On Sunday evening, the leaders of the SPD, Greens and FDP met in a coalition committee to settle their differences. It took a full 30 hours before they were able to present the 16-page result, which is called the “modernization package for climate protection and planning acceleration”. The assessment was very different: SPD and FDP were satisfied, the Greens were disillusioned. The paper cannot meet its own demands in the fight against global warming.
The Greens made an effort to emphasize that the resolutions had solved major blockages of the past few months. However, an internal paper 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 gap is still very large. ”More is not possible in this coalition, said Habeck.
“Solar highway” as a “symbol of failure”
The “Frankfurter Rundschau” commented – like the majority of the German media – critically: “The federal government is continuing to build motorways. However, they are equipped with solar systems on the noise protection walls. Asphalt with a green border. So what is: placebo policy. It is what happens when the FDP and the Greens, who have too little in common on the future issue of climate, form a government together and are led by a self-proclaimed climate chancellor from the SPD who is not doing his job. The ‘solar highway’ is the symbol for the resulting failure.”
“Austria is the car country par excellence”
Swing to Vienna: Meat consumption and banning cars are not answers, but regression, said ÖVP leader and Federal Chancellor Karl Nehammer on March 10th in his “Speech on the Future of the Nation”. “Sometimes you feel like you have to apologize for even being in the world.” He doesn’t want to downplay the concerns of the young, but you have to act with creativity and innovation in technology against climate change, and “this doomsday apocalypse ‘ counter. “Austria is the car country par excellence” and “I too will speak out against banning the internal combustion engine”.
Climate protection organizations reacted in horror, the green coalition partner needed a day to collect himself. “Ideological adherence to the combustion engine and a bit of technology will not save the climate,” said Environment Minister Leonore Gewessler. The Greens would ensure “that this country will still be worth living in ten years from now. We take the climate crisis and the concerns of the people in Austria seriously. The chancellor should do the same.”
Vice-Chancellor Werner Kogler saw no problem for the coalition in Nehammer’s speech, but cautioned that one should “work forward and not seek salvation in the past”.
Ban mentality vs. openness to technology
The fronts on both sides of the border have been marked out: On the one hand, the Greens, who rely on “determination and courage” in the fight against the climate crisis and often see compromises as a dilution. On the other hand, there are the conservatives, who “do not want to work with bans”, but consider investments in science and technology to be sufficient to deal with the crisis. A restriction of individual freedom is firmly rejected.
For Melanie Pichler, political scientist at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna, this incantation of freedom is “inconsistent on two levels,” as she said in an interview with ORF.at. On the one hand, it is inconsistent to emphasize the “openness” of the technology in climate protection, but to rely on bans in other areas.
Pichler refers, among other things, to the working agreement of the ÖVP and FPÖ in Lower Austria, according to which languages other than German are prohibited in educational institutions in the “breaks and in the schoolyard” or gender – “to make a contribution against ideologized and improper use” – should be avoided.
Urgency exacerbates conflict
On the other hand, it is the essence of politics to create rules and to intervene. Without this authorization “there would be no need for politics”. The fact that climate protection is increasingly causing “conflict lines” is due to the increased relevance of the topic, there is only a short time frame to take countermeasures. With the urgency, the defensive reactions would also increase – a “don’t care” attitude “is no longer possible,” says Pichler.
Change is always difficult to accept, but there is no way around it. Far too little has been done in Austria, the compromises reached are only significant on a “cosmetic level”. The longer one hesitates, the more competitiveness will deteriorate. Europe is already lagging behind in the development of electric cars, for example.
Coalition climate increasingly burdened
On Wednesday afternoon, the Green MP Nina Tomaselli attacked the ÖVP in the National Council for the failed rental price brake. And Minister of Social Affairs Rauch (Greens) hopes for a government with the SPÖ and NEOS after the next election – possibly a revenge foul after Chancellor Karl Nehammer’s (ÖVP) future speech with clear rejection of core Greens issues.
Finding a compromise is becoming increasingly difficult
Political scientist Katrin Praprotnik sees the latest developments more as an election campaign than a culture battle. The coalition partners agree on the goal of counteracting the climate crisis, only the preferred way and the pace there are different.
Nehammer’s speech primarily served to show a “clear edge” and to send signals to the electorate. The closer the next election date gets, 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 rental price brake.
Climate crisis ‘challenges conventional thinking’
The German journalist Jonas Schaible wrote in a 2020 with the German Reporter Prize for the best essay of the year excellent contribution: “In order to prevent misunderstandings, both conscious and unconscious, it should be said that it (the climate crisis; note) is by no means the only problem that politics should deal with, even if sooner or later it interacts with all other problems . First of all, it is important to realize that it challenges conventional thinking, that it also creates contradictions that you have to be aware of before you can deal with them productively. The point is that you cannot counter the climate crisis 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 Climate Protection Act from 2019 are not compatible with fundamental rights, the judges ruled. Since the law only provides for measures to reduce emissions up to 2030, the dangers of climate change would be postponed until later and at the expense of the younger generation. The German government improved and anchored the goal of greenhouse gas neutrality by 2045. In Austria, even after three years of black and green, such a law is still a long time coming.
