I wish there would be more effort to tackle climate change. Such actions are important, but insufficient if they happen only in one particular state, or a handful of states.
Germany as well as most of the member countries in the European Union appear to be on the forefront of climate-related measures, even though the bloc falls short of (too) many of its own goals. According to the Climate Action Tracker - an joint independent scientific project by Climate Analytics and NewClimate Institute, that tracks government climate action - Germany’s and the EU’s climate-related actions are labelled “insufficient”. And so is the U.S., Australia, and practically all other larger economies.
The worst polluters are currently Russia (“critically insufficient”) and China (“highly insufficient”), though. It doesn’t seem that there will be similar lawsuits against the governments there I am afraid.
One reason I’d like to see Germany held to account is their long-term efforts to push the interests of their car industry, even as it filled the world with overly polluting (and, recently, increasingly over-sized) vehicles
Historically most of the EU countries also accounted for a large swath of the global pollution. Furthermore a lot of the pollution in places like China is created to export goods to the EU, Australia or US.
For comparison, the World Bank’s calculation of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per capita for larger economies like China, European Union, United States, Germany, Russian Federation - (you can add further countries or blocs yourself in the diagram).
Probably will work out the same as it did on the federal level:
- Win lawsuit
- Government passes new legislation that due to some maths tricks meets the climate targets.
- Next government fails to meet targets and moves the goal posts.
- …
- No profit. Planet still fucked.
Germany has had falling emissions for some years and there are a number of pretty good climate laws on the books. It is not enough, but it is not like nothing is happening.
