At yesterday’s opening sessions of the ongoing national party convention of the German Greens, the most radicalized proposals for a CO2 tax, for the final exit from diesel and gasoline auto engines, and several other items were not adopted due to interventions by the party executive, notably Green Chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock and party co-chair Robert Habeck. This was done to avoid extra new weak flanks exposing the party to attacks during the national election campaign.
However, the Green Party program is still radical enough to be characterized as incompatible with the needs and interests of a leading industrial nation like Germany: A CO2 tax of 60% by 2023 for each ton of carbon dioxide emissions, a final exit from gasoline/diesel-burning cars by 2030, a final exit from coal already by 2030 instead of 2035-2038. And the fact that hundreds of billions of euros would be poured into certificates trading under the EU Green Deal, instead of into industrial and infrastructure investments, is not contested by the Greens at all. The Greens also make the unconvincing attempt to make the financial burdens of the Green Deal “affordable” by the population, by hypocritically offering “energy pay” to citizens in the range of just €75-100 annually.
