The economic and social wings of the CDU do not want to fall behind Saudi Arabia or India when it comes to climate protection – or at least the party leadership does not allow it. According to taz information, a corresponding request for the party conference, which will take place in February, was defused on Monday. The two versions of the application are available to the taz.
The middle class and economic union MIT had CDA together with the Christian Democratic Workers’ Association requestedthat the CDU should work to postpone the German goal of climate neutrality in 2045 by five years to 2050. Because the European Union does not want to become climate neutral until 2050, the 2045 target is an “overachievement”.
In addition, the rarely united economic and social wings called for the European goal of climate neutrality by 2050 to be overturned. Climate neutrality means that only so much CO is released within the EU2 may be expelled as is bound by forests, moors and technical sinkholes. CDA and MIT wanted to “redefine” this goal as a CO2-Reduction by 90 percent compared to 1990 – currently the EU target for 2040.
The EU would thus continue to fuel global warming, which is already happening today, without an end date making areas of land uninhabitable, Caused billions in damage and kills people. Because only if humanity stops emitting more and more CO2 blowing into the atmosphere can stabilize the climate. In order to comply with the 1.5 degree limit from the Paris Agreement, even CO would have to be reduced in the long term2 be taken from the atmosphere.
The new application is significantly defused
In addition, this redefinition of climate neutrality would be less ambitious than the climate goals of the coal country India or the oil giant Saudi Arabia, which only want to become climate neutral by 2060 in the case of Saudi Arabia and 2070 in the case of India, but understand this to mean complete climate neutrality.
The new version of the application no longer says anything about a redefinition of climate neutrality or a weaker German climate target. All that is said there now is that “the savings ahead of us will require significantly greater efforts” than in the past 35 years. This makes it clear that climate protection can only succeed with joint global efforts. A weakening of the European emissions trading system, as CDA and MIT had called for, is no longer happening.
“We do not understand the economy, climate protection and social balance as opposites,” the defused text says instead. However, a debate is also announced about how the changed geopolitical situation and the weak exports of German companies can be “combined with an internationally competitive economy with good jobs and climate protection”.
After the original application was discussed in the CDU presidium, CDU parliamentary group vice-president Andreas Jung and the former CDA leader Karl-Josef Laumann, who are both deputy party leaders, were commissioned to negotiate with the applicants about a weakening – i.e. with the CDA leader Dennis Radtke and MIT leader Gitta Connemann. Time was of the essence because the application committee met on Thursday.
Merz and the basic program promised climate protection
For Chancellor Friedrich Merz (CDU), the original proposal would have meant breaking his word. He had promised at the climate conference in Brazil in November: “Germany stands by the national and European climate goals.”
“We have our sights firmly set on climate neutrality by 2045, which is bindingly anchored in the Climate Protection Act,” it also says in the CDU’s policy program. In it, the CDU commits to the Paris climate goals of keeping global warming below two degrees, but if possible at 1.5 degrees. To do this, the EU must reduce its CO2 by 20402-Reduce emissions by 90 percent and be climate neutral by 2050 at the latest, as the EU Climate Advisory Council noted in the summer.
In addition, a report from the Climate Union comes to the conclusion that “the ambitious goal of greenhouse gas neutrality is not only politically convincing in terms of knowledge and planetary limits, but is also difficult to change legally.” By this they mean: The Federal Constitutional Court, European and international law oblige the federal government not to weaken its climate goals.