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The International Climate Initiative (ICI) : The ICI sees itself as a contribution to international environmental cooperation, enabling climate-related projects to supplement “traditional” development cooperation (DC). Germany is a big part of the ICI and they regularly do contribute to this fund. They report their involvement of this fund greatly to the UNited nations framework convention on climate change. The main objectives of this is to create a climate friendly economy where nations are able to prevent climate damaging greenhouse gases. It also promotes safe measures of preservation and sustainable use of carbon reservoirs.  Reducing emissions and deforestation and degradation in the world’s eco systems It contributes over 120 million euros to this cause. Germany is one of the largest contributors of the “forest Protection program”  along with great britain and Norway they are pledging in having 5 billion dollars by 2020 towards this cause. Germany itself has contributed 1.1 billion dollars to date.

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The International Climate Initiative (ICI) : The ICI sees itself as a contribution to international environmental cooperation, enabling climate-related projects to supplement “traditional” development cooperation (DC). Germany is a big part of the ICI and they regularly do contribute to this fund. They report their involvement of this fund greatly to the UNited nations framework convention on climate change. The main objectives of this is to create a climate friendly economy where nations are able to prevent climate damaging greenhouse gases. It also promotes safe measures of preservation and sustainable use of carbon reservoirs.  Reducing emissions and deforestation and degradation in the world’s eco systems It contributes over 120 million euros to this cause. Germany is one of the largest contributors of the “forest Protection program”  along with great britain and Norway they are pledging in having 5 billion dollars by 2020 towards this cause. Germany itself has contributed 1.1 billion dollars to date.

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Germany has recognised how Climate change is affecting their nation on an environmental and social level. Numerous measures have been put forth to minimise the human effect on their environment and monitor the climate change throughout the years. The National Adaption plan implemented in 2011 is one of Germanys main source of positive change towards their environment. The aim is to is to reduce vulnerability to the consequences of climate change, to maintain or improve the adaptability of natural, social and economic systems, and to take advantage of any opportunities. National Organizations such as the National Climate Data Centre, Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development and KLIWAS are just a few examples of organizations created to control the resources used which have a great impact on their environment. The Adaptation Action Plan generally sets out arrangements at the national level and activities commenced by the Federal Government that are jointly initiated with the Länder. The activities are specifically designed to reduce energy sources, search for options of adaptation to climate change and present to the general public how these new approaches will complement their way of living as well as the environment.
- Aneesah’s 200 words

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No matter a country's population or GDP, we encourage all nations to commit to combating climate change - this is an international issue that requires a concerted international response. We believe Germany is setting an exemplary precedent on climate change. We encourage all states to contribute economically and technically to the issue - climate change cannot be solved by high GDP countries alone. All states must contribute. We implore other nations of similar potential to Germany's to match the our standard, if not exceed it. We encourage bilateral and multilateral efforts, and anticipate mutually beneficial arrangements to come from these negotiations.

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- Madeleine

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China is the world's excuse for cruelty and barbarism. If we don't behave atrociously, politicians and columnists assure us, China will, so we had better do it first, before we are outcompeted.

You want holidays, collective bargaining rights and fair conditions in the workplace? Forget it. When Chinese workers have none, such fripperies would "hamper British/US/Australian/Canadian industry", making it uncompetitive.

Columnists like Thomas Friedman at the New York Times, gleefully regaling us with tales of Chinese workers being turfed out of their dormitories at midnight, marched to a workstation and obliged to perform a 12-hour shift to meet a last-minute order from Apple, insist that we either compete on these terms or perish. France, he once claimed, is doomed if it seeks to preserve a 35-hour week, while people in Asia " are ready to work a 35-hour day."

In fact French workers are doing fine: it turns out that European countries with shorter working hours (France, the Netherlands and Denmark for example) have higher productivity per hour than those whose workers have to spend longer at their desks (such as Germany and Britain). And a country whose people have both decent wages and time to relax can support millions of jobs - in leisure and pleasure - that don't exist where workers are treated as little more than slaves.

You want your rivers, air and wildlife protected? What planet are you on? China, we are told, doesn't give a damn for such luxuries, with the result that if we don't abandon our own regulations, it will take over the world.

On no topic are these claims made more often than on climate change. What is the point of limiting our greenhouse gas emissions, a thousand bloggers (and a fair few politicians) insist, if China is building a new power station every two weeks (or days or minutes or whatever the latest hyperbole suggests)? Taking action on climate change is useless and stupid in the face of the Chinese threat.

China is not just a country. It is whatever powerful interests want us to be. It is, they suggest, a remorseless, faceless, insuperable threat to civilisation, to which the only rational response is to abandon civilisation. So often is the threat invoked to justify the latest round of inhumane proposals that it needs a name. Perhaps we could hijack one: China Syndrome.

China Syndrome is the 21 st century extension of the Yellow Peril myth. First formulated by Kaiser Wilhelm II, whose extreme militarism, racism and anti-Semitism prefigured the rise of Nazism in Germany, the term reflects a long-standing apprehension about the people of Asia, dating back perhaps to the Mongol invasions of eastern Europe. It invokes an uncaring, undifferentiated horde of philistines, possessed perhaps with supernatural powers, but without moral limits or human qualities like empathy, pity, love or self-restraint. Unless we took extreme measures to defend ourselves against this threat, Wilhelm and others insisted, this human swarm would outbreed and overrun the nations of the west.

The myth became a staple of schlock literature and films, spawning such characters as Fu Manchu and Ming the Merciless. The idea that the people of China might "steal our jobs" is also deep-rooted. It triggered a number of pogroms in the United States during the later decades of the 19 th century, during which many Chinese immigrant workers were murdered.

It is, of course, true that China contributes substantially to the threat of climate breakdown: it is now the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. It is also true that its diplomats often prove to be a hindrance during international negotiations on the subject. That was certainly the case at the UN climate conference in Bonn that ended on Thursday, where they refused even to discuss the crucial issue: how much global warming the policies adopted by each nation will cause.

This stands in apparent contrast to the agreement struck this week, as a result of Angela Merkel's diplomacy, at the G7 meeting, calling for "a decarbonisation of the global economy over the course of this century".

