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Ten guidelines for climate success

1. Readjustment to achieve goals

The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement is a climate policy milestone. But the targets needed to limit global warming to below 2°C are being achieved almost nowhere, including here in Germany. Climate policy must therefore become more global and nationally more efficient - a realistic reorientation is needed.

2. We need openness to innovation

We will only be successful in climate policy if we examine all technological solutions without prejudice and give research and industry the necessary freedom to achieve our ambitious goals. It is a matter of mobilizing our entire market, scientific and technological potential.

3. Crisis-proof climate protection through security of supply and affordability

Besides global warming, there are other existential threats: wars, attacks on democracy, losses of prosperity, social division, scarcity of raw materials and water, the decline of biodiversity, and pandemics. Climate policy must become resilient. To ensure that times of crisis (for example, the financial crash of 2008 or the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine in 2022) do not lead to the devaluation of climate policy, security of supply and affordability of energy for private households and companies must become much more important.

4. Thinking geopolitically

Climate and energy policy have a geopolitical and security dimension. Since Germany and Europe remain dependent on energy imports, competition in energy forms, supply and raw material relations, and cooperation in partnership with key countries (external climate policy) are central tasks. Technologies must be deployed where they have the greatest impact on climate protection.

5. Consider the dangers of deindustrialization and loss of prosperity

Democratic climate policy must take the needs of citizens seriously. Limitations on mobility or housing, deindustrialization and loss of prosperity are not attractive to a majority in the long run. Citizens and the business community have proven that they understand climate policy arguments. They do not want measures and bans, but technical and market-based solutions.

6. Continue to finance bridging technologies

The attempt to channel funding streams into climate-friendly projects is to be welcomed. However, it only makes sense if the yardstick is not an ideological target, but a concrete CO2 reduction in each case. The aim is to ensure that investments in bridging technologies also remain possible.

7. Economy as the driver of ecology

We need an unreserved discourse about the best solutions. Black-and-white thinking will not get us there. Industry is the central driver for innovation and the development of solutions. The basic consensus on climate policy should not be jeopardized by enemy stereotypes of "good" climate protectors versus "evil industry." Industry is the central engine for innovation and the development of solutions. The task remains to consider economy and ecology together.

8. For the climate: social market economy instead of new state economy

Politics should define goals but resist the temptation to micromanage. Politics should focus above all on technology, open research, and innovation - and set the framework for achieving climate targets by making fossil fuels more expensive in a sensible way. The trend toward detailed state regulation of production is not a promise for us. Especially in a united Germany, we should know better.

9. Disaster prevention as part of responsible climate policy

Because, despite all climate policy efforts, it is foreseeable that the number of natural disasters caused by climate change will increase, disaster prevention and protection are part of a responsible climate policy to contain the consequences of devastating storms, droughts, or floods.

10. Strengthening basic research

Technical progress has repeatedly produced new inventions and thus unimagined possibilities. We should strengthen confidence in science and create an environment in which new ideas are generated and implemented.