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People value the positive aspects of nature, whether relaxing in their own backyards, sitting on the patio, vacationing, playing sports, or just enjoying their free time. But clean air and clean rivers, rich diversity of species, and well-functioning ecosystems also have great significance for our economy, not only for its agricultural component but also for our overall prosperity. We are all aware that a healthy nature is our insurance policy for the future. And for that reason, ambitious environmental and climate policies are crucial political goals that will enable us to maintain and reinforce the foundations of our lives and economic activities. But the benefits of such policies are far from self-evident. The achievements of social democratic policymaking are being called into question again in a changed world. These include social security systems, peace and détente policies, equal treatment, the exit from nuclear power, and co-determination, as well as the environmental and climate policies highlighted here.

If Germany’s oldest democratic party, the SPD, wants to develop a program with a new set of basic principles, it will have to offer answers to more than just the classic questions. It will need to confront new challenges – ones that were unknown in 2007, when the SPD’s Hamburg Program was being drafted – such as artificial intelligence, digitalization, populism, and the rise of authoritarian powers.

»Climate protection became a divisive issue that contributes to the polarization of society.«

When Willy Brandt championed environmental policy during the 1961 electoral campaign for the Federal Parliament under the rubric »The skies over the Ruhr region must become blue again,« he could count on broad public support. Today, the social policy situation is more complicated. On one hand, climate protection is now constitutionally mandated and recently was anchored in Germany’s Basic Law by broad majorities in both houses of Parliament. On the other hand, climate protection and its concrete implementation have become a divisive issue that contributes to polarization. Whereas just a few years ago opinion surveys revealed that the climate crisis was judged to be our most urgent problem, today – against the backdrop of acute crises and conflicts – polls show that by now environmental issues are perceived as less urgent and therefore in danger of being overshadowed by other problems.

But the protection of the environment, nature, and the climate are important underpinnings of our freedom. They should occupy a central position among the basic principles included in our new program. I am convinced that we can formulate and implement a modern policy that is not only ambitious and socially just, but also capable of commanding majority support. Four planks in that program will be decisive. First, the SPD should endorse ambitious goals and make sure that those are carried out with the broadest possible public support. Second, social justice must be the central criterion of political decision-making. Third, Germany’s position as an industrial powerhouse needs to be strengthened and upgraded. To do that, we must prioritize renewable energy, a circular economy, green tech, and sustainable financing. Finally, we have to mobilize majorities in favor of those policies while overcoming social divisions. Taking our bearings from these guidelines, the following topics should be given special emphasis as the main foci of a social democratic environmental and climate policy.

Using climate policy as a unifying element

Most people have noticed how shared experiences in nature can create bonds among them. We must build on those experiences when the very foundations of our lives and the spaces we inhabit are at stake; i.e., when protecting health, economic development, and prosperity are at the top of the political agenda. We need nature as an ally in the struggle against climate change and species extinction. By the same token, we need the sun and the wind as allies, so we can put fossil fuels behind us at last. 

Active environmental protection has become an increasingly salient factor in helping companies decide where to locate their plants. They invest where security of supply, predictability, and resilience can be guaranteed. And where sufficient renewable energy sources are available. In this respect environmental policy is a strategic, cross-sectional task. Climate neutrality and competitiveness are indissolubly linked to one another. In the future, competitiveness will be defined by whether economic activity is sustainable. Part of that effort will involve making procedures and enforcement more efficient and digitalizing permitting processes without vitiating environmental standards.

»Climate policy can be successful only when it is just.«

Putting a price on CO2 in the heating and transportations sectors is the right thing to do because it sets policy on a course toward reduced emissions. The current emissions trading regime for industry and energy demonstrates that. Thus, revamping our stock of existing buildings and expanding electromobility are important steps in that direction. Still, we have to make sure that people are not being overwhelmed; otherwise, we will not get their consent. For that reason, targeted, socially calibrated funding programs are necessary.

Even adapting to the impacts of climate change raises social questions. Heat waves, rainstorms, and droughts hit people with underlying health conditions, children, older people, and low-income households harder than others. A national strategy of adaptation must pay special attention to those groups. In this context, preventive civil defense, the safeguarding of drinking water, investment in green infrastructure, and health care measures such as providing cooling stations and shade are indispensable.

