This week I was actually on the road outside of Berlin again, on business. Such trips have become rare since the pandemic, bad in a job that thrives so heavily on encounters and personal impressions. The trip took me to the Barnim north of Berlin – where the Greens presented their “immediate program” for climate protection. The green idea of a climate protection ministry with the right of veto, it comes from this on-site meeting on the edge of a bog.
One can argue for a long time whether such a veto is compatible with the Basic Law, whether it can be reflected in the rules of procedure of a federal government and whether there are coalition partners who would give a supposedly green climate protection ministry so much power. But the thought behind it also drives me: How can a government (and ultimately also society) get it to think about climate and nature protection in all decisions? As a big, common goal?
Instead, the Ministry of the Environment in this country is in constant tension with all other departments. Transport, agriculture, energy, construction – they all have a direct bearing on climate protection. They all often pursue different interests: the Ministry of Agriculture, that of farmers, the Ministry of Transport, that of motorists, freight forwarders and aviation, and the Ministry of Construction, that of the real estate industry. Tension, different approaches, that also has its good points: It can lead to better politics if it allows conflicting goals to be resolved intelligently. But it can also thwart consistent climate protection. Unfortunately, that was the case all too often in the last German governments.
Whether a veto can solve this problem, whether it also accelerates what a government can do in a positive sense want, I have my doubts about that. A government that has more in common than just a coalition agreement in which the parties grudgingly make concessions would be more important. A government that actually wants to shape and change something in the country, one that unites a project and not a laborious compromise.
But you can dream after such a nice trip.
(This text is from the weekly Newsletter Environmental Friday you here free of charge can order.)