CO2 emissions on a three-degree course: Flatten the curve!

It is a strange analogy, but in the pandemic as in climate protection, the Chancellor's phrase applies: It's simply not enough. And by far. One does not have to be an alarmist, just a realist, to take the latest figures from the UN Climate Program as the ultimate call to finally act now, for real this time. "Enough with the pettiness," the Chancellor demanded from her ministers in the summer of 2019 regarding climate protection. That still applies: Because the so-called emission gap is enormous. Without drastic cuts, the world is on course for a warming of over three degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times.

"That means a catastrophe," commented UN Secretary-General António Guterres dryly. And he promptly added a warning: With the economic recovery, emissions are also on the rise again. "In some places, even above pre-Covid levels."

As with tackling the Corona crisis, symptoms are being treated for a long time here and attempts are being made to counteract them with quasi "homeopathic" remedies. These "remedies" represent the previous climate protection commitments of the states, which the report summarizes and extrapolates what they would bring for CO2 reduction by 2050. Sobering result: 3.2 degrees of warming. Dear leaders of states, that's a "six" in school grades, in the literal sense of "inadequate," and please urgently improve your efforts!

We need to, as EU Climate Commissioner Frans Timmermans completely rightly demanded, rethink mobility in Europe "systematically." Away from "gradual" change and towards a "fundamental transformation" of the transport sector.

In other words: Enough with the pettiness! Bring on the effective vaccine against the planetary fever! And it has long existed. Numerous ones, even!

And these remedies have long been approved. But not everyone uses them. "Anti-vaxxers" or "efficacy doubters" are also numerous on the climate issue. But the fact is: In the Paris Agreement, adherence to the 1.5-degree target, at least below two degrees, was promised. The world is currently far from that.

The Corona pandemic did cause a noticeable, albeit extremely short, dip. The lockdown of the world lowered the temperature by a mere 0.01 percent.

Before the pandemic, the GHG emission levels of all greenhouse gases had been rising for three years, most recently by 1.1 percent in 2019 to 52.4 gigatons, with the lion's share being CO2. If you also add the carbon stores in the form of forests destroyed by many fires or deforestation, you end up with 59.1 gigatons of GHG in the atmosphere.

Using the Corona crisis for "green transformation"

It would be all the more important to use the "restart" of the economy for green transformation. This is one of the few glimmers of hope: Many states want to support this process with "green recovery programs," using one crisis as an opportunity for the other. The UN calculates that if all these measures were consistently aimed at climate protection, emission reduction, and last but not least, clean mobility, the "world as we knew it" could at least be approximately saved.

Specifically: Then GHG emissions could be reduced to 44 gigatons by 2030. Still far from the 1.5-degree target, which is practically already obsolete. But: A stop of warming at two degrees would at least be within reach. "A green recovery from the crisis could significantly reduce emissions," said the hopeful head of the UN Environment Program Inger Andersen. Good thing the EU leaders are currently meeting.

Old reflex: We can no longer afford climate protection

Of course, there are also political currents or rather reflexes in Germany, preferably from the neoliberal and "conservative" camp, arguing that climate protection can no longer be afforded now, and that the economy needs to recover first. Others, so-called "lateral thinkers," even deny the problem itself, both in the pandemic and in the climate. This is completely wrong thinking and arises from an anachronistic logic that the world can no longer, no, actually never could, afford. Both must go hand in hand. Finally.

The Federal Republic, of all places, under former Environment Minister Angela Merkel, had every chance during her many years of chancellorship to set an example of green transformation for an industrial nation through consistent transport and energy transition, and would have, I bet, created at least as many jobs as would have been lost in old industries. Yet many things have been slowed down, debated to death, and torn apart by retarding resistance, much like the early scientifically recommended tough Corona decisions by the prime ministers' conference.

Currently, the world is in climate protection as the Republic is in the pandemic: It was foreseeable but acted too late. Now, as in both cases, it's only about flattening the curve somehow quickly: Flatten the curve!

In climate matters, one also risks "exponential growth," for example, through reinforcing effects of glacier melt, permafrost thawing, or forest loss. To once again use the almost iconic phrase of the Chancellor from the Corona crisis: The situation is serious. Take it seriously! Nothing more can be added to that regarding climate protection.