In the context of the climate crisis before us, it is very important to bring the NEW into the world. But it is equally important to get rid of the OLD.
Take my home country Germany, for example. Thanks to a coalition between Social Democrats and Greens around the turn of the century, Germany has done pretty well at adopting renewable energy, which now is almost 40 percent of total electricity supply. But there was also some kind of tacit pact that left coal untouched, leaving Germany as still the biggest polluter in Europe, with almost all of the ten most-polluting power stations in the EU.
The result is overproduction, with our neighboring countries complaining because of all the excess electricity pushed into their grids (and this despite the fact that Germany phased out two thirds of nuclear capacity after Fukushima). This is why Germany cannot join the international alliance against coal and why it has turned from an international climate champion into an obstacle for greater ambition in Europe and in the global climate regime. And finally, coal has broken the “agreement”: each successive government since 2005 has worsened the conditions for renewables, bringing down new wind and solar installations as a fraction of new supply.
