Germany to Invest 100 Billion Euros by 2030 to Fight Climate Change

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The parties of the governing coalition of German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed on Friday, September 20th, on a climate strategy that will represent at least EUR100 (R$460) billion in investment by 2030.

This amount will be invested in climate protection and the energy transition according to the final text of the agreement, which was reached after more than 18 hours of negotiations between the conservatives of the Chancellor’s Party (Christian Democratic Union/CDU) and the Social Democrats (SPD).

The government plans to spend EUR54 billion in the first four years of the plan until 2023, said Finance Minister Olaf Scholz.

The challenge consists of measures to encourage Germans to reduce polluting emissions and allow the country, now lagging behind, to meet its targets of reducing polluting emissions.

The text has yet to be adopted by the Council of Ministers.

The goal is to achieve a 55 percent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030 (compared to 1990), in line with what was agreed in the European Union after Germany failed to meet the 40 percent reduction by 2020.

“Now we are not sustainable,” said German Chancellor Angela Merkel, presenting the package of 70 measures in advance of the meeting called for Monday, September 23rd, by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to discuss measures to tackle the climate crisis.

The agreement was also announced on the day when thousands of demonstrators, 100,000 according to the organizers, met in Berlin at the Brandenburg Gate on the day scheduled to be a global climate protest action.

On the posters, you could say, “When you’ve done your homework, we’ll do ours!”, “There’s no planet B” or “Thank you, Greta”, said the Swedish teenager behind the FridaysforFuture movement.

The mobilization must be particularly successful in Germany where environmentalists have a good political profile.

In total, the demonstrations will take place in 575 German cities, said the FridaysforFuture movement’s spokeswoman, Luisa Neubauer, in a message on Twitter.

Today, all over the world, there are demonstrations by activists in defense of the environment, such as in Australia, India, Thailand, Hong Kong, among other places. The demonstrations are in advance of Monday’s meeting at the UN.

(Source: Agência Brasil)