But to suggest that China is an inherent and insuperable threat, as many of my correspondents do (mostly those who alternate between insisting that man-made climate change isn't happening and insisting that we can't do anything about it anyway), is grievously to misrepresent the people of that nation.

Video: George Monbiot teams up with Leo Murray and green charity PIRC to explain the UK's 'carbon omissions'. Guardian

First, of course, much of its energy use is commissioned by other nations. As manufacturing has declined in countries like the US and Britain, and the workforce is mostly engaged in other activities, the fossil fuel burning caused by our consumption of stuff has shifted overseas, along with the blame. Even so, when China's total greenhouse gas production is divided by its population, you discover that it is still producing much less per head than we are.

Partly as a result of a massive investment in renewables, the Chinese demand for coal dropped for the first time last year, and is likely to drop again this year. Perhaps because of the bureaucratic chaos of China's centralised, unwieldy government, there is a gulf between the energy transition rapidly taking place within China and its negotiating positions in international meetings, which are " in the hands of completely different sets of bureaucrats."

But perhaps the biggest surprise for those who unwittingly invoke the old Yellow Peril tropes is that the Chinese people care more about climate change than we do. A survey released on Monday reveals that 26% of respondents in the UK and 32% in the US believe that climate change is "not a serious problem", while in China the figure is only 4%. In the UK, 7% don't want their government to endorse any international agreement addressing climate change. In the US the proportion rises to 17%. But in China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, only 1% want no action taken.

Of course, the question that arises in undemocratic countries like China is the extent to which public desires can shape government policy. But what's clear is that China's failure to act decisively on climate change does not arise from any national characteristic.

Video: An animated guide to signs of hope emanating from China on climate change.
Guardian

The paternalistic assumption that only the rich nations can afford to care is also based on myth: a myth that - like the Yellow Peril story - dates back to the colonial era. As the Greendex survey of consumer attitudes shows, people in poorer countries tend to feel much guiltier about their impacts on the natural world than people in rich countries, even though those impacts might be far smaller. Of the nations surveyed, the people of Germany, the US, Australia and Britain felt the least consumer guilt; while the people of India, China, Mexico and Brazil felt the most. The more we consume, the less we feel.

There is no scope for moral superiority in the climate talks, least of all a moral superiority based on unfounded national stereotypes. Collectively, we are wrecking the delicate atmospheric balance that has allowed human civilisation to flourish. Collectively, we have to sort this out. And it will happen only by taking responsibility for our impacts, rather than by blaming other nations for what we don't want to do.
Monbiot.com

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Stop using China as an excuse for inaction on climate change | George Monbiot

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George Monbiot: Invoking Yellow Peril tropes over China's carbon footprint fails to recognise the fact its energy use is tied to our consumption, the country's coal demand is dropping and Chinese people care more about climate than we do

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Only in 2003, after the law's gradual implementation, the amount of emissions reduced by 2.4%, which is 20 million tons of CO2. Thus, the eco-tax is one of the most powerful instruments for climate protection in Germany. The number of workplaces rose by 250,000 jobs

- Aneesah

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- Are richer countries only rich bc of industrialisation? Obviously there has been a financial benefit, are they now just repaying their environmental debt?
- Have lower GDP/less developed countries not benefitted from this industrialisation, too?
- Emissions per capita vs CC $ commitment per capita

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In a screening procedure covering all of Germany using the newly-developed, consistent method, the regions and topics will be identified which are particularly at risk by climate change for each of the sectors and across these sectors. The results include climate change impact maps with a spatial resolution of municipalities.

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Interactive map on who contributes what $ to climate change

- Madeleine

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An independent website providing information on international finance initiatives designed to help developing countries address the challenges of climate change.

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Bonn Climate Change Conference - May 2017

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Application period for side events and exhibits at the UN Climate Change Conference May 2017 (SB 46) will be open through the Side Events and Exhibits Online Registration System ( SEORS): The application period for side events & Exhibits was 07-10 February 2017, and is now closed.

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- Aneesah

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Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development

-Aneesah

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federal office for building and regional planning

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Wechsel zur Homepage des englischsprachigen Auftritts

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KLIWAS – Impacts of climate change on waterways and navigation – Searching for options of adaptation

-Aneesah

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With the pilot project "Hydrology and Inland Navigation" - a precursor of the KLIWAS research programme - the Federal Institute of Hydrology (BfG) had begun already in the year 2007 to compile a hydro-meteorological database of the German parts in all international (shared) river basins.

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- Adopted  by the German Federal Cabinet on 31rst August 2011

-The Adaptation Action Plan mainly sets out activities at the national level and activities undertaken by the Federal Government that are jointly initiated with the Länder.

- The Federal Government will present an initial report in the next electoral term for the evaluation of the DAS and the Action Plan, and further reports are to follow at regular intervals.

- Aneesah

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- The aim of the Adaptation Strategy is to reduce vulnerability to the consequences of climate change, to maintain or improve the adaptability of natural, social and economic systems, and to take advantage of any opportunities

-This strategy addresses all possible factors that help sustain or hinder the adaption strategy. e.g Sustainability, Expected Climate change, Human impact on nature, Biological diversity, Agriculture, tourism, National adaption. etc.

- Germany has the goal of "extensive greenhouse gas neutrality" by 2050.

- Aneesah

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Fresh on the heels of the rapid entry into force of the Paris Climate Change Agreement on 4 November 2016, the first long-term strategies have been submitted by the United States, Mexico, Germany and Canada.

The United States has presented a pathway for emissions reductions of 80 percent or more below 2005 levels by 2050. Mexico's pathway is a 50% reduction of greenhouse gases by 2050 compared to the year 2000. Germany has the goal of "extensive greenhouse gas neutrality" by 2050. Canada's emissions reduction goal is for net emissions to fall by 80% by 2050 compared to 2005 levels, consistent with the Paris Agreement's objective of a maximum global average temperature rise of 1.5°C to 2°C.

The Paris Agreement encourages all Parties to formulate and publish long-term low greenhouse gas emission strategies.

Further long-term climate change strategies are expected to be published by countries in the near future. This is further testimony to the continued global momentum for strengthened action on climate change.

Even before the historic climate change conference in Paris in 2015, during which the Paris Agreement was adopted, countries submitted national climate action plans (Nationally Determined Contributions, or NDCs), which detail what each country will contribute to the global response to climate change, in line with their national circumstances. The long-term climate strategies complement countries' NDCs.

