That’s a disgrace. Because it’s not the target’s fault, it’s the minister’s fault.
A boomerang is an ancient hunting device. If you throw it skillfully, it will kill an animal on the way. Otherwise he will fly back. Volker Wissing has just thrown a political boomerang from the Federal Ministry of Transport. He’s supposed to kill the climate protection law, including a few Greens – but now he’s about to hit Wissing’s office again.
Wissing’s boomerang is not made of wood or bone, but rather a friendly letter. Content: an unfriendly threat. If the traffic light does not immediately reform the climate protection law, the minister writes, then driving bans would be unavoidable – not just on Sunday, but throughout the entire weekend.
The Wissing logic: no goals, no problems
The Wissing logic: If the climate protection law were finally changed, as discussed, the driver messengers would not be necessary. Then the annoying targets would be off the table. Then it would no longer be a question of how much CO2 each individual sector consumes, as long as the entire country saves enough emissions.
Unfortunately, in addition to the construction and housing sector, the transport sector in particular is notorious for contributing little to the common savings goal. In fact, nothing at all. One can rightly call Wissing’s letter an impudence.
Nevertheless, it would be wise if, for once, the Greens did not get upset in this case. If they instead put on a sad dachshund look and gave the Minister of Transport a few consoling speed tissues. “Oh, monk Volker, it’s really stupid that you of all people have to impose driving bans.”
A liberal who restricts freedom?
One would really expect something else from a liberal politician – and probably the last remaining voters in his party – than to introduce such drastic restrictions on freedom. In principle, the minimum requirement for politicians is that they try to solve problems rather than making them unnecessarily worse. This is particularly true for problems that have been on the horizon for a long time.
“Can you really think of no other way of achieving the savings targets, Volker?” Robert Habeck, for example, could ask and empathically place his hand on the shoulder of his cabinet colleague. No speed limit, 130 on the highway, 30 in the city? No consumption caps? No end to the diesel subsidy? Neither bicycle promotion nor public transport offensive – so does the driving ban alone really help?
Really stupid. Also because Wissing’s climate protection ambitions have always been aimed at the distant future. A future in which green hydrogen is plentiful, so clean and cheap that we can even burn it in our cars. A future in which magical e-fuels, which are currently only available in homeopathic quantities, flow like milk and honey.
In the present, the same Volker Wissing is fighting at European level to postpone the end of the combustion engine. Perhaps that is why the minister has not yet been able to present an immediate climate protection program. Although he is obliged to do so according to the current law due to the constant failure to meet “his” savings targets. Even though he was even ordered to do so by court order.
Full coverage, Mr. Wissing!