“On-the-job accident of historic proportions”

Back in December 2015, the Paris Climate Agreement was hailed as a “historic” achievement - 17 months later it rather looks like international diplomacy has incurred an on-the-job accident of historic proportions, Andreas Mihm writes in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Climate diplomacy has visibly lost momentum “partly due to Trump, whose criticism of environmental policy greatly irritates conservationist organisations and leaves other governments clueless”, Mihm says. “But it’s not all Trump’s fault” – many economists are convinced that the voluntary commitments by signatories of the Paris Agreement are inadequate to substantially bring down emissions, and instead they call for a global carbon price. This “change of strategy” would incentivise cost-efficient clean energy generation and ensure that Germany’s renewables expansion does not become “a negative example” that deters other countries due to its costs, Mihm says.

Read the article in German here.

See the CLEW article German reactions to US decision to withdraw from Paris Agreement for background.