To view published long-term strategies, see here

To view the NDC registry, see here

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First Long-Term Climate Strategies Submitted to UN Under Paris AgreementPlans by the US, Mexico, Germany and Canada

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Fresh on the heels of the rapid entry into force of the Paris Agreement on 4 November 2016, the first long-term strategy has been submitted by the United States of America, presenting a pathway for emissions reductions of 80 percent or more below 2005 levels by 2050.

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Outsider perspectives on Germany approach to Climate Change

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Outsider perspectives on Germany approach to Climate Change

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In the international community, opinions on Germany's CC policies and actions are mixed.

Many praise Merkel for her theological devotion to the environment. It is likely she is motivated by personal interest in the subject, as a scientist 'by trade' and former Environmental minister for Germany.

Domestically, Germany are ahead of their peers. Germany are leading the charge in terms of renewable energy sources. In 2015, it was reported that 78% of the country's electricity was renewably sourced.

However, Germany, and Merkel, draw criticism for inaction on an international level. Recent public political interest in Germany has revolved around immigration and refugees, and not climate change.

It could be argued that this is somewhat self-serving. As Germany is a strong (if not the strongest) economy, Germans are less directly affected by climate change as those in lower SES countries, who feel/see/experience the effects of CC every day.

- Madeleine

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- Article claims 78% of Germany's electricity was generated by renewable energy sources.

- "Aggressively" invested approx. 120 billion euros into low-pollution energy from 2005-2015

- Madeleine

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On Sunday, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton unveiled the first major commitments of her climate change policy. Her plan centers on dramatically increasing renewable energy sources in the United States, with the goal of having 33% of the country's power generation come from renewable sources by 2027. While commentators debate how realistic her goals are and whether they're adequate for meeting the challenge of climate change, they might do well to look across the Atlantic for some inspiration.

Last week, Germany hit an extraordinary milestone: On July 25th, 78% of the country's electricity was generated by renewable energy sources.

According to an analysis by Craig Morris, an expert on German energy, the record was made possible by a confluence of chance weather events. Severe storms in northern Europe contributed to strong winds throughout the country and especially in the north - where most of its wind turbines are located. It was simultaneously sunny in the south, where most of the country's solar panels are situated. The combination of the two boosted the share of the Germany's total renewable-generated electric power generated to a new high, surpassing the previous record of of 74% set in 2014.

Germany's performance on renewable energy in recent years has been remarkable. The country is a manufacturing powerhouse with a population of 80 million and the largest economy in the world that relies as much as it does on renewables. According to Bloomberg, the nation aggressively invested about 120 billion euros into low-pollution energy in the past decade, and the share of electricity generated by renewable sources has increased to about 28% - more than any other source. Including energy used for transportation and heating, the share of energy that comes from renewables in Germany is three times higher than in the U.S.

According to ThinkProgress, the country wants to double the share of renewable energy in its energy production by 2035 - while eliminating its reliance on nuclear energy.

Reform in the U.S.: Clinton's plan seeks to increase solar capacity by 700% by the end of her first term - the equivalent of solar panels on 25 million homes. She's pledging to double the share of total power generation that comes from renewable sources. Combined with nuclear energy, Clinton's target meets one key standard of the influential climate change activist group ClimateGen: that half of the nation's electricity is generated from renewable or zero-carbon sources by 2030.

But Clinton still has plenty of work to do in order to convince climate activists that she can deliver meaningful reforms to manage the crisis of global warming. Earlier in the week, she refused to take a stance on the proposed Keystone pipeline, an issue that environmentalists consider a litmus test for determining how serious candidates are about ending the U.S.'s addiction to fossil fuels.

Clinton's fellow candidate former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley has called for the U.S. to commit to 100% clean energy by 2050, but so far, climate change has not received a great deal of attention in the 2016 race. That may change in the coming months. But at the moment, the economy and social issues like criminal justice reform are dominating the policy conversation.

Germany's commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% by 2050 doesn't necessarily sound that much more ambitious than the rhetoric of its peer nations. But its impressive record on renewable energy so far signals a unusual commitment to fulfilling its promises.

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Germany Just Hit a Serious Milestone in Fighting Global Warming

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On Sunday, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton unveiled the first major commitments of her climate change policy. Her plan centers on dramatically increasing renewable energy sources in the United States, with the goal of having 33% of the country's power generation come from renewable sources by 2027.

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Criticism of Germany's inaction on CC, and the absence of CC in election discussion in 2013.

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Criticism of Germany's inaction on CC, and the absence of CC in election discussion in 2013.

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- Madeleine

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Despite Germany's 'green' reputation, the issue of climate change has been largely absent from the federal election campaign

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Germany has taken a leading role in efforts to tackle the problem of climate change. As Mark Dawson and Pierre Thielbörger write, however, the issue has not played a major part in the country's fed...

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- Madeleine

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Merkel grows up in East Germany, the daughter of a protestant pastor. In 1973 she follows her passion for science and studies physics at the University of Leipzig. Afterwards, she is a researcher at the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry at the Academy of Sciences in Berlin, earning her doctorate in 1986. Entering politics when the Berlin Wall falls in 1989, she quickly rises in the party ranks of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union ( CDU) of then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

1994-1998 Environment Minister

Merkel is made Federal Environment Minister. In 1995, she presides over the first UN Climate Conference in Berlin, which puts Germany at the forefront of the global movement to cut CO ₂ emissions.

"Greenhouse gas emissions do not only have to be stabilised, but have to be reduced as quickly as possible," Merkel wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung shortly before the conference started.

Frustrated during negotiations, she breaks down in tears, according to a biographer. After a renewed effort, an agreement is reached - one of her proudest moments. Merkel is also in charge of 1997 negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol, the first and only binding international climate protection treaty to date.

2005-2007 The making of the "Climate Chancellor"

Merkel is elected Chancellor in 2005 as head of a "grand coalition" government of CDU and rival Social Democratic Party ( SPD). In 2007, she hosts the World Economic Summit of the G8 industrialised countries. "I have been fighting for climate action for over ten years now and I consider it to be a tough struggle," Merkel said in an interview a few days before the G8 summit. Asked about the reservations of US President George W. Bush against a 2°C warming limit, she said: "You can be assured that I won't accept trusted scientific findings such as those by the IPCC to be watered down."

