The federal government is well aware of the fact that the German share in the supposedly man-made climate change is relatively small. In this respect, the question of whether Germany will achieve the desired climate neutrality by 2045 or not and whether it will even be able to come up with negative emissions from 2050 is not a question on which the weal or woe of our planet will be decided.
Rather, what is desired is that Germany takes on a pioneering role and, through its good example, encourages other countries to act in the same way. Seen from this perspective, it is important and at the same time imperative that the German economy proves to the world in the coming years that it is also possible to work successfully economically and survive on the world markets if production is climate-neutral.
If Germany wants to have any appreciable influence on the climate policy of other countries, then it must succeed. What’s more, the experiment must not only succeed a little, but so convincingly that other countries will be happy to follow this example. This makes it clear that the bar was consciously or unconsciously set very, very high.
Woe betide if the experiment fails
In order for Germany to function as a role model, two things must succeed. First of all, the transformation process itself must be survived without economic damage. This means that it must be shown that old “climate-damaging” jobs can be replaced by new climate-friendly jobs.
This focuses on the process as such. But the result must also be right, because it will not be enough if Germany retains its competitiveness. The country must also preserve the prosperity that it has built up over the past decades.
Only if both proofs can be presented convincingly can one hope that other countries will follow the German example. At this point, it is not surprising that the traffic light coalition is quite confident on both points. The current federal government is not actually pursuing any climate policy concerns at all, but has committed itself to a highly dangerous economic policy experiment.