“We’ll take up the fight against climate adversaries”

The German Green Party has strengthened its focus on ecology and economic transformation as core topics for its election campaign. Following the Green’s convention last weekend, the party published a set of amendments to its draft election campaign programme, titled: “We’ll take up the fight against climate protection adversaries.” Party co-leader Katrin Göring-Eckardt said US President Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Climate Agreement amounted to “picking a fight against the earth. We’re up to that challenge!”
Göring-Eckardt also lashed out against German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s record on climate protection, saying that “she’s been leading for nearly twelve years now. And what good did that bring to the climate?” Merkel was “blocking renewables, blocking a coal exit, blocking the e-car” and therefore was “no climate chancellor, but rather the opposite of that,” the Green co-leader argued. At their party convention, the Greens agreed to “shut down Germany’s 20 dirtiest coal-fired power plants immediately” to enable the country to still reach its 2020 climate targets.
Party members also voted for only issuing licenses to emission-free vehicles after 2030, effectively “ending the era of combustion engines” in order to concurrently protect the environment and save German industry jobs through innovation. The Greens’ final election programme will be published later this week, a party spokesperson told Clean Energy Wire.

Find the party’s convention overview in German here.

See the CLEW factsheet on The Green Party’s draft election programme and a CLEW interview with Green parliamentary group leader Hofreiter for more information.