Conservative climate protection

Over the past ten years, climate protection has made progress, but currently the gap between scientific knowledge and the strategies and outcomes of political action and negotiation is widening. In many places, action is being reversed, postponed, or watered down. The more politically conservative the decision-makers, the more they tend toward half-truths, if not outright falsehoods, to justify climate-damaging strategies. An extreme example is currently found in the USA, whose government is withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and also the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Climate change is being degraded to a matter of opinion and denied to the point of rejecting reality. But since emissions continue at record levels, damages and losses — including of human lives — are increasing. At the expense of all citizens of this world, the USA is taking liberties that cannot be justified.

The IPCC, together with the UNFCCC, and IPBES, together with the CBD, were founded to enable political agreements on the basis of the best available scientific knowledge. IPCC and IPBES reports are reviewed and discussed in detail. Their summaries deliver key findings on climate change and on biodiversity, adopted by consensus between science and governments. It is remarkable that, in subsequent negotiations under the Climate Framework Convention, for example, individual governments feel entitled to treat this consensus as non-binding. The right to economic development through the use of fossil resources is ranked higher than the necessity of protecting the climate and nature, and higher than the sustainable management of our planet's limited natural resources for the benefit of all people. This arbitrariness means that the unchecked exploration of fossil fuels has so far been successfully defended. Hollowed out in this way, the consensus principle leads to blockades in negotiations, so that the process within the IPCC and UNFCCC is barely able to meet the challenges anymore. 

Yet economic development cannot be realized without successful climate and nature protection. Dangerous climate change for people and nature can only be effectively avoided if net emissions fall rapidly to zero and then turn negative. The respective window of opportunity closes as soon as the 1.5°C threshold of the Paris Agreement is not merely reached, but is foreseeably surpassed for decades (overshoot). Risk analyses in the Sixth Assessment Report of the IPCC (2015–2023) have impressively confirmed this. With ineffective illusions such as the imaginary high-efficiency combustion engine or with unlimited faith in adaptation, neither preventing nor justifying the crossing of this threshold is possible. Adaptation has only limited capacity, which is increasingly constrained by climate change itself. Only science-based realism points the way toward a more sustainable future.

Certain actors — individuals, industries, countries, including major emitters — take the view, like Saudi Arabia for instance, that they bear little or no responsibility for the damages caused. Others ignore the damages or their role in causing them, like the USA on the grounds of economic priorities, or like China citing the right to development. Countries like India argue that they are now legitimately entitled to use fossil fuels; only the early users of fossil fuels — that is, the classic industrialized nations — should be held liable for the damages. This reflects the aforementioned tendency toward half-truths and falsehoods. It would be far more honest, given the exponentially rising climate damages and mortality rates, to acknowledge shared responsibility on the basis of one's own share of all historical and current emissions. This would also prevent individual actors from driving up their own share, and would place climate policy and negotiations on a new footing. For at its core, the recognition that the use of fossil fuels is destroying the very foundations of human and natural life is equivalent to being cast out of the paradise of untroubled use of these energy sources. With this recognition, it would be "honestly conservative" for everyone to relinquish the right to use these energy sources — indeed, to feel increasingly ashamed of doing so.

Currently, "our own" Christian conservatives are also attempting to leave their mark on national climate and environmental policy. Since they do so with an eye toward past economic successes, their actions amount to a backward roll. Delaying tactics are meant to preserve the classic economic model of the fossil industrial age, including agriculture, in order to avoid the partly uncomfortable transformation ahead. The claim that climate targets will nonetheless be met offers no explanation of "how." There is also a lack of honest statements about what level of damage and loss would be considered acceptable under weaker climate protection. This imbalance is counterproductive even from an economic perspective, since clinging to old industries and technologies has already led to losses in competitiveness, jobs, and prosperity — visible in the fate of "our" solar industry and currently the automotive industry — and will continue to lead further into a dead end.

What remains to be done: it would be conservative, honest, and also Christian to stop the destruction of the natural foundations of life and to rebuild them, in order to secure a good life for humanity. This means giving priority to the protection of the health of both people and nature, and pursuing this goal even more ambitiously than the Greens have so far been able to do. Concretely, this also means that reducing bureaucracy should not be achieved by dismantling environmental protection rules, but by cutting back on excessive, detail-obsessed, and redundant bureaucratic processes and controls. Accelerated technological change, complemented by spatial planning that corresponds to the mosaic approach of IPBES, IPCC, and the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU) for the protection and sustainable use of natural spaces, can promote sustainability goals while simultaneously enabling economic prosperity. For infrastructure, priority should be given to the repurposing of industrial and residential brownfield sites, in order to avoid new land consumption through construction and sealing. The sustainable use of land, freshwater, and ocean should completely replace strategies of irreversible exploitation and degradation. On such a foundation, consensus-building across all political parties should be possible, for the sake of reducing risks to people and nature.

The current international blockades mean that majorities must be prepared outside of the UN conventions. Here, the formation of alliances is important ("climate clubs") that exclude science-hostile producers of fossil fuels and should only include those "customers" for whom securing the natural foundations of life matters. The pace of economic development should be coupled to the increasing availability of renewable energy sources. Such alliances can bring strong, science-based policy proposals into the conventions. They can simultaneously implement these proposals in a protected manner within their own network, disadvantage fossil business sectors and emissions-intensive agriculture, and set new standards. The customer is king, and should not — against their better judgment — allow themselves to be compelled to consume fossil fuels or goods produced in an emissions-intensive manner. The shortsighted tactics and delays must stop; they are leading human civilization to the brink. Reliable planning in line with sustainability goals is essential for the survival of nature, of the economy, and of society. All strata of society should be enabled, through social and financial compensation, to participate promptly in the consistent implementation of these goals.

This is a translation of the article published in FAZ. illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.

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