THE GND IS TOO CAUTIOUS:

The impetus ultimately came from Germany Constitutional Court. In late April, the court ruled that the Paris climate agreement's commitment to limiting the global temperature increase to below 2 degrees Celsius amounted to a legal obligation to the next generation. Ignoring that obligation, the court found, would amount to depriving future generations their most fundamental right: freedom.

"Two weeks ago, I didn't think it would be possible that I would be sitting here," said a visibly overwhelmed Environment Minister Svenja Schulze of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) following the cabinet's decision. On the day of the high court ruling, Schulze had instructed her ministry to write a new version of the climate protection law. By 2030, greenhouse gas emissions are now to fall by 65 percent relative to 1990 levels, 10 percentage points more than previously agreed. By 2040, they are to fall by 88 percent and be at net zero five years after that.

The industrial sector, energy companies and consumers now face a major challenge. Can they meet it? Will there be social conflict? If the incoming government fails to find an affordable path into the new age of sustainability, not only could the economy suffer irreparable damage, so too could democracy. The question as to who will bear the burden of climate change will determine the battles over political distribution in the coming years.

In the best-case scenario, the climate protection act will become the biggest modernization program since the postwar period and secure prosperity for future generations. "Many political actors probably don't fully understand the ramifications of the task ahead," says Felix Matthes, research coordinator in the Berlin office of the Öko Institut, an environmental research institute.

According to his calculations, Germany has an emissions budget of 6.1 billion tons of CO2 left. If things continue as they are now, there will hardly be anything left for the years after 2030. For this reason, more needs to be saved sooner. "The technologies for change are available," Matthes believes. In a study for the Climate Neutrality Foundation, he and his research team calculated the path Germany must take to achieve its targets.

The most important instrument is the price of CO2 emissions. The more expensive it is, the greater the incentive becomes to cut them. Matthes, though, believes that won't be enough and argues that more incentivizing instruments are required to drive the shift to sustainable technologies. "Now it's a matter of cleverly combining the mechanisms," Matthes says, "as quickly as possible but also in a way that doesn't leave anybody behind." The engineer was commissioned by the German government to calculate what burdens would emerge for citizens and how these can be fairly distributed. Three areas stand out that affect everyone in the country.

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