Eventually, she persuades G8 leaders to accept the science of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and gets them to agree to the necessity of binding CO ₂ reduction targets. Merkel also leads the EU to adopt emissions reduction targets. The German press dubs her the "Klimakanzlerin" (Climate Chancellor).

2009 Defeat in Copenhagen

Merkel has to accept defeat at the Copenhagen UN Climate Conference, where she lobbied hard to get countries to agree to a 25 percent cut in CO ₂ by 2020. 24 hours before the end of the summit, Merkel appeals to world leaders to find a solution: "If we go home and have to explain why we haven't accomplished anything, this will be good for those who don't want to fight climate change, who don't want to fight poverty, and who don't want to change their lives. That would be a terrible signal to all who want to secure a good future for the world in the 21 st century."

In the end, countries fail to agree to targets that could cap global warming at 2°C this century. Merkel says climate change can only be fought at a global level. "We all need to help each other, and we all have to be willing to change the way we live."

2010 Reversing the exit from nuclear

Merkel, now in a coalition with the business-friendly liberal party ( FDP), reverses the decision to phase out nuclear energy by 2021 - agreed by the SPD/Green coalition of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in the early 2000s. Environmentalists had fought against the technology for decades, and Merkel goes so far as to describe Schroeder's decision as "absolutely wrong." Merkel believes reconciling the shut-down with demands to reduce dependency on coal for electricity - in order to meet climate targets - would be problematic.

2011 Fukushima turns Merkel against nuclear

Only a few months after the final decision to extend the operation of nuclear plants, the Fukushima nuclear disaster pushes Merkel to one of the most spectacular u-turns in German politics. Within days of the accident in Japan, she announces her intention to quit the technology - the corresponding bill to shut all nuclear power stations by 2022 is passed with a huge majority in parliament in June. "Fukushima changed my attitude towards nuclear energy", Merkel said in parliament. Especially many international observers consider this final decision to phase out nuclear energy the real start of the Energiewende.

In the same year, Merkel's government passes a package of long-term policy goals committing Germany to making the Energiewende a success. With strong approval across all party lines, parliament agrees to the following 2050 targets: cut greenhouse gases by 80 to 95 percent, produce 60 percent of gross energy consumption with renewable sources, and halving total energy use.

2013 Merkel the automobile industry's chancellor

After five years of EU negotiations about CO ₂ emission standards for cars, negotiators from all member states agree on a compromise to toughen the rules. But in July 2013 Merkel intervenes at the last minute by calling the Irish EU Council President, asking him to take the subject off the agenda. A government spokesperson explains the "particularities of the German automobile industry had to be taken into account". This delays the process by another year, leading to watered-down rules. Parliamentary opposition and environment organisations are enraged by the Chancellor's decision, and media report other EU members complained about Merkel using "bullying tactics" to protect the German car industry.

2015 A "Climate Chancellor" after all?

Merkel makes climate and energy policy a major focus of Germany's G7 presidency. At the Petersberg Climate Dialogue in May, a preparatory meeting for Paris, Merkel says Germany will double its contribution to international climate financing by 2020. In 2009, industrialised nations agreed to mobilise $100 billion dollars (87 billion euros) annually by 2020 to help developing countries mitigate climate change and adapt to its effects. "We are aware that the industrialised nations as a whole will have to do more if we are to honour the pledge," Angela Merkel said with regard to other G7 members. At the G7 summit in Germany in June, she pushes G7 leaders to commit to the concept of "decarbonising" their economies by the end of the century - a move which meets much praise from environmental NGOs.

But her own government's commitment is questioned because of its failure to push for an end to Germany's dependence on coal, even so the use of highly polluting lignite for power production put Germany's target at risk to reduce emissions 40 percent by 2020 over 1990 levels. This struggle plays out over the details of the country's Climate Action Plan, aimed at getting stakeholders like the coal industry, to agree to measures that will put its climate targets within reach.

Merkel writes in an op-ed in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and The Times in June that getting countries to commit to CO2 limits at the Paris Summit in December "would take us closer to our goal of limiting the increase in global temperature to two degrees - which all the experts say is the only way to keep it within reasonable parameters."

Shortly before the summit, Greenpeace head Kumi Naidoo said in an interview there was absolutely no doubt Merkel had worked hard to make Paris a success - despite her domestic shortcomings. Jennifer Morgan, who is Global Director of the Climate Program at the World Resources Institute and has met Merkel, told the Clean Energy Wire the Chancellor had a deeper knowledge of climate issues than any other head of state. Morgan believes Merkel's nickname "Climate Chancellor" is definitely justified from an international perspective: "I have no doubt that she understands the science and what's at stake."
All texts created by the Clean Energy Wire are available under a "Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY 4.0)". They can be copied, shared and made publicly accessible by users so long as they give appropriate credit , provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made .

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The making of "Climate Chancellor" Angela Merkel

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Merkel grows up in East Germany, the daughter of a protestant pastor. In 1973 she follows her passion for science and studies physics at the University of Leipzig. Afterwards, she is a researcher at the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry at the Academy of Sciences in Berlin, earning her doctorate in 1986.

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1994: Merkel is the German Environmental Minister
1997: Merkel was involved in the creation of the Kyoto Protocol

Has been quoted saying climate change action, specifically reducing carbon emissions, is a "sound investment".

"The faster industrialized countries cut their emissions, the more willing other countries will be to do their bit".

- Madeleine

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Angela Merkel is the German chancellor, and she is a driving politician in the movement to combat climate change. She was one of the key leaders present when the Kyoto Protocol was hammered out in 1997. The Kyoto Protocol is an international treaty that sets a framework for the global reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

In Germany, Merkel's environmental leadership is inspiring. She began her leadership for the country as its environment minister in 1994, and since then Germany has become a leader in renewable energy and emission reductions. Germany's energy policy includes lofty goals like phasing out nuclear power by 2022, cutting greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050, and having 80% of energy used come from renewable sources.

And under Merkel's leadership, it might just happen. Hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the energy sector have been created, contributing to a healthier economy and developments in the energy field.

