The past two weeks in Germany have shown how quickly political winds can turn.
On 29 April, Germany’s top constitutional court in Karlsruhe ruled that the country’s climate protection law infringed upon the rights of the nation’s youth. The law, which aimed to cut emissions by 55% by 2030 and reach climate neutrality by 2050, was considered too vague by the judges, who gave legislators until the end of 2022 to fix it.
The case – previously only of interest to legal scholars and climate activists until the ruling was announced – created a political whirlwind.
On 5 May, the federal government followed up. Taking observers by surprise, senior cabinet members announced plans to aim for climate neutrality by 2045 instead of 2050 and cut emissions by 65% before the end of this decade.
BBC News
Published
image captionRenewable energy, like wind power, is gradually replacing coal in many EU countries
The EU has adopted ambitious new targets to curb climate change, with a pledge to make them legally binding.
Under a new law agreed between member states and the EU Parliament, the bloc will cut carbon emissions by at least 55% by 2030, compared to 1990 levels.
The EU parliament had pushed for a higher target of a 60% reduction. Our political commitment to becoming the first climate neutral continent by 2050 is now also a legal one, said EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen. The Climate Law sets the EU on a green path for a generation.
America Needs a New Transatlantic Script to Deal with China
Neither the transatlantic alliance nor an alliance of democracies can be the bedrock for stability or for change in today’s world.
Battered relentlessly by former President Donald Trump over four difficult years, relations between the United States and the European Union are back on track, with China providing an important spur for the renewed warmth. Expect no automatic and complete U.S.-EU alignment of views on China, however. As it gets underway, the transatlantic conversation will spotlight both convergences and divergences in the United States and EU approaches towards Beijing. For all their enthusiasm for President Joe Biden’s interest in working with allies, EU leaders have no appetite for a China policy based on confrontational zero-sum games, starting another calamitous cold war or a discussion dominated by hard security and references to preserving U.S. primacy in the Indo-Pacific region.