Right-wing populist parties like the AfD torpedo multilateralism, of which the climate policy is alive. You will damage the world’s climate? And as environmentalists to go with the climate-deniers?
Karsten Hilse of the “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) is not a man of the swings, loud Talking, or with a cutting tone of voice to become the focus of attention, so how the leading minds of his party, Alice rye and Alexander Gauland, it likes to do. Not to mention the loudest climate change deniers among the global populists: U.S. President Donald Trump. As the climate policy spokesman of the right-wing populists in the Bundestag Hilse is, therefore, but not less radical.
His goal is that Germany leaves the Paris climate agreement the United Nations. At the UN climate change conference in Katowice, which begins this month. The remaining lignite plants in the new German länder, and will soon be closed, because they damage the climate. And he wants the German to stop, think about what you can do against human-induced climate change. For he says: Not man is to blame for the rising temperatures.
“Humanity is not to blame for climate change,” AfD Deputy Karsten Hilse
The 53-Year-old, according to the established political parties have in common with the media in an irrational environment-Religion is created, which forces the citizens to pay for imaginary climate-sins, and on the whole world. “In the public-service television is not a day on which the people are told that they are for the upcoming disaster, and that you have to pay that’s why good support for renewable energy goes,” says Hilse of the German wave. As he sees it, has become the climate change is a replacement Religion, and Karsten Hilse and his party are in this world, the rational, atheistic scouts. With his attempt to convince others of this view, is not challenging Hilse, only the politicians and the media, but also the science.
The logic of Copernicus
From the German Bundestag from the party headquarters of the party Alliance 90/The Greens in just a few minutes with the wheel. At the weekly press conference where the Co says-Chairman Anna Lena Baerbock, the skepticism of the AfD in the face of climate change is nothing more than a cynical questioning of science. “The AfD does not stand behind the freedom of Research in our country. You don’t accept that we will make in the entire environmental fields, including in the climate debate, scientific results have to be worn by all the scientists of this world, but you tried to make the science in question.”
Baerbocks statement is not entirely true: in fact, There are scientists who reject the concept of human-induced climate change, but they are few and not climate specialists. As the signatories to the “Oregon Petition” of 2007, in which some researchers doubted climate change, and is considered to be untrustworthy. The vast majority of experts in favour of the idea that humanity needs to change their way of life, to slow climate change. For Karsten Hilse of the AfD but science is “not a democracy”, in which “the majority” to decide. “Look at Copernicus, who said first that the earth is in the center of our solar system but the sun,” said Hilse. “How many percent of that, experts have said, ‘are You crazy?'”, he asks. “Science has nothing to do with democracy.” In fact, Hilses reasoning is flawed: is The theory of Copernicus was right because he was a better scientist than his detractors, not because you shouldn’t believe experts.
Useless agreement or useless Changes?
Although the right-wing populists against all the climate treaties, they argue that measures such as the Paris climate agreement have been declarations. You have with nationalists around the world have in common: Therefore, the US President announced the agreement in mid-2017.
“The AfD wants to put the science in question”. Green Party Leader Anna Lena Baerbock.
And the new nationalist authorities in Brazil want to have to do with climate protection. Also, the populist government of Italy does not consider a lot of the Paris Treaty.
The fact that even Germany is not expected to meet its own climate goals for 2020, for help is a sign of the weakness of this “non-binding agreement”. The conclusion of the AfD is therefore: Why join? For the Greens it is, however, a reason to move the German Federal government to operate more climate protection, instead of spending the energy on discussions with the AfD.
“The AfD would like to make this whole political debate is broken, so it brings nothing, with which to deal,” said Baerbock. “But we don’t have to pressurising the Federal government in front of us, with the unfortunately, at the time of the climate protection targets of Paris.”
New political fronts
Although the AfD is primarily an Anti-immigration party. You could stamp Hilse as a hapless individual fighters, whose twisted the world can be ignored point of view confidently. However, Hilse’s not alone within the AfD. Although the skepticism of the AfD has been observed at the climate change has so far had little, but they changed their approach to the rules of the game of politics. Hilse explains that he just wanted to represent alternative perspectives and “people can form an opinion”, but Baerbock sees it as something Threatening: a destruction of the democratic foundations of modern Ecology. And that would be a double win for the right wing: “In the FDP and Parts of the Union, is now said suddenly: Out of consideration for the AfD, we should not talk so much about the climate policy,” explains Baerbock of the German wave. “This is absolutely wrong. Thus, the right-wing populists on the glue.”
And the populism, the AfD contributes to the German climate policy has lost so much of Elan, is still further weakened.