After APECs confirmation of what had increasingly seemed inevitable – that the Copenhagen summit wouldn’t be the major breakthrough it was heralded to be – the chances of swift and effective action on climate change seem to have faded. But Europe has not been the leader on this issue its rhetoric would suggest. And the German example exemplifies this trend.

First, take Angela Merkel: she likes to point to Germany’s record as a leader on environmental technology and climate change policy; indeed, climate change featured prominently in her speech to the US Congress. Yet, at the same time Merkel seemed to constitute the major block against concrete EU-pledges of financial aid for climate change adaptation to developing countries at the EU summit at the end of October; and that even though the head of the German federal environmental agency (Bundesumweltamts) argues that Germany will need to spend €5 billion a year in adaptation funding to developing countries.

Another telling sign of ambiguity was her stance about attending the Copenhagen summit in person. Faced with opinion polls that show 90 percent of Germans in favour of her attending the summit, Merkel first announced she was going to attend the summit, only to have her press spokesman relativise this statement the next day, stating Merkel would only attend the summit if there were ‘chances for a significant breakthrough‘. As of this morning Merkel was once again set to attend the summit. A good sign, surely, but a week of changes to her decision can hardly be seen as a sign of unwavering commitment and belief.

The ambiguity about how much a priority climate change should be politically does not stop with Merkel. Dirk Niebel, development minister and member of the CDU’s liberal coalition partner FDP, drew widespread criticism by suggesting as early as last week that he thought a binding agreement at Copenhagen was unlikely to materialise – and placing any possible blame for this on large transitional economies like India, Brazil and Mexico. In retrospect Niebel’s perception of likely failure has been realistic, but statements like this always have a certain quality of political self-fulfillment. It certainly did not help Norbert Röttgen’s dramatic rhetorical attempts to convince other countries and the German public that ‘failure in Copenhagen is not an option‘. A new government always needs some time to speak with a unified voice and define priorities. But given the danger of outright failure in Copenhagen, Germany has certainly not played the proactive role that it could have. But it is definitely not alone in this failure.

Angela Merkel’s CDU (with their Bavarian sidekicks, the CSU) and the free-market FDP – the main winner of Germany’s federal elections – will form the next governing coalition. This is almost certainly bad news for German climate change policy – both domestically and on the international stage – but the policy setbacks in this area will arguably be more limited than what the FDP would prefer. Looking at international negotiations and energy policy as examples will show why.

1) International negotiations

Within the Grand Coalition that governed Germany for the past 4 years, Germany’s stance at international negotiations was never a hotly contested political terrain, for several reasons. Because Germany started important environmental measures earlier than other countries (and cleverly pushed for CO² emission-reduction targets to be based on 1990, before the heavily eastern German industry was mostly shut down) being progressive in contrast to international negotiating partners was never particularly hard, because it did not necessitate painful domestic policy measures. While this is changing to an extent, Germany, and indeed Europe, are not the crucial barriers to a post-Kyoto. And Angela Merkel, a former environment minister and early believer in the science behind climate change is unlikely to give up control over negotiations to an extent that would endanger a progressive German position.

Nevertheless, another danger is more real. Sigmar Gabriel (SPD), German’s environment minister had four years in which to build relationships with other negotiators and governments, get a feeling for the limits of other countries’ room for political maneouvre and learn the tricks of the trade. Given the lack of high-profile candidates in the area of environmental and climate change policy within the FDP and CDU/CSU, Gabriel successor will almost certainly struggle to make a similar impression. And, in addition, she or he will only have had three weeks at the most to get their head into an issue that is among the most complicated and tricky of any ever attempted to be dealt with by international negotiations.

2) Energy policy

While it is fair to say that climate change policy did not feature in the run-up to the federal elections at all, this is not true for energy policy. A long string of lies about nuclear energy was masterfully publicised by SPD environment minister Sigmar Gabriel. They included cover-ups about leaks in the site of Germany’s proposed site for the long-term storage of nuclear energy, high costs for cleaning up an alternative site borne by the tax-payer, the existance (and subsequent denial of this fact) of a strategy paper commissioned by an energy major and outlining communication strategies to promote nuclear energy in the election campaign (conclusion: keep quiet and point out nuclear energy’s green credentials). In addition to further accidents in a notorious north-German nuclear power plant and the emotive nature of many Germans’ thinking about nuclear energy made the CDU/CSUs and FDPs election pledge of ‘exiting-the-exit’ of nuclear energy (Ausstieg vom Ausstieg) one of the few clear dividing lines in an otherwise uneventful election campaign.

