The idea of carbon pricing is as simple as it is charming: those who emit more greenhouse gases, for example because they drive a large car, pay more for them. Anyone who mostly travels by bike and also lives a climate-friendly lifestyle should benefit financially because he or she emits fewer greenhouse gases. At least that’s the theory. Since 2021, there has been a CO₂ price in Germany of currently 45 euros per ton; it is considered a key element of climate policy.
A new study from the Copernicus Project Ariadne, which Vivien Timmler reports on, is surprising. Accordingly, climate-damaging subsidies in transport sometimes completely cancel out the effect of the CO₂ price: those who put more pressure on the climate are also more rewarded for it. The researchers examined the diesel tax privilege, the tax exemption for kerosene, the company car privilege and the commuter allowance. In extreme cases, these can lead to a negative CO₂ price, i.e. a saving of up to 690 euros per ton.
The FDP can also get used to taxing greenhouse gas emissions in the hope that the market will then regulate climate protection alone. You can find out why the FDP-led Finance Ministry is still not thinking about abolishing these subsidies in my colleague’s report.
It is contradictions like these that Roda Verheyen regularly runs against, often successfully. The 51-year-old is one of the lawyers behind the Federal Constitutional Court’s spectacular climate decision: In response to Verheyen’s constitutional complaint, the judges in 2021 obliged the then grand coalition to take stricter climate protection. The ruling resulted in the most ambitious climate protection law Germany has ever had – until the Bundestag recently passed a reform that pretty much watered it down.
SZ magazine editor Mareike Nieberding accompanied Verheyen for some time. Your portrait is very worth reading describes a woman who, at the age of 13, refused to go on a skiing holiday with her parents because of the impact of this sport on the environment. It is well connected in the Berlin climate protection scene, which is often perceived as a bubble – but can also convince northern German shrimp fishermen. But not everyone is impressed by Verheyen’s methods.
Nieberding’s portrait shows what impact climate lawsuits can have – and what their limits may be.
(This text comes from the weekly Newsletter Climate Friday that you here free of charge can order.)