Climate – Munich – Booster or Looser: What can the new climate law achieve? – Bavaria
Munich (dpa / lby) – Opinions are also divided on Bavaria’s revised climate protection law. While Environment Minister Thorsten Glauber (Free Voters) sees the law as a “climate protection booster” with which the Free State will meet its share of the current 1.5-degree target in Paris, criticism from the opposition and environmental associations immediately rained. In the opinion of Bavaria, this is losing important time to effectively curb the longest ongoing climate change.
“The presented climate protection law is not enough for Bavaria to live up to its commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement. Söder is not fulfilling its responsibility,” said Greens parliamentary group leader Ludwig Hartmann of the German press agency on Tuesday with a view to Prime Minister Markus Söder ( CSU). SPD parliamentary group leader Florian von Brunn said that the revised climate law contained a few advances compared to the “old, completely inadequate draft”, but ultimately it was “completely inadequate, endangered jobs and not fit for the future”.
On Monday, the cabinet surprisingly passed its long-announced amendment to the law – shortly afterwards, the Federal Nature Conservation Union had criticized it as “inadequate”. Glauber sees it completely differently: “We will master climate change in Bavaria. With the new climate protection law, the accompanying measures and a daily climate billion for financing, we are well positioned.” Bavaria is making its contribution, interlinked with the federal government and the EU, “to achieve the global 1.5 degree target.”
The government itself initiated the amendment after the Federal Constitutional Court criticized the federal climate protection law as flawed. The Karlsruhe judges called on the legislature, among other things, to regulate the reduction targets for greenhouse gas emissions in more detail. In Bavaria’s amendment, based on this, the following sentence can now be found: “The law aims to reduce the dangers of climate change for future generations and thus ensure their civil liberties die in the long term.”
If you take a look at the draft, which has not yet been officially published, you will actually find some changes: by 2030, greenhouse gas emissions per inhabitant should no longer be reduced by 55 percent, but by 65 percent, based on the 1990 average Free State to become climate neutral by 2040 and not until 2050. Bavaria’s administration is to work climate-neutrally by 2028, the state government by 2023. What is also noticeable: the 1.5 degree target is not even mentioned in the law.
The goals are to be achieved, among other things, through a photovoltaic (PV) obligation for commercial roofs and the construction of PV systems along highways, the reforestation of 30 million trees in the next five years and the renaturation of 55,000 hectares of moorland. The controversial 10H minimum distance rule for wind turbines remains, however.
As with the first edition of the law, most of the 125 measures in total can be found in an accompanying catalog that is currently still being drawn up in the ministry. The ministry sees this as an advantage, because in the future further measures can be added without a complicated new law, critics see a lack of binding force in the implementation.
For the first time in the law there is a link between the Free State and the so-called sector targets of the federal government – including the binding savings targets for areas such as agriculture, construction and transport. In order to measure progress, a controlling system is being set up within the government in Bavaria. And there WILL be a new report from the Ministry of the Environment on progress.
It will take some time before the law can come into force. The first step is the hearing by the associations and the parliamentary consultation. If it is up to the climate policy spokesman for the Greens, Martin Stümpfig, the new edition of the Bavarian Climate Protection Act could ultimately have legal consequences: “We will fight against this inaction and refusal in climate protection, against this irresponsible government – we will fight that way disagree.”
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 211116-99-20562 / 4