On Sunday night, SPD, Greens and FDP leaders met in a coalition committee to resolve their differences. It took 30 hours before they were able to present the 16-page result, which is called a “modernization package for climate protection and planning acceleration”. The assessment was very different: SPD and FDP were satisfied, the Greens were disappointed. The newspaper fails to meet its own demands in the fight against global warming.
The Greens were at pains to emphasize that the resolutions resolved major blockages of recent months. However, an internal document also said: “Honesty also means that there is still a lot to be done – especially when it comes to climate protection in transport. Here the difference is still very big.” No more is possible in this coalition, Habeck said.
“Solar highway” as a “symbol of failure”
The “Frankfurter Rundschau” commented – like most German media – critically: “The federal government continues to build motorways. However, they are equipped with solar systems on the walls to protect against noise. Asphalt with green border. So what it is: placebo policy. That’s what happens when the FDP and the Greens, who have very little in common on the future climate issue, form a government together and are led by a self-appointed SPD climate chancellor who isn’t doing his job. The ‘solar highway’ is the symbol of the resulting failure.”
Portal/Michele Tantussi FDP leader Christian Lindner and Habeck’s positions harmonize only to a very limited extent
“Austria is the car country par excellence”
Swing to Vienna: Meat eating and car bans are not answers but regression, ÖVP leader and Federal Chancellor Karl Nehammer said on March 10 in his “Speech on the Future of the Nation”. “Sometimes you feel like you have to apologize for even being in the world.” He does not want to minimize the concerns of young people, but it is necessary to act with creativity and innovation in technology against climate change, and “this apocalyptic apocalypse ‘ counter. “Austria is the automobile country par excellence” and “I too will speak out against the ban on the internal combustion engine”.
Climate protection organizations reacted in horror, the green coalition partner needed a day to recover. “Ideological adherence to the combustion engine and a little technology will not save the climate,” said Environment Minister Leonore Gewessler. The Greens would guarantee “that this country will still be worth living in ten years from now. We take the climate crisis and the concerns of the Austrian people seriously. The chancellor should do the same.”
Vice-Chancellor Werner Kogler saw no problem for the coalition in Nehammer’s speech, but warned that one must “work forward and not seek salvation in the past”.
Ban mentality versus openness to technology
The fronts on both sides of the border were marked: on the one hand, the Greens, who bet on “determination and courage” in the fight against the climate crisis and often see compromises as a dilution. On the other side are the conservatives, who “do not want to work with prohibitions”, but consider that investments in science and technology are sufficient to face the crisis. A restriction on individual liberty is firmly rejected.
IMAGO/SEPA.Media/Martin Juen Also in Austria, coalition partners are fighting on climate policy issues
For Melanie Pichler, a political scientist at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, this enchantment of freedom is “inconsistent on two levels”, as she put it in an interview with ORF.at. On the one hand, it is inconsistent to emphasize the “openness” of technology in climate protection but rely on bans in other areas.
Pichler refers, among other things, to the working agreement of the ÖVP and the FPÖ in Lower Austria, according to which languages other than German are prohibited in educational institutions in the “playgrounds and in the schoolyard” or genre – “to make a contribution against ideological and improper use” – should be avoided.
Urgency exacerbates conflict
On the other hand, it is of the essence of politics to create rules and intervene. Without this authorization “there would be no need for politics”. The fact that climate protection is causing more and more “conflict lines” is due to the growing relevance of the topic, there is only a short time to take countermeasures. With urgency, defensive reactions would also increase—an “I don’t care” attitude “is just not possible anymore,” says Pichler.
Change is always hard to accept, but there’s no running away from it. Very little has been done in Austria, the compromises reached are only significant on a “cosmetic level”. The longer you hesitate, the more your competitiveness will deteriorate. Europe is already lagging behind in developing electric cars, for example.
Increasingly burdened coalition climate
On Wednesday afternoon, Green MP Nina Tomaselli attacked the ÖVP in the National Council for curbing rent prices. And Social Affairs Minister Rauch (Greens) expects a government with the SPÖ and NEOS after the next election – possibly a lack of revenge after Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s (ÖVP) forthcoming speech with clear rejection of the central issues of the Greens.
Finding a compromise is becoming more and more difficult.
Political scientist Katrin Praprotnik sees the latest developments more as an election campaign than a cultural battle. Coalition partners agree on the goal of tackling the climate crisis, just the preferred way and pace is different.
Nehammer’s speech mainly served to show a “clear edge” and send signals to the electorate. The closer to the date of the next election, the clearer these “signals” will be and the more difficult it will be to find compromises within the coalition – the most recent example is the failed agreement on the rent price brake.
AP/Michael Sohn The German Federal Constitutional Court ruled before 2021: Anyone who does not protect the climate now will destroy freedom in the future
Climate crisis ‘challenges conventional thinking’
As early as 2020, the German journalist Jonas Schaible wrote in an article that won the German Reporter award for the best essay of the year: “To avoid misunderstandings, both conscious and unconscious, it must be said that (the climate crisis ; note) it is by no means the only problem, which policy must take care of, even if sooner or later it interacts with all other problems. First, it’s important to realize that this challenges conventional thinking, which also creates contradictions that you must be aware of before you can deal with them productively. The point is that the climate crisis cannot be tackled with the well-established mechanisms of reason, nor with the usual means of politics.”
Indirectly, a judgment by the German Federal Constitutional Court in April 2021 proved him right: parts of the 2019 Climate Protection Act are not compatible with fundamental rights, the judges decided. As the law only provides for measures to reduce emissions until 2030, the dangers of climate change would be postponed until later and at the expense of the younger generation. The German government has refined and anchored the goal of neutrality of greenhouse gases by 2045. In Austria, even after three years of black and green, such a law is still taking time to arrive.