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Author: <link https: diepresse.com user external-link-new-window internal link in current>Matthias Auer
The fight against climate change has to hurt if it's not to fail
A guilty conscience is plaguing the Americans. US environmentalists want to plant a million trees to make up for their president Donald Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on climate change. Why not? The ideas the rest of the world has for keeping global warming within bearable limits aren't much better: they range from driving bans with limited impact to the controversial plan to artificially cool the Earth.
People have to decide whether they want to spend billions now to keep the problem as small as possible, or pay even more later to clean up after the predicted catastrophes. In the event of unchecked climate change, the majority of experts predict not only rising sea levels, but also more frequent hurricanes, floods, droughts, and famines — including the associated migration towards the safe haven of Central Europe. And yet the Paris goal of stabilising global warming at a maximum of two degrees above pre-industrial levels seems out of reach. Global emissions have continued to rise recently — in many countries without any restraint whatsoever.
There's no quick fix in sight: a diesel driving ban might help reduce ground-level nitrogen oxides, but it does nothing for the climate as long as diesel cars are replaced by petrol cars that are even more harmful to the climate. Likewise, the billions in subsidies for renewable energy sources sometimes do more harm than good, as long as electricity grids and storage systems can't keep pace. Germany rather overdid it: the bold expansion of green energy power plants caused electricity prices to collapse, meaning that only cheap but dirty coal-fired power plants are economically viable when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. The result: Germany's CO2 emissions rose again in 2016.
The OECD put a possible solution on the table just a few days ago: energy and CO2 must be made noticeably more expensive, demands the industrialised nations' think tank. Currently, energy taxes in none of the countries studied are high enough to influence people's behaviour. And the most climate-damaging energy sources are entirely tax-free in many countries.
Motorists actually come off quite well in the OECD's analysis, by the way. They pay more than enough taxes — just the wrong ones. When it's more expensive in Austria, tax-wise, to own a car than to drive it, anyone who leaves their car parked is being economically foolish. The far greater energy consumption outside the transport sector, on the other hand, is overlooked by most finance ministers. Four-fifths of all emissions produced by heating, industry, or electricity generation don't cost those responsible a single cent.
If at least Europe wants to honour its commitments from Paris, that will have to change. Heating with old oil-fired boilers, burning coal for electricity, and driving diesel and petrol cars will either have to be banned — or made significantly more expensive. And here lies the big catch in the plan: if the price of emitting a tonne of CO2 into the atmosphere rises from ten to a hundred euros, the question of who's going to pay for it inevitably arises.
"We all will!" is the knee-jerk response that springs to mind, but it's not accurate. Based on the pattern so far, the fight against climate change will be borne primarily by the middle class and lower-income citizens, says Georg Zachmann from the Brussels-based think tank Bruegel. They have neither the money to slap heavily subsidised solar panels on their roof, nor to finally get rid of their old Skoda diesel. So while they continue to bleed dry at the pump and on heating bills, governments are helping the better-off buy their electric cars with generous subsidies. This is a blind spot in the fight against climate change that could grow into a serious problem. Because without the support of as broad a section of the population as possible, this systemic transformation won't succeed. There aren't enough trees in the world to plant our way out of that failure.