Merkel knows that it is up to industrialized nations to lead the charge when it comes to cutting global emissions and slowing global warming. "The faster industrialized countries cut their emissions, the more willing other countries will be to do their bit," she said, according to the Guardian. "An intelligent and fair regulation of CO2 reductions is in everyone's best interests."

She also realizes that the damage caused by global warming will be far greater than the cost of preventing it. "The costs of reducing emissions should be seen as a sound investment," she said. "Unabated climate change will slash prosperity by between 5% and 25%. Rigorous climate protection will cost only 1% of this prosperity and makes economic sense."

We just wish other world leaders would follow her example and put more force behind green measures. Because if we don't get our act together soon, it may be too late.

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Angela Merkel is the German chancellor, and she is a driving politician in the movement to combat climate change. She was one of the key leaders present when the Kyoto Protocol was hammered out in 1997. The Kyoto Protocol is an international treaty that sets a framework for the global reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

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NatGeo article commends Germany's renewable energy strategies

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NatGeo article commends Germany's renewable energy strategies

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- Madeleine

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This story appears in the November 2015 issue of National Geographic magazine.

Hamburg knew the bombs were coming, and so the prisoners of war and forced laborers had just half a year to build the giant flak bunker. By July 1943 it was finished. A windowless cube of reinforced concrete, with seven-foot-thick walls and an even thicker roof, it towered like a medieval castle above a park near the Elbe River. The guns protruding from its four turrets would sweep Allied bombers from the sky, the Nazis promised, while tens of thousands of citizens sheltered safely behind its impenetrable walls.

Coming in at night from the North Sea just weeks after the bunker was finished, British bombers steered for the spire of St. Nikolai in the center of the city. They dropped clouds of metallic foil strips to throw off German radar and flak gunners. Targeting crowded residential neighborhoods, the bombers ignited an unquenchable firestorm that destroyed half of Hamburg and killed more than 34,000 people. Towering walls of fire created winds so strong that people were blown into the flames. Church bells clanged furiously.

The spire of St. Nikolai, which somehow survived, stands today as a mahnmal- a memorial reminding Germany of the hell brought by the Nazis. The flak bunker is another mahnmal. But now it has a new meaning: An urban development agency (IBA Hamburg) and the municipal utility (Hamburg Energie) have transformed it from a powerful reminder of Germany's shameful past into a hopeful vision for the future.

In the central space of the bunker, where people once cowered through the firestorm, a six-story, 528,000-gallon hot water tank delivers heat and hot water to some 800 homes in the neighborhood. The water is warmed by burning gas from sewage treatment, by waste heat from a nearby factory, and by solar panels that now cover the roof of the bunker, supported by struts angling from the old gun turrets. The bunker also converts sunlight into electricity; a scaffolding of photovoltaic (PV) panels on its south facade feeds enough juice into the grid to supply a thousand homes. On the north parapet, from which the flak gunners once watched flames rising from the city center, an outdoor café offers a view of the changed skyline. It's dotted with 17 wind turbines now.

What makes Germany so important, however, is the question of whether it can lead the retreat from fossil fuels.

Germany is pioneering an epochal transformation it calls the energiewende- an energy revolution that scientists say all nations must one day complete if a climate disaster is to be averted. Among large industrial nations, Germany is a leader. Last year about 27 percent of its electricity came from renewable sources such as wind and solar power, three times what it got a decade ago and more than twice what the United States gets today. The change accelerated after the 2011 meltdown at Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant, which led Chancellor Angela Merkel to declare that Germany would shut all 17 of its own reactors by 2022. Nine have been switched off so far, and renewables have more than picked up the slack.

What makes Germany so important to the world, however, is the question of whether it can lead the retreat from fossil fuels. By later this century, scientists say, planet-warming carbon emissions must fall to virtually zero. Germany, the world's fourth largest economy, has promised some of the most aggressive emission cuts-by 2020, a 40 percent cut from 1990 levels, and by 2050, at least 80 percent.

The fate of those promises hangs in the balance right now. The German revolution has come from the grass roots: Individual citizens and energy genossenschaften- local citizens associations-have made half the investment in renewables. But conventional utilities, which didn't see the revolution coming, are pressuring Merkel's government to slow things down. The country still gets far more electricity from coal than from renewables. And the energiewende has an even longer way to go in the transportation and heating sectors, which together emit more carbon dioxide (CO₂) than power plants.

German politicians sometimes compare the energiewende to the Apollo moon landing. But that feat took less than a decade, and most Americans just watched it on TV. The energiewende will take much longer and will involve every single German-more than 1.5 million of them, nearly 2 percent of the population, are selling electricity to the grid right now. "It's a project for a generation; it's going to take till 2040 or 2050, and it's hard," said Gerd Rosenkranz, a former journalist at Der Spiegel who's now an analyst at Agora Energiewende, a Berlin think tank. "It's making electricity more expensive for individual consumers. And still, if you ask people in a poll, Do you want the energiewende? then 90 percent say yes."

Why? I wondered as I traveled in Germany last spring. Why is the energy future happening here, in a country that was a bombed-out wasteland 70 years ago? And could it happen everywhere?

The Germans have an origin myth: It says they came from the dark and impenetrable heart of the forest. It dates back to the Roman historian Tacitus, who wrote about the Teutonic hordes who massacred Roman legions, and it was embellished by German Romantics in the 19th century. Through the upheavals of the 20th century, according to ethnographer Albrecht Lehmann, the myth remained a stable source of German identity. The forest became the place where Germans go to restore their souls-a habit that predisposed them to care about the environment.

So in the late 1970s, when fossil fuel emissions were blamed for killing German forests with acid rain, the outrage was nationwide. The oil embargo of 1973 had already made Germans, who have very little oil and gas of their own, think about energy. The threat of waldsterben, or forest death, made them think harder.

Government and utilities were pushing nuclear power-but many Germans were pushing back. This was new for them. In the decades after World War II, with a ruined country to rebuild, there had been little appetite for questioning authority or the past. But by the 1970s, the rebuilding was complete, and a new generation was beginning to question the one that had started and lost the war. "There's a certain rebelliousness that's a result of the Second World War," a 50-something man named Josef Pesch told me. "You don't blindly accept authority."