The exit from nuclear and fossil-fuel energy sources as a project of modernization

Decades ago, Hermann Scheer demonstrated that an energy system built on the sun, wind, energy storage, and intelligent networks would make sense and be desirable not only as climate policy, but even as an economic investment. The exit from nuclear and fossil-fuel energy sources is the principal building block of a climate-neutral economy and the grand project of modernization in our time.

More than a million small-scale power plants on German balconies show that a lot of people want to get involved in the transition. We shouldn’t wait for solutions that still have not moved beyond the laboratory stage. Instead, we should count on several options: the expansion of wind and solar energy (ideally with the participation of citizens on a local level), energy storage solutions, and networked infrastructure, as well as green hydrogen, the last of which will be especially indispensable for industry.

Germany needs an upgrade to become an innovative industrial location

Green tech, the circular economy, and green chemistry are the industries of the future. They offer secure jobs and generate new chains of value-creation while making Germany and Europe as a whole more geopolitically independent. An active industrial policy is essential for all of these advances. It supports regions as they undergo structural transformation, promotes research and development, and creates a reliable general framework of laws and policies, thus fostering predictability for investment. The opportunities are enormous. New industrial value-creation in areas such as battery technologies, recycling schemes, or technologies for removing CO2 from the atmosphere could become motors of sustainable growth. Germany has the powers of innovation and the industrial base available to shape these trends and to restore its role as a competitive location for industry, as it has done repeatedly in the past.

Expanding international cooperation

For ten years now the Paris Climate Agreement has furnished a process through which countries could cooperate to halt global climate change. That process depends on trust in properly functioning multilateralism. Germany and Europe must confirm their roles in established multilateral forums like the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as well as moving ahead with new institutions such as the Climate Club. Such platforms for cooperation are important in enabling Germany to retain its capacity for action even when big international negotiations have stalled. 

International environmental policymaking can open channels for talks when classical diplomacy has reached a dead end. We want to make cooperation on environmental, nature-preservation, and climate protection issues a stabilizing force in a fragmented world order. Germany’s contribution to those efforts should be marked by fairness and responsibility, burden-sharing, technological cooperation, and support for poorer countries in the energy transition.

Let’s make Germany’s successes in environmental and nature preservation more visible

The history of environmental and nature preservation in Germany has been a tale of success. Much has been accomplished in the cleanup of our waters, soil, and air. In particular, the post-1990 process of unification has presented enormous opportunities to save and restore damaged and ravaged natural landscapes. In the German Democratic Republic, the environmental movement played an important part in the quest for freedom and self-determination as well as in the peaceful revolution that took place in the fall of 1989. Over the past 35 years, the aftereffects of the decades-long burning of brown coal and of chemical industry pollution have largely been eliminated. The “death strip” along the former border between the two Germanies has become a green belt, while what used to be military training grounds are now natural heritage sites. The GDR’s national park program, the brainchild of nature preservationists as early as the Seventies, became the nucleus of large nature reserves in a united Germany once the unification treaty had been signed.  Even today, these accomplishments and the most important actors involved in them are known only to a small, specialized public.

Environmental and nature preservation have contributed to better health and longer life-expectancy. They are the basis of surging tourism and numerous successful industrial plant sitings in eastern Germany. This story shows in exemplary fashion what can be achieved when we take the long view of environmental protection and sustainable investment.

Let’s think about ecology and economics as two sides of the same coin

But we can’t rest on our laurels when it comes to environmental, nature, and climate protection, nor should we yield to resistance from the fossil fuel lobby. We can and must defend and secure our freedom against the economic and social consequences of climate change. The social democratic signature on environmental and climate policy becomes clearest when ecology and economics are viewed as two sides of the same coin and when we place our hopes on what binds us together as we try to overcome social divisions. The burdens of change must be distributed in socially just ways, while we ensure that everyone has a voice in the transition.

Discussions about the basic principles of a new SPD program offer many opportunities to think about the paths described here and the many ideas that go beyond them. That process could give us considerable self-confidence in our capacity to shape the future. At stake is nothing less than the safeguarding of the very foundations of our lives and prosperity, not only for ourselves, but also our children and grandchildren. I am looking forward to a broad discussion.