The high percentage of Germans who want to exit nuclear energy doesn’t seem to have helped the SPD very much. Nor is there a clear-cut impact of nuclear policy on climate change. Nuclear energy is clean (with regards to CO² emissions), and not extending the life of nuclear power plants would almost certainly have meant building more coal powered ones, even at the breakneck speed of German renewables growth. While there is a valid argument that being able to keep written-off nuclear plants running will decrease the pressure for large energy companies to invest in renewables, this would have been equally true for investment in coal that is already happening. If the new government sticks to the CDUs election pledges of not building new nuclear and taxing nuclear providers half the extra profits they make from extending their lifetime to invest this money in renewable energy, then this may not actually be bad news for preventing climate change. Yet this is doubtful. The traditional energy companies are not friends of renewables, and their deep pockets and lobbying prowess may mean they will push further, for government-subsidised new nuclear power stations and reductions in funding for renewables. If the market knows best, skepticism may prevail. On Monday morning after the election the shares of EON and RWE jumped, while those of renewable technology producers fell sharply…

In the uncertain time when noone is quite sure whether their governments, politicians and parties will be more or less Obama-esque in their approach to solving climate change in a severe economic downturn. So a look back at some of the past months’ highlights in German climate change policy over the past few months:

1) Poznan, 0,5/1: No comment about the overall progress of a post-kyoto agreement, but Germany was not notable for heroic leading from the front. A subdued performance.

2) EU Climate agreement: 1,5/3) Germany agreed to auction all permits for emissions from energy production, kudos. But on permits for energy-intensive industry politicians faltered to industry pressure, and the renegotiation and eventual relaxation of the timeline for reducing fleet emissions a clear sign that there are worries about the German car industry.

3) The fiscal stimulus package: 1/3) Closer at home, last month’s fiscal stimulus package disappointed those that had hoped for a green new deal. Among others, the Green party is dissatisfied with the environmental aspects of the package, and, because of Germany’s finely balanced political landscape is now in a position to block the package’s passage through parliament by virtue of membership in Hamburg’s unique black-green coalitio, and threatening to do so.

Their grievances centre on a new CO² based car tax regime, after a first draft would have halved tax for the most polluting SUVs. With last minute changes the new regime will not change existing rates much, with exceptions for Diesel cars, with the Greens want to remove from the bill.

The second ‘green’ measure in the package is the ‘wrecking bonus’ paid to buyers of new cars when they’re old car is taken out of circulation instead of sold on. Either by design, or (more likely) unintentionally, the bonus has worked like a charm, but not, as hoped, by stimulating buyers to buy German cars (because those that can afford to will normally sell their car on for more of the bonus they would be paid for destrying it), but to import cheap, fuel-efficient cars, the biggest gainer being the Peugeout 307.

In general, the package contains little tageted investment for green measures. Construction work that will be done will conform to high environmental standards, and renovating public buildings will make the more energy efficient, but within the design of the package this seems more incidental, than at the forefront of politicians’ thinking.

4) Umweltgesetzbuch. 0/1?) On the surface, this seems like one of the awfully familiar spats between SPD and CSU about a piece of legislation. But beyond the bickering, this is more important, and an indication of the faultlines in the upcoming election campaign. The project to consolidate the byzantine mess of planning and environemntal regulation into one law, and therefore ensure that planning was as uncomplicated as possible, while making it easier to uphold environmental standards. In the last second, and after years of joined draftingbacked by Angela Merkel, the CSU pronounced it would not support the law without wide-raning changes essentually guaranteeing state autonomy on a wide range of policy, which was duly declined by Sigmar Gabriel, the environmet minister. The fact that the CSU chose to break with the SPD over this declared government intention, and the fact that Angela Merkel has so far declined to step in, the coming months might well show an increasig divergence on climate chane policy.

If one had been hoping for clear signs of progress a week-and-a-half into Poznan and on the eve of a European Council meeting, where an ambitious EU climate agenda should have been finalised, this has not been the best week. German enthusiasm for action on Climate Changed has not only waned with the onset of the financial crisis, but, more or less, disappeared completely.

In parliament last week, Angela Merkel reasserted the EU’s ambition to push for an international agreement on Climate Change. She also defended the ‘compromise’ on car emissions as reflecting the need to secure jobs as well as CO² reduction and climate change. Not only did the Greens heckle in response to this assessment, but since then different observers have questioned the purity of Ms Merkel’s intentions.

NGOs ‘Brot für die Welt’ and EED accused her of ‘forgetting about’ the EU action on Climate Change she had herself initiated. In a joint letter, Christian leaders from the UK, Germany and Sweden warned of neglecting action on Climate Change because of the financial crisis. And Klaus Töpfer, a prominent former environment minister and head of UNEP, warned that commitments to tackle Climate Change should be questioned by no-one, least of all Ms Merkel.

Leaders looking for answers

For the moment it seems that, barring a political miracle, the results of the EU Council meeting and Poznan will not meet the expectations of better times. Germany is likely to push for further exceptions to the auctioning of CO² permits for energy intensive industries, such as steelmaking, cement, and aluminium, leading to the Spiegel’s mourning Angela Merkel’s transformation from ‘Miss World’ to ‘Madame No’.

Not much space seems left for the argument Obama and an earlier Merkel have made, namely that action on Climate Change will create, rather than destroy jobs. Bärbel Höhn, the Greens’ environmental spokesperson