Pesch was sitting in a mountaintop restaurant in the Black Forest outside Freiburg. In a snowy clearing just uphill stood two 320-foot-tall wind turbines funded by 521 citizen investors recruited by Pesch-but we weren't talking about the turbines yet. With an engineer named Dieter Seifried, we were talking about the nuclear reactor that never got built, near the village of Wyhl, 20 miles away on the Rhine River.

The state government had insisted that the reactor had to be built or the lights would go out in Freiburg. But beginning in 1975, local farmers and students occupied the site. In protests that lasted nearly a decade, they forced the government to abandon its plans. It was the first time a nuclear reactor had been stopped in Germany.

The lights didn't go out, and Freiburg became a solar city. Its branch of the Fraunhofer Institute is a world leader in solar research. Its Solar Settlement, designed by local architect Rolf Disch, who'd been active in the Wyhl protests, includes 50 houses that all produce more energy than they consume. "Wyhl was the starting point," Seifried said. In 1980 an institute that Seifried co-founded published a study called Energiewende- giving a name to a movement that hadn't even been born yet.

It wasn't born of a single fight. But opposition to nuclear power, at a time when few people were talking about climate change, was clearly a decisive factor. I had come to Germany thinking the Germans were foolish to abandon a carbon-free energy source that, until Fukushima, produced a quarter of their electricity. I came away thinking there would have been no energiewende at all without antinuclear sentiment-the fear of meltdown is a much more powerful and immediate motive than the fear of slowly rising temperatures and seas.

All over Germany I heard the same story. From Disch, sitting in his own cylindrical house, which rotates to follow the sun like a sunflower. From Rosenkranz in Berlin, who back in 1980 left physics graduate school for months to occupy the site of a proposed nuclear waste repository. From Luise Neumann-Cosel, who occupied the same site two decades later-and who is now leading a citizens' initiative to buy the Berlin electric grid. And from Wendelin Einsiedler, a Bavarian dairy farmer who has helped transform his village into a green dynamo.

All of them said Germany had to get off nuclear power and fossil fuels at the same time. "You can't drive out the devil with Beelzebub," explained Hans-Josef Fell, a prominent Green Party politician. "Both have to go." At the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin, energy researcher Volker Quaschning put it this way: "Nuclear power affects me personally. Climate change affects my kids. That's the difference."

If you ask why antinuclear sentiment has been so much more consequential in Germany than, say, across the Rhine in France, which still gets 75 percent of its electricity from nukes, you end up back at the war. It left Germany a divided country, the front along which two nuclear superpowers faced off. Demonstrators in the 1970s and '80s were protesting not just nuclear reactors but plans to deploy American nuclear missiles in West Germany. The two didn't seem separable. When the German Green Party was founded in 1980, pacifism and opposition to nuclear power were both central tenets.

In 1983 the first Green representatives made it into the Bundestag, the national parliament, and started injecting green ideas into the political mainstream. When the Soviet reactor at Chernobyl exploded in 1986, the left-leaning Social Democrats (SPD), one of Germany's two major parties, was converted to the antinuclear cause. Even though Chernobyl was hundreds of miles away, its radioactive cloud passed over Germany, and parents were urged to keep their children inside. It's still not always safe to eat mushrooms or wild boar from the Black Forest, Pesch said. Chernobyl was a watershed.

But it took Fukushima, 25 years later, to convince Merkel and her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) that all nuclear reactors should be switched off by 2022. By then the boom of renewable energy was in full swing. And a law that Hans-Josef Fell had helped create back in 2000 was the main reason.

Fell's house in Hammelburg, the town in northern Bavaria where he was born and raised, is easy to spot among all the pale postwar stucco: It's the one built of dark larch wood, with a grass roof. On the south side, facing the backyard, the grass is partially covered by photovoltaic and solar hot water panels. When there's not enough sun to produce electricity or heat, a cogenerator in the basement burns sunflower or rapeseed oil to produce both. On the March morning when I visited, the wood interior of the house was bathed in sunlight and warmth from the conservatory. In a few weeks, Fell said, wildflowers would be blooming on the roof.

A tall man in jeans and Birkenstocks, with a bald, egg-shaped head and a fringe of gray beard, Fell has moments of sounding like a preacher-but he's no green ascetic. A shed in his backyard, next to the swimming pond, houses a sauna, powered by the same green electricity that powers his house and his car. "The environmental movement's biggest mistake has been to say, 'Do less. Tighten your belts. Consume less,' " Fell said. "People associate that with a lower quality of life. 'Do things differently, with cheap, renewable electricity'-that's the message."

From Fell's garden, on a clear day, you used to be able to see the white steam plumes of the nuclear reactor at Grafenrheinfeld. His father, the conservative mayor of Hammelburg, supported nuclear power and the local military base. Young Fell demonstrated at Grafenrheinfeld and went to court to refuse military service. Years later, after his father had retired, Fell was elected to the Hammelburg city council.

It was 1990, the year Germany was officially reunified-and while the country was preoccupied with that monumental task, a bill boosting the energiewende made its way through the Bundestag without much public notice. Just two pages long, it enshrined a crucial principle: Producers of renewable electricity had the right to feed into the grid, and utilities had to pay them a "feed-in tariff." Wind turbines began to sprout in the windy north.

But Fell, who was installing PV panels on his roof in Hammelburg, realized that the new law would never lead to a countrywide boom: It paid people to produce energy, but not enough. In 1993 he got the city council to pass an ordinance obliging the municipal utility to guarantee any renewable energy producer a price that more than covered costs. Fell promptly organized an association of local investors to build a 15-kilowatt solar power plant-tiny by today's standards, but the association was one of the first of its kind. Now there are hundreds in Germany.

In 1998 Fell rode a Green wave and his success in Hammelburg into the Bundestag. The Greens formed a governing coalition with the SPD. Fell teamed up with Hermann Scheer, a prominent SPD advocate of solar energy, to craft a law that in 2000 took the Hammelburg experiment nationwide and has since been imitated around the world. Its feed-in tariffs were guaranteed for 20 years, and they paid well.

"My basic principle," Fell said, "was the payment had to be so high that investors could make a profit. We live in a market economy, after all. It's logical."

