In Germany, global warming is changing more than just the climate. It’s changing politics, too.
In the latest elections, the environmentalist Green Party won more votes than ever, giving it a seat at the table as a new government is formed.
The deluge, which was preceded by three consecutive summers
of drought, has brought a new urgency for many to find climate change solutions
— and that has impacted Germany’s politics, too.
In last month’s federal election, the environmentalist Green Party had its best results yet, winning nearly 15 percent of the vote, and trailing just behind the two largest parties.
Unlike in the United States where the issue is still subject
to debate, global warming is a key concern in Germany that voters increasingly
expect politicians to address.
Its prominence in the election was no surprise to architect
Florian Trummer, 65, whose hometown of Antweiler was hit by the floods. He
officially joined the Green Party two months ago after a lifetime of swing
voting.
“I have to admit that in the past, I did not always vote for
the Greens,” he said. “With the elections looming this year, I felt compelled
to do something. The conventional parties play hide and seek, they say one
thing, but mean another. They did not take the implementation of the climate
goals seriously.”
Unlike foreign policy, which hardly got a mention in
pre-election debates, climate change was a top focus before the vote.
The issue also spurred tens of thousands of Germans to
gather days before the election at a climate action protest outside parliament
in Berlin featuring the famed young Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. Also, a
handful of young people declared a hunger strike in August to push politicians
to acknowledge that there’s a climate emergency.
This attitude isn’t unique to Germany — a recent Pew survey
found that intense concern about climate change has increased sharply among
people in several advanced economies. Remarkably, the share of people in
Germany who are very concerned that climate change will harm them personally at
some point during their lives has increased 19 percent since 2015, according to
the survey published in September. In contrast, in the U.S., that number has
decreased 3 percent.
The difference in the urgency to fight climate change felt
by the American and the German electorates comes as a result of decades of
environmental messaging in Europe, according to Andreas Goldthau, a research
leader at the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam,
Germany.
“The whole idea of the environment being important is
something that has been with most of the European electorate for the last 40
years,” he said. “So, voters understand climate change, they can make sense of
it, and it is a topic they can engage with.”
Winegrower Christoph Baecker has taken those environmental
lessons to heart over the years. His winery, one of the first in the region to
go organic in 1990, stands in the middle of the picturesque Ahr Valley, where
vineyards line the sides of steep hills.
His home, around 10 miles from the river, was severely
damaged in July’s floods. The waters also washed away around a third of his
vineyards, destroyed nearly all of his equipment and contaminated many barrels
of grapes from the harvest. He described how the morning after the flood, his
property looked like a parking lot, filled with cars carried from elsewhere in
the region by the floodwaters.
“It is clear that the catastrophes are not only hitting
closer to home, but they are also occurring more frequently,” Baecker, 60,
said. “We have had flooding in the past, but this type of weather
constellation, with so much rain in such a short time, we have not seen
before.”
Not far from his home, piles of debris, wood and waste still
line the banks of the shallow Ahr river, and heavy machinery is on hand to
reconstruct streets, houses and riverbanks. The flood’s damage to the region’s
wine industry alone is estimated at $175 million, according to the Ahr Wine
umbrella organization for winemakers.
Baecker believes that it could take five to 10 years for the
area to rebuild. As it does, he wants the government to take the lessons
learned from the floods more seriously.
“It is important that the next government ensures that there
is less burden on the environment,” he said. “We need an energy transition.”
Baecker is not alone. A study published last month by the
market research company Kantar showed that the number of shoppers polled in
Germany who made changes to be more sustainable in the last year was up nearly
9 percent, compared to just over 1 percent of those polled in the U.S.
Except Image arrangement change this story has not been edited by Blueplanet staff
Source nbc
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