Jürgen Trittin in Esslingen. Former Federal Environment Minister Jürgen Trittin speaks plainly
For many, he is still the environment minister par excellence: Jürgen Trittin was a guest at the Econvent and did not hold back with criticism of the government’s policies.
He is often called the “environmental politician par excellence” and described as a man of strong principles. Jürgen Trittin, Federal Environment Minister from 1998 to 2005 and chairman of the Alliance 90/The Greens parliamentary group in the Bundestag from 2009 to 2013, is indeed a man who speaks plainly. This became very clear during the talk series at the Econvent Esslingen, in which the high-profile guests take part free of charge.
Is he really as principled as many say, EZ editor Alexander Maier wants to know from Jürgen Trittin: “I don’t know whether I am more principled than others. But in the Greens we have certain goals, such as phasing out nuclear power, which we then pursue and implement persistently,” he replies. For the Bremen-born politician, however, one thing is quite clear: politicians must stand by what they have said and then actively implement these goals. On many key points, the current government is moving far too slowly for him, Trittin makes clear. On climate protection, for example: “Does the federal government simply want to sit out the climate crisis? There is no shortage of fine words, but there is certainly a lack of political action,” he criticises. “Germany was once a pioneer in climate protection. But the record of the last decade, Angela Merkel’s chancellorship, shows that German greenhouse gas emissions are stagnating at a high level. The goal was to reduce emissions by 40 per cent by 2020 compared with 1990. So far we have only achieved 31 per cent of this interim target. Achieving another nine percentage points within a year is something not even the most radical Greens could manage.” German and European climate targets must be tightened, says Trittin – who clearly supports a climate protection law – “but I see no sign of that at the moment.” Global warming must be limited to a maximum of two degrees, or better still one and a half degrees, in order to cope with the consequences of the climate crisis. Instead, we are currently living in times of the highest CO2 concentration worldwide for probably three million years: “That is disastrous.”
The 2019 European elections showed voters’ clear frustration with politicians’ inaction on the climate issue. However, the poor performance of the major people’s parties can never be attributed to just one issue: “Regardless of specific issues, the question also arises: does it always have to go on like this, for example as far as the grand coalition is concerned,” Trittin sums up. The energy transition is achievable; the knowledge and technical prerequisites are there: “The problem is the terrible market strategy.” Diesel subsidies, for example, must finally come to an end. “In China, a million electric cars were sold in 2018 alone, none of them from a German manufacturer,” Trittin cites as an example of the overly slow implementation of the goals: “The car industry is further ahead here than the federal government. We are ten years behind.” Or when Markus Söder (CSU) now talks about phasing out coal by 2030: “The Greens have had that in their programme for a long time.”
Every two years, the Federal Environment Agency conducts a study on Germans’ environmental awareness: “In the latest one, 70 per cent of respondents consider climate protection to be a central political task. But only three per cent think the federal government is doing enough. That is a very serious finding,” Trittin stresses. A rethink is also needed in agriculture: “At present, those with the largest areas receive the most financial support. So the biggest recipients of subsidies are large companies.” Instead, the focus must be on smaller farms, “they are still real farmers and not large industrial operations,” says Trittin. Problems such as adding antibiotics to large herds or spreading slurry, which in turn pollutes the groundwater, must be counteracted. As must the production of animal feed, which often goes hand in hand with the clearing of tropical forests – think, for example, of soya deliveries from South America.
Jürgen Trittin, who is a Member of the Bundestag and of the Foreign Affairs Committee, is not yet tired of politics, he makes clear when asked: “I have been in politics all my life, I am still fit, why should I stop now?” At the next federal election, the big challenge for the Greens will be to hold on to their current very good results from the European elections in order, ideally, to leave behind the “extremely uncomfortable” role of opposition. He plays down the idea of being available again for the post of Federal Environment Minister: “We have the people for that,” says Trittin, referring to the current joint leadership of Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck.
Finally, Alexander Maier wants to know whether politics has changed. “Yes, it has. When you see mayors stepping down today because they receive death threats and the mob gets its way with a lack of inhibition not seen for a long time, that really troubles me. Something has to change. The democratic parties must take a clear stand here against this hatred, this new nationalism, which is so often played down as right-wing populism.”
First published in the Eßlinger Zeitung on 7 April 2019 by the author Katja Eisenhardt