Fell was about the only German I met who claimed not to have been surprised at the boom his logic unleashed. "That it would be possible to this extent-I didn't believe that then," said dairy farmer Wendelin Einsiedler. Outside his sunroom, which overlooks the Alps, nine wind turbines turned lazily on the ridge behind the cow pen. The smell of manure drifted in. Einsiedler had started his personal energiewende in the 1990s with a single turbine and a methane-producing manure fermenter. He and his brother Ignaz, also a dairy farmer, burned the methane in a 28-kilowatt cogenerator, generating heat and electricity for their farms. "There was no question of making money," Einsiedler said. "It was idealism."

But after the renewable energy law took effect in 2000, the Einsiedlers expanded. Today they have five fermenters, which process corn silage as well as manure from eight dairy farms, and they pipe the resulting biogas three miles to the village of Wildpoldsried. There it's burned in cogenerators to heat all the public buildings, an industrial park, and 130 homes. "It's a wonderful principle, and it saves an unbelievable amount of CO₂," said Mayor Arno Zengerle.

The biogas, the solar panels that cover many roofs, and especially the wind turbines allow Wildpoldsried to produce nearly five times as much electricity as it consumes. Einsiedler manages the turbines, and he's had little trouble recruiting investors. Thirty people invested in the first one; 94 jumped on the next. "These are their wind turbines," Einsiedler said. Wind turbines are a dramatic and sometimes controversial addition to the German landscape-"asparagification," opponents call it-but when people have a financial stake in the asparagus, Einsiedler said, their attitude changes.

It wasn't hard to persuade farmers and homeowners to put solar panels on their roofs; the feed-in tariff, which paid them 50 cents a kilowatt-hour when it started in 2000, was a good deal. At the peak of the boom, in 2012, 7.6 gigawatts of PV panels were installed in Germany in a single year-the equivalent, when the sun is shining, of seven nuclear plants. A German solar-panel industry blossomed, until it was undercut by lower-cost manufacturers in China-which took the boom worldwide.

Fell's law, then, helped drive down the cost of solar and wind, making them competitive in many regions with fossil fuels. One sign of that: Germany's tariff for large new solar facilities has fallen from 50 euro cents a kilowatt-hour to less than 10. "We've created a completely new situation in 15 years-that's the huge success of the renewable energy law," Fell said.

Germans paid for this success not through taxes but through a renewable-energy surcharge on their electricity bills. This year the surcharge is 6.17 euro cents per kilowatt-hour, which for the average customer amounts to about 18 euros a month-a hardship for some, Rosenkranz told me, but not for the average German worker. The German economy as a whole devotes about as much of its gross national product to electricity as it did in 1991.

In the 2013 elections Fell lost his seat in the Bundestag, a victim of internal Green Party politics. He's back in Hammelburg now, but he doesn't have to look at the steam plumes from Grafenrheinfeld: Last June the reactor became the latest to be switched off. No one, not even the industry, thinks nuclear is coming back in Germany. Coal is another story.

Germany got 44 percent of its electricity from coal last year-18 percent from hard coal, which is mostly imported, and about 26 percent from lignite, or brown coal. The use of hard coal has declined substantially over the past two decades, but not the use of lignite. That's a major reason Germany isn't on track to meet its own greenhouse gas emissions target for 2020.

Germany is the world's leading producer of lignite. It emits even more CO₂ than hard coal, but it's the cheapest fossil fuel-cheaper than hard coal, which is cheaper than natural gas. Ideally, to reduce emissions, Germany should replace lignite with gas. But as renewables have flooded the grid, something else has happened: On the wholesale market where contracts to deliver electricity are bought and sold, the price of electricity has plummeted, such that gas-fired power plants and sometimes even plants burning hard coal are priced out of the market. Old lignite-fired power plants are rattling along at full steam, 24/7, while modern gas-fired plants with half the emissions are standing idle.

"Of course we have to find a track to get rid of our coal-it's very obvious," said Jochen Flasbarth, state secretary in the environment ministry. "But it's quite difficult. We are not a very resource-rich country, and the one resource we have is lignite."

Curtailing its use is made harder by the fact that Germany's big utilities have been losing money lately-because of the energiewende, they say; because of their failure to adapt to the energiewende, say their critics. E.ON, the largest utility, which owns Grafenrheinfeld and many other plants, declared a loss of more than three billion euros last year.

"The utilities in Germany had one strategy," Flasbarth said, "and that was to defend their track-nuclear plus fossil. They didn't have a strategy B." Having missed the energiewende train as it left the station, they're now chasing it. E.ON is splitting into two companies, one devoted to coal, gas, and nuclear, the other to renewables. The CEO, once a critic of the energiewende, is going with the renewables.

Vattenfall, a Swedish state-owned company that's another one of Germany's four big utilities, is attempting a similar evolution. "We're a role model for the energiewende," spokesperson Lutz Wiese said cheerfully as he greeted me at Welzow-Süd-an open-pit mine on the Polish border that produces 22 million tons of lignite a year. In a trench that covers 11 square miles and is more than 300 feet deep, 13 gargantuan digging machines work in synchrony-moving the trench through the landscape, exposing and removing the lignite seam, and dumping the overburden behind them so the land can be replanted. In one recultivated area there's a small experimental vineyard. On the same rebuilt hill stands a memorial to Wolkenberg, a village consumed by the mine in the 1990s. Boulders mark the spots where the church and other buildings once stood.

It was a gorgeous spring day; from Wolkenberg, the only cloud we could see was the lazily billowing steam plume from the 1.6-gigawatt power plant at Schwarze Pumpe, which burns most of the lignite mined at Welzow-Süd. In a conference room, Olaf Adermann, asset manager for Vattenfall's lignite operations, explained that Vattenfall and other utilities had never expected renewables to take off so fast. Even with the looming shutdown of more nuclear reactors, Germany has too much generating capacity.

"We have to face some kind of a market cleaning," Adermann said. But lignite shouldn't be the one to go, he insisted: It's the "reliable and flexible partner" when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing. Adermann, who's from the region and worked for its lignite mines before they belonged to Vattenfall, sees them continuing to 2050-and maybe beyond.

