Why the traffic light keeps arguing

NFor eight o’clock, traffic-light politicians negotiated to resolve divisive points in climate policy, and afterwards they were still not satisfied. Just one day after the agreement, the party leader of the Greens said, Ricardo Langit “is not enough”.

Economy Minister Robert Habeck even found that the compromises found were “not nearly enough”. This raises the question of what actually goes wrong with the traffic light. There are three answers to this, as many as there are parties in this alliance. They show how far apart this coalition is.

Greens blame the SPD

The first version of the story comes from the Greens and goes like this: The fact that so little could be achieved in terms of climate protection was mainly due to the SPD. She made no more concessions to the Greens, not because she was against their positions, but because she had to save the Liberals. According to the story, the Social Democrats were not concerned with content, but with calculations of power politics.

The Greens keep them FDP for a dying party. It is between five and seven percent in polls for the federal election and has lost several state elections since it came to the traffic light. So the Liberals are under pressure. You have to score points, otherwise even more voters could turn their backs and end up endangering the traffic light.

For the Greens, it is clear who the FDP would then sweep away first: the Social Democrats. They would lose the Chancellery, and in the event of new elections also difficult to recapture. Because they are also doing badly in the polls. The Greens are more optimistic about their own party. If the traffic light fails, they see themselves in a better position than the SPD, even if they have no interest in breaking up the coalition. That is why it is already easier for them to demand more consistent climate protection. You can afford it. The Social Democrats, on the other hand, have no choice but to provide emergency ventilation for the FDP.

Example synthetic fuels. They can be used to drive cars with combustion engines in a climate-neutral manner. However, it takes more energy to cover the same distance with such a car than with an electric car.

That’s why the Greens don’t think much of the Minister of Transport Volker Wissing by the FDP in the European Union to allow combustion engines after 2035 if they are only fueled with synthetic fuels. The Greens don’t think the SPD thinks anything of it either. But the Liberals badly needed a sense of achievement. Even if, from the Greens’ point of view, it’s just a victory on points that has no further meaning.

React quickly and make uncomfortable decisions

They are divided on the Social Democrats. Some believe that the SPD also had to accommodate the Liberals in the negotiations that had just ended, they were so desperate. Therefore, the Social Democrats would have taken part in softening the sector targets in the Climate Protection Act. They had introduced it themselves during the grand coalition.

Since then it has been the responsibility of each department to reduce emissions. The Greens are particularly annoyed that this principle has now been abandoned. Some therefore believe that climate protection is ultimately not that important to the SPD. The green especially miss the urgency. It is said that anyone who is talking about a crisis should also act accordingly. Whether Russia is attacking Ukraine or drying up rivers, in both cases you have to react quickly and make uncomfortable decisions. But whenever things get serious, the Greens see the Social Democrats as acting as if climate protection were their business alone.