Environmentalist radicalism defeated in Germany, here are the results of the referendum
The referendum in Berlin to bring forward climate neutrality from 2045 to 2030 failed due to failure to reach the quorum. All the consequences for German politics in the article by Pierluigi Mennitti from Berlin
The referendum proposed by ecological acronyms which asked to bring forward by 15 years, from 2045 to 2030, the achievement of the goal of a climate-neutral city failed in Berlin due to failure to reach the quorum. According to data provided by the electoral office, there were 442,210 yes votes, while the quorum to be reached was 607,518 votes in favor (equal to a quarter of those entitled to vote, which were 2,430,072). More than 150,000 votes were missing, not a few.
Unlike what happens in Italy, the quorum required for the referendum to be valid was not that of exceeding 50% of voters: it was necessary for the promoters to be able to mobilize a quarter of the citizen electorate for the yes. This has not happened.
DATA ON THE REFERENDUM
And even when counting only the votes cast, things did not go well for the ecologists: the supporters of the referendum obtained a narrow majority of 50.9 percent, while 423,418 Berliners voted against (48.7%). A surprising figure since the experts expected that, among those who would go to vote, the great majority would express themselves in favor, and that those against would, on the contrary, aim only to increase the field of no votes.
And instead, net of agnostics and undecided, adding up the opponents who went to the polls in any case to those who instead chose the option of not voting, it is clear that the great majority of Berliners did not approve of the idea of accelerating the necessary measures to achieve the climate neutrality goal set for 2045.
The overall turnout was 35.8%. An interesting fact is provided by the city's geography of the referendum vote. Among those who voted, yes prevailed in central districts, from Kreuzberg-Prenzlauer Berg to Mitte, from Tempelhof-Schöneberg to Neukölln to Charlottenburg, while no won in all peripheral ones. But in the latter case not only in the more problematic ones but also in the richest and most affluent neighborhoods. The referendum vote thus largely followed the administrative vote of last month, when in the face of the clear victory of the conservatives of the Cdu, the districts of the city center had seen a prevalence of the vote for the Greens . It is a dichotomy, that between the center and the peripheries, which recalls that of many other European metropolises, even if in Berlin, the prevalence of no even in the wealthy neighborhoods contradicts a narrative based on social and income differences.
UNREALISTIC EMISSIONS GOALS?
In order to introduce the measures necessary to bring forward by 15 years the achievement of the climate-neutral city goal, the city government would have had to modify the energy law of the Land, accelerating a series of transformations whose costs, according to the first electoral data analysts , they scared the citizens.
Furthermore, according to many experts, the objectives indicated by the referendum were utopian and not achievable in reality. An opinion expressed, for example, by researchers at the Institute for Climate Studies of the University of Potsdam, the capital of Brandenburg near Berlin, who had defined the objective proposed by the referendaries as "unrealistic", despite having nevertheless launched an appeal the yes, justified with the desire to keep up the pressure on the political world for climate issues. And even the centre-left government (SPD, Verdi, Linke), currently still in office for current affairs awaiting the formation of the new one that emerged from last February's administrative elections, had judged the objective of the referendum unrealizable.
THE COMMENT OF THE NZZ
In a sea of indignant journalistic comments, a first critical assessment of the vote comes from the Neue Zürcher Zeitung ( Nzz ), the German-speaking Swiss newspaper, for which in the end "Berlin is a crazy but not crazy city", and the result is also "a warning to the national government, and above all to the Greens". Because, argues the Nzz bluntly, "those who intend to make climate policy with a crowbar are doomed to fail". If a referendum of this kind is already defeated in an "alternative" city like Berlin, let alone in the rest of Germany.
The Zurich daily does the math of how much this race to bring forward the climate neutrality goal by 15 years would have cost. “The first piece of good news concerns households, both public and private,” he writes, “life in Berlin, once the cheapest metropolis in Germany, has long become expensive, especially where housing is concerned. With the decision on the climate, the latter would have become inaccessible for many”.
Hundreds of thousands of residential properties needed to be supplied with renewable energy in just seven years, and all public buildings needed to be refurbished to make them more energy efficient. An enormous and concentrated effort in a period in which Germany and Berlin in particular are experiencing a historic shortage of craftsmen.
“It's not that the majority of people in Germany don't care about climate change,” concludes the Neue Zürcher Zeitung , “but they also take other issues seriously, such as their own prosperity, individual mobility, internal security. Whoever endangers all this for climate radicalism will lose the citizens first, then the elections.
THE ACCUSATION AGAINST SCHOLZ AND THE GREENS
A second warning to the federal government, after the electoral one, came from the report drawn up by the council of climate scientists, established in 2019 by the previous executive at the time of the approval of the climate protection law. Experts accuse Olaf Scholz and his ministers (presumably especially the green ones) of "big gaps in climate policy" such as the absence of the strategies necessary to achieve the goals set. “On the bumpy road to climate neutrality, Germany is currently at a loss”, warns Sabine Schlacke, co-chair of the Scientific Platform for Climate Protection (Wpks), “the consequence is an ominous loss of faith in German climate policy on the part of companies, associations and civil society".
However, the first reactions coming from the environment of ecological movement do not seem to take these observations into account. Stefan Zimmer, co-promoter of the failed referendum and spokesman for the "Klima-Neustart" group announces that the battle will continue, claims that many Berliners did not understand what was at stake and that ultimately it is not a matter of establishing who won or lost, “because climate change threatens everyone”. The leader of the German section of the Fridays for Future movement, Luisa Neubauer, instead accused "dark forces of the city" who are firing the last shots against climate defence. But from the movements no self-criticism.
Among the political forces, however, the declarations of the two parties committed to forming the new city government stand out. For the CDU, the result is positive because it "says no to false promises". The SPD, while satisfied, nonetheless declares that it is committed to achieving the objective that failed with the referendum "as soon as possible". CDU and SPD are negotiating to form a new government in Berlin under the leadership of Christian Democrat Kai Wegner.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/germania-fallimento-referendum-neutralita-climatica/ on Mon, 27 Mar 2023 11:03:15 +0000.