Vattenfall, however, plans to sell its lignite business, if it can find a buyer, so it can focus on renewables. It's investing billions of euros in two new offshore wind parks in the North Sea-because there's more wind offshore than on and because a large corporation needs a large project to pay its overhead. "We can't do onshore in Germany," Wiese said. "It's too small."

Vattenfall isn't alone: The renewables boom has moved into the North and Baltic Seas and, increasingly, into the hands of the utilities. Merkel's government has encouraged the shift, capping construction of solar and onshore wind and changing the rules in ways that shut out citizens associations. Last year the amount of new solar fell to around 1.9 gigawatts, a quarter of the 2012 peak. Critics say the government is helping big utilities at the expense of the citizens' movement that launched the energiewende.

At the end of April, Vattenfall formally inaugurated its first German North Sea wind park, an 80-turbine project called DanTysk that lies some 50 miles offshore. The ceremony in a Hamburg ballroom was a happy occasion for the city of Munich too. Its municipal utility, Stadtwerke München, owns 49 percent of the project. As a result Munich now produces enough renewable electricity to supply its households, subway, and tram lines. By 2025 it plans to meet all of its demand with renewables.

In part because it has retained a lot of heavy industry, Germany has some of the highest per capita carbon emissions in western Europe. (They're a bit more than half of U.S. emissions.) Its goal for 2020 is to cut them by 40 percent from 1990 levels. As of last year, it had achieved 27 percent. The European carbon-trading system, in which governments issue tradable emissions permits to polluters, hasn't been much help so far. There are too many permits in circulation, and they're so cheap that industry has little incentive to cut emissions.

Though Germany isn't on track to meet its own goal for 2020, it's ahead of the European Union's schedule. It could have left things there-and many in Merkel's CDU wanted her to do just that. Instead, she and Economics Minister Sigmar Gabriel, head of the SPD, reaffirmed their 40 percent commitment last fall.

They haven't proved they can meet it, however. Last spring Gabriel proposed a special emissions levy on old, inefficient coal plants; he soon had 15,000 miners and power plant workers, encouraged by their employers, demonstrating outside his ministry. In July the government backed down. Instead of taxing the utilities, it said it would pay them to shut down a few coal plants-achieving only half the planned emissions savings. For the energiewende to succeed, Germany will have to do much more.

It will have to get off gasoline and diesel too. The transportation sector produces about 17 percent of Germany's emissions. Like the utilities, its famous carmakers-Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Volkswagen, and Audi-were late to the energiewende. But today they're offering more than two dozen models of electric cars. The government's goal is to have a million electric cars on the road by 2020; so far there are about 40,000. The basic problem is that the cars are still too expensive for most Germans, and the government hasn't offered serious incentives to buy them-it hasn't done for transportation what Fell's law did for electricity.

Much the same is true of buildings, whose heating systems emit 30 percent of Germany's greenhouse gases. Rolf Disch in Freiburg is one of many architects who have built houses and buildings that consume almost no net energy or produce a surplus. But Germany is not putting up many new buildings. "The strategy has always been to modernize old buildings in such a way that they use almost no energy and cover what they do use with renewables," said Matthias Sandrock, a researcher at the Hamburg Institute. "That's the strategy, but it's not working. A lot is being done, but not enough."

All over Germany, old buildings are being wrapped in six inches of foam insulation and refitted with modern windows. Low-interest loans from the bank that helped rebuild the war-torn west with Marshall Plan funds pay for many projects. Just one percent of the stock is being renovated every year, though. For all buildings to be nearly climate neutral by 2050-the official goal-the rate would need to double at least. Once, Sandrock said, the government floated the idea of requiring homeowners to renovate. The public outcry shot that trial balloon down.

They knew the energiewende was never going to be a walk in the forest, and yet they set out on it. What can we learn from them?

"After Fukushima, for a short time there was aufbruchstimmung- for about half a year there was a real euphoria," said Gerd Rosenkranz. Aufbruchstimmung means something like "the joy of departure"; it's what a German feels when he's setting out on a long hike, say, in the company of friends. With all the parties in Germany in agreement, Rosenkranz said, the energiewende felt like that. But the feeling hasn't lasted. Economic interests are clashing now. Some Germans say it might take another catastrophe like Fukushima to catalyze a fresh burst of progress. "The mood is bad," Rosenkranz said.

But here's the thing about the Germans: They knew the energiewende was never going to be a walk in the forest, and yet they set out on it. What can we learn from them? We can't transplant their desire to reject nuclear power. We can't appropriate their experience of two great nation-changing projects-rebuilding their country when it seemed impossible, 70 years ago, and reunifying their country when it seemed forever divided, 25 years ago. But we can be inspired to think that the energiewende might be possible for other countries too.

In a recent essay William Nordhaus, a Yale economist who has spent decades studying the problem of addressing climate change, identified what he considers its essence: free riders. Because it's a global problem, and doing something is costly, every country has an incentive to do nothing and hope that others will act. While most countries have been free riders, Germany has behaved differently: It has ridden out ahead. And in so doing, it has made the journey easier for the rest of us.

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Germany Has Some Revolutionary Ideas, and They're Working

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This story appears in the November 2015 issue of National Geographic magazine. Hamburg knew the bombs were coming, and so the prisoners of war and forced laborers had just half a year to build the giant flak bunker. By July 1943 it was finished.

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Current commitment on an international level

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Current commitment on an international level

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-Benjamin

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International Commitment to Climate Change 

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International Commitment to Climate Change 

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Bilateral partnerships through technical and economic assistance ongoing:

Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Cameroon, Colombia, Costa Rica, Côte d'Ivoire, Dem. Rep of Congo, Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Ghana, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgystan, Laos, Mexico, Nepal, Peru, Phillipines, Senegal, Serbia, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Uganda, Ukraine, Vietnam, Zambia
-Benjamin

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Germany's commitment to Climate Change is derived from a three-prong approach:

1) An amibitious national climate change target and policy
2) Creating and supporting international efforts to support developing countries combat Climate Change
3) Continuing and leading international dialogue on the issue.
-Benjamin

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Angela Merkel is waiting for her specially selected team of expert consultants to provide her with some input for the upcoming climate negotiations... ;-)

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Angela Merkel is waiting for her specially selected team of expert consultants to provide her with some input for the upcoming climate negotiations... ;-)