Greens co-boss Habeck on climate protection: “We don’t all have to be angels”

Good climate policy without individual waiver – this is how Greens co-boss Habeck advertises tagesschau24 for his party’s election plans. He is counting on a strong final spurt in the election campaign.

With an immediate climate protection program including its own climate protection ministry, the Greens want to win votes in the election campaign. In an interview with tagesschau24 has the party’s co-chair, Robert Habeck, tries to dispel doubts that a high level of climate protection could mean personal sacrifices for consumers.

“We don’t all have to become angels,” he said. From his point of view, a good climate policy is organized on a general level, without “individual renunciation” of an individual. It is about making better politics and not about “re-educating the people”.

No higher electricity price due to the coal phase-out

Habeck cited the coal phase-out as an example. The Greens want to prefer it: It is currently due to be completed by 2038, the Greens believe that this will be possible as early as 2030. Habeck counters the concern that the renouncement of coal would result in higher electricity prices for citizens. The consumer will not “notice anything” when it comes to power consumption, he assures.

Waning approval for Baerbock

Five weeks before the federal election, the Green polls are getting worse – in the current ARDGermanyTrend the party loses another two percentage points and is currently only 17 percent.

However, Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock is losing even more massively in the electorate: just twelve percent of Germans would currently choose her as Angela Merkel’s successor.

Habeck agrees to catch up

According to Habeck, this is “partly due to self-made reasons”. He is convinced, however, that in the end it is not a question of “who is holding the umbrella the right way round”, but rather the question of who can provide orientation and who is best prepared. And those are the Greens.

In this context, Habeck described the Union and SPD chancellor candidates, Armin Laschet and Olaf Scholz, as “almost interchangeable”. The election campaign is now “on the home straight” and his party will do everything to “regain lost confidence” and achieve a strong result.

Afghanistan: political greens behind misjudgment?

But regardless of who follows Merkel into the Chancellery at the end, he or she will “have to endure tests by fire without end,” said Habeck. Especially with regard to the crisis in Afghanistan.

The focus is currently on rescuing those in need of protection. Habeck emphasized the “moral duty” of the Federal Republic of Germany to bring to safety as quickly as possible those “who, trusting in the word of the West, risked their lives and are now in danger of losing it”. He left open how many people from Afghanistan Germany should or could take in.

In the question of why the rise of the Taliban was underestimated, political reasons could also play a role, according to Habeck. He suggested that the intelligence services had reflected “what was politically wanted” in their assessment. But it is the responsibility of a government to get the services to expect the truth from you. In the end, it must be clarified whether the secret services in Afghanistan were simply insufficiently informed or whether there was “a culture of silence about an unpleasant truth”.