Why the Germans insist that climate protection hurts

No more cars, no flights, rationed and allocated living space, economic output and consumption halved - the life that the taz editor Ulrike Herrmann describes in her current bestseller "The End of Capitalism" and that we all supposedly inevitably face is barren.

Because, according to Herrmann, wind and sun will never provide us with enough energy to maintain our current level of prosperity. I appreciate their honesty, many climate activists want to make us believe that with a few increases in efficiency, a speed limit and the ban on private jets, an industrial nation like Germany can make ends meet with renewable energies alone.

Herrmann is much more realistic and laconically describes which sectors will no longer exist in Germany if we are only dependent on wind and sun, such as the automotive industry, aviation and banks.

Climate protection in Germany hurts. Hardly a week goes by without new obligations, bans and restrictions being imposed on citizens: compulsory renovation of oil and gas heating systems, compulsory installation of heat pumps, compulsory insulation for houses, ban on combustion engines, reduction of private transport, degrowth of our industry.

The long-standing director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, recently even proposed a CO₂ budget for every citizen. Every German citizen should still have three tons per year - currently the average output per person is eleven tons.

All of these measures and proposals have one thing in common: they mean massive losses in freedom and prosperity. But this is strangely ignored. Similar to the pandemic, it is almost frowned upon to even name these irrefutable costs of measures to protect against the virus or climate change, let alone to demand a weighing up.

This is about fundamental values. Civil liberties were hard won over centuries until they were codified in Article 2 of our Basic Law. And prosperity is closely linked to life expectancy, education, equality, and probably also democracy.

In view of what is at stake, the decisive question should actually be: does effective climate protection really mean such a loss of freedom and prosperity? Does it have to hurt like that?

I claim: It could also be different. But for that we would have to overcome our deep-seated skepticism about market mechanisms and technologies. And finally take into account the sentence "It doesn't matter to the climate where a ton of CO₂ is saved" in our real political actions.

European emissions trading, to which around 40 percent of Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions are subject, translates this knowledge into a market economy system: the government target (how many emissions of greenhouse gases are still permitted?) is achieved with the greatest possible cost efficiency by always saving the next ton of CO₂ there will be where this is most convenient.

In this way, previous savings targets for the sectors that are subject to emissions trading were achieved even earlier than originally intended - and at lower prices than expected.

Nevertheless, a sector-specific approach dominates nationally, which was laid down again in the Climate Protection Act in 2021 and which sets savings targets for each sector. Last week the balance for 2022 was taken: the agriculture, waste and industry sectors clearly met their targets, the energy sector only just because of the reactivation of coal, in the buildings and transport sectors the targets were missed.

If you explained the idea of ​​sector-specific savings targets to a four-year-old, she would certainly find it “totally fair”. Everyone should contribute equally. But the problem is that this kindergarten logic is not efficient.

Because the costs of saving a ton of CO₂ differ massively in the individual sectors. In the transport sector, for example, they are particularly high. By the end of 2022, the taxpayer had subsidized each electric car with around 20,000 euros (now it's a little less). This means costs per ton of CO₂ reduction of 2000 to 4000 euros, as the Magdeburg economist Joachim Weimann calculated. The price per tonne of CO₂ in European emissions trading is currently 80 euros.

It doesn't matter to the climate whether we save 80 euros or 4,000 euros per bin. Ton remains ton. Only: We can't be indifferent to this, because continuing to insist that the transport sector (the same applies to the building sector) makes an equal contribution to savings does allow the transport minister, who is conveniently provided by the FDP, to be portrayed in the media as a climate sinner to pillory. But it also means receiving far less climate protection for every euro spent than would be possible. Or the other way around: accepting greater losses of prosperity and freedom than would be necessary.

Our national focus also ensures that climate protection hurts more than it should. It is clear that Germany must finance the implementation of the savings targets to which Germany and Europe have committed internationally. But that does not mean that the savings must also be made in Germany. This is because the costs of avoiding one tonne of CO₂ are particularly high here - for example because a lot of savings potential has already been exploited, or because solar systems can never be operated as economically here as in sunnier regions.

Article 6 of the Paris climate protection agreement expressly provides for financing projects in other countries and counting the reductions against one's own targets. So far it is only liberal Switzerland that has used this opportunity for international cooperation and has reached agreements with Senegal, Ghana and Georgia, among others. In Germany, this possibility is hardly talked about. German climate protection must take place in Germany - whatever the cost.

In addition, we reject almost any technology that could help us prevent or manage climate change. CCS, the permanent underground storage of CO₂, is somehow scary to us. We successfully drove green genetic engineering, which could help make plants more resistant to heat, out of the country, and in mid-April we finally said “No, thank you” to almost CO₂-free nuclear power.

In my opinion, this German way of dealing with climate change bears religious traits. The apocalypse is said to be approaching – Katrin Göring-Eckhardt, Vice President of the Green Bundestag, spoke of “devastation” this week in “Hart aber Fair”, of a country where people “can no longer live” and have children who go to kindergarten today "then no more liveable earth!"

No more “livable earth” – who still dares to come up with cost efficiency. So we prefer to resort to contemplation, penance and inner-worldly asceticism, as we learned in joyless Calvinism.

The rest of the world, however, is not going along with it, but is rather amazed at the increasing number of German special paths. Here, too, the world will not recover from the German character.

Kristina Schröder was a member of the German Bundestag from 2002 to 2017 and Federal Minister for Families, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth from 2009 to 2013. Today she works, among other things, as a management consultant and as deputy chairwoman of REPUBLIK21, a think tank for new middle-class politics. She belongs to the CDU and is the mother of three daughters.