Environmental policy: Laschet discovers climate protection

For Laschet, climate protection has so far only been important if it did not mean a competitive disadvantage. Now he wants to accelerate the subject. Out of conviction or opportunism?

Union Chancellor candidate Armin Laschet therefore wants more speed in climate protection. With a view to climate protection, Laschet has so far mainly heard a decided “Yes, but”. Climate protection, yes, but not as a competitive disadvantage for industry – as if that were automatic.

Energy transition, yes, but not without fixed distance rules for wind turbines in North Rhine-Westphalia – with which Laschet’s state government, not without irony, has in fact created a competitive disadvantage for a future industry. Which also plays an important role in the expansion of renewable energies. Without this it will not work if the increasing demand for electricity in Germany is to be fed primarily from clean energy sources in the future. Green steel, green hydrogen, central ingredients for a climate-neutral industrial country, as Laschet would like it to be – require a lot of electricity to generate.

Conviction or opportunism

Climate protection, yes, but only if the so-called ordinary people can also afford it, is actually a matter of course. The “common people” who, by the way, are likely to be the first to lose their homes, work, and possibly even their lives, if politicians do not continue to pursue serious climate protection.

If the “common people” are so important, why has the Union fought back and forth against sharing tenants and landlords with additional CO2 costs? Why did Laschet, after all CDU chairman, have to be lonely ARDEncourage the summer interview to also include landlords?

Where has Laschet been in the past few months? Has he always seen it that way and nobody listened to him? Or has he changed his mind because the Union approach might have been badly received by the voters? In other words: is he acting out of conviction or out of opportunism?