Hard but fair (ARD): Heated debate about cargo bikes and climate change

Frank Plasberg is back from the summer break with the topic: Climate protection in the citizen check: Which party can you trust?

Berlin – Climate change has long been abstract and far away. But now the floods in the German regions have affected. Is it something else when the calamities happen in the neighborhood? Svenja Schulze, Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (SPD) was there herself and saw the suffering of the people who have lost their belongings. Something has to change in the next few years so that such incidents do not happen more often.

Pauline Brünger, climate activist and student of political science, philosophy and economics, interjects that the ruling parties have not achieved very much in recent years. It is often hidden how big the crisis actually is and how great the sacrifices should actually be: What will it cost each and every person in the end and wouldn’t the price of careful consideration for nature be lower in advance? How can changes be designed here in such a way that people do not perceive them to be foregoing?

Hard but fair (ARD): “Climate change can also be fun”

The individual is no longer allowed to eat steak, no longer go on vacation, no longer buy plastic, Pauline Brünger enumerates. These are all limitations in the individual organization of life, which do not do much in the mind except defiance. There is no point in frightening people by doing without, agrees Markus Blume, General Secretary of the CSU. Climate change is there and everyone who denies it – in good Bavarian terms – has lost hops and malt. Another world will come. But does this have to go hand in hand with asceticism? Climate change can also be fun. Pauline Brünger interrupts him quickly: It must be a serious change – that has nothing to do with fun!

Cem Özdemir, Chairman of the Committee on Transport and Digital Infrastructure (Alliance 90 / The Greens) became a vegetarian at the age of 17, but does not force anyone to give up meat. Nevertheless, he can make a policy that is based on the fact that there is meat in the shop that comes from animals kept in a species-appropriate manner and that the farmers are paid appropriately. As a politician, he carries out the job, while the citizens can decide for or against with their individual decisions. If the issue of climate protection is to be taken seriously, then he would like a bipartisan consensus. So let’s be honest: all parties actually want to increase the price of CO2.

Hard but fair (ARD): Fuel will (even) become more expensive

There is no other way. But people can hardly afford the fuel now. Even if it is supposed to make driving less attractive, the systems should of course continue to function. Therefore, it is now important for politicians to shape climate protection in such a way that it can take place socially, affirmed Svenja Schulte at “hart aber fair” (ARD). So it should be a slow increase so that everyone can prepare for it: Fuel will become (even) more expensive. So it will be worthwhile to buy an economical car in the future. It will be worthwhile to switch to electromobility.

Politicians have to ask themselves exactly such questions of further development, agrees Michael Hüther, economist and director of the Institute of German Economy in Cologne. What alternative solutions can there be? An expansion of the train connections and the review of whether disused routes can be reactivated? Cem Özdemir was born in Bad Urach in the Swabian Alb, at a time when the railway line was being shut down because people were supposed to be driving. A politically fatal decision. Now the railroad is back in operation because crazy people like him advocated it. Politicians just have to set the framework differently.

Hard but fair (ARD): 1,000 euros for a cargo bike

But there must also be space for individual mobility in the future, explains Markus Blume. How else is a rural nurse supposed to get to work in the city if there is no other option? Are e-cars and e-bikes an option here? He has also closely followed the current discussion about the plans for grants of more than 1,000 euros within the next four years for cargo bikes in private households. Is this just for the green bohemians in the big cities? And it also depends on where the electricity for the e-bikes comes from in the end, says Michael Hüther.

No matter how many electric cars can be driven, if the electricity stays that way, mankind has not gained much. Then maybe our morale is calmed, but the climate is not protected in the end. 80% of the world’s energy production is still generated from fossil fuels. Electricity production must focus more quickly on renewable energies. Build large solar systems in the desert? At least a good innovation competition should be created in order to find suitable systems and to become a good example for other countries.

Not so easy, because Germany will miss the climate targets this year. And even last year they were only adhered to because of the corona pandemic, Pauline Brünger calculates. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change regularly summarizes the latest status here. None of the parties has a successful concept for this balance sheet, they agree and would like each party to present its own climate election program.

The parties already have concepts, the people just have to be won over and convinced of them, says Michael Hüther. Many want to get involved in climate protection, but do not want to lose their jobs, their income or their security along the way. There are even more factors at play here, all of which influence each other and which no party should ignore. Why didn’t she actually found a party herself, he asks the 19-year-old almost provocatively, then she could have initiated exactly these demands.

Hard but fair (ARD): Can a speed limit help?

But Pauline Brünger prefers to rely on democratic protests and demonstrations: The great change has always happened on the streets. On September 24th, two days before the federal election, they want to go public again with Fridays for Future. There are many here who have no voting rights at all, but what the federal government decides in the next period will also determine their future.

Cem Özdemir comes to her aid with “Hart aber fair” (ARD): Actually, they should all be proud that there are young people in this country who are actively committed to their future. The youth asks politics to do their job. And his job as a parliamentarian is to ensure that as much as possible is implemented with the best of his knowledge and belief. Unfortunately, there will always be compromises, like with the CDU / CSU, where Markus Blume argues that, although climate protection is extremely important along the way, it is not the only issue, and certainly not at the price of de-industrialization. You can keep the jobs through innovation, then maybe they have a model for the whole world and an export hit, but not at the expense of social stability or to risk millions of jobs.

Can’t the speed limit also contribute to climate protection in a simple way? Once again, Markus Blume makes it very clear that here, too, there are completely different things for him and his party that need to be strengthened. They don’t want to enforce that: the contribution that a speed limit can make to the climate is minimal. This could save two million tons of CO ₂ , which corresponds to the entire domestic German air traffic, says Cem Özdemir. You could do that immediately and thus make traffic more fluid. The police union in North Rhine-Westphalia would be in favor. Even the ADAC. It’s a free and easy-to-use tool and then they block it, even Pauline Brünger doesn’t understand it.

Not only CDU / CSU, but also with the SPD, she sees no good concepts, but only platitudes, as if none of this were a problem and would steer itself back into the usual path. Climate protection is cheaper than the effects of climate change. We are just seeing the effects of the flood disaster, Cem Özdemir comes back to. The CO ₂ remains in the atmosphere, no matter how hard everyone tries in the next few years: The difference will be how committed they are to make it more manageable. Not only in Germany: Flood disasters, crop failures and droughts all over the world are an issue and what effects this will also have on immigration. It makes sense to use all possibilities to decarbonise the economy, that is, cut the CO ₂ and make sure that it remains a strong industrial standpoint at the same time.

In the last few years we have slept a lot here and each additional year means that it will cost more later. As a Swabian, he absolutely does not advise it and his face makes it clear that he is just as serious about it as Pauline Brünger had previously wished. Investing in advance saves you the higher costs to compensate for the damage afterwards, confirms this. We are the people, we have to demand from politics what we expect. Citizens can express these expectations on September 26th: Whether the original green, the new green or the evergreen, as Frank Plasberg puts it so beautifully philosophically at the end of “hart aber fair” (ARD). It remains to be seen which party has built enough green authenticity by then to gain the trust of voters. (Tina Waldeck)