By Stefan Schilde
“Yes to the Berlin 2030 climate-neutral referendum!” says the postcards that fluttered into many Berlin mailboxes on Tuesday. And further: “It is possible! More than 100 cities in Europe are showing us how it’s done.” But is that really true?
The sender is “Klimaneustart Berlin”, which also initiated the referendum. What is meant is: According to the European Union (EU), 100 European cities are taking part in an EU mission. It aims to radically reduce CO2 emissions and become climate-neutral by 2030. This is recorded in “Climate City Contracts”.
The German cities of Mannheim, Munich, Frankfurt/Main, Leipzig, Dortmund, Dresden, Münster, Aachen and Heidelberg are also among the participants.
BZ took a closer look at the examples. Do the initiators of the referendum want to trick the voters? The facts:
► Only a few German participants (Aachen, Mannheim, Münster) want to become completely climate-neutral by 2030. Until 2030, most of them are concerned at best with their city administration. The remaining CO2 polluters will only be gotten under control later, in the case of Leipzig, Dresden and Heidelberg even not until 2040!
► Elsewhere, city politicians decided on concepts, guidelines, master plans. There is no climate protection law like in Berlin (since 2021) anywhere!
► The concepts always talk about “goals” that one would like to “achieve”. This is exactly what the current Berlin Climate Protection Act says! However, this is not enough for the referendums: They want “obligations” instead of “goals” – with the possibility of punishing “breaches of duty”! A novelty!
► The climate city contracts between participating cities and the EU are by no means legally binding.
► In addition, Munich, which wants to become climate-neutral by 2035, is the only metropolis among the supposed pioneers. The comparatively small Aachen with its 249,000 inhabitants has to do significantly less than the 3.7 million metropolis of Berlin.
