May marked the early start of the wildfire season in the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The fierce fires in the vast forests and prairies worsen local air quality due to the high levels of particulate matter and threaten the US East Coast with heavy smoke – and they also have a global impact. […]
According to a recent study, the coalition contract between Germany’s Christian Democrats and Social Democrats includes new environmentally and climate-damaging state subsidies worth between 9 and 15 billion euros annually. The sum consists of planned new subsidies and the reversal of existing subsidy cuts. They will primarily benefit the energy sector and, to a lesser […]
Mr. Flasbarth, how do you feel as the only climate advocate in the German government?Jochen Flasbarth I am not the only climate advocate. We have plenty of expertise in our ministries. And we have a minister who has made it clear that climate action is a top priority for him. I am confident that we […]
The Climate Union elected its Federal Executive Board in Mannheim at the weekend with a new old chairman and an announcement that it would also urge the CDU-led federal government to pursue an efficient climate policy. Former member of the Bundestag Thomas Heilmann was re-elected chairman with 91 percent of the vote. Wiebke Winter, member […]
The newly formed German Bundestag Committee on the Environment, Climate Protection, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety will be chaired by a climate policy expert in the upcoming 21st legislative period. Yesterday, Lorenz Gösta Beutin from the parliamentary group The Left was elected chair of the committee, which will accompany and monitor the work of the […]
The Minister for the Environment, Climate Protection, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, Carsten Schneider, will not get the usual 100-day grace period as a newcomer to office. His official schedule for the current week is almost empty: It only includes the inaugural visits to Bonn, the Ministry’s second official residence, and to his Polish counterpart […]
One month before the Bonn SBSTA conference, the new climate targets of smaller countries such as Moldova, Kenya and Zambia are gradually arriving at the UN. At the same time, however, it is becoming clear that without a fundamental tightening of these central instruments of national climate policies, they will fall far short of the […]
The new black-red government has abolished the post of “Special Representative of the Federal Government for International Climate Policy.” Nevertheless, such a function is to be retained in the Ministry of the Environment under an as yet unclear title, according to government circles. Where exactly and with what rank is currently being negotiated by the […]
The new Federal Minister for the Environment, Climate Action, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, Carsten Schneider, faces major organizational and substantive tasks. He takes office at a time when the ecological crises relating to climate, biodiversity, resource consumption and plastic pollution are coming to a dramatic head, but the will to regulate in these areas […]
Following the Social Democrats’ approval of the coalition contract, the new German government is set in almost all areas. Only climate policy remained a matter of dispute until the very end. It is now at least certain that responsibility for international climate policy will be moved from the Foreign Office back to the Environment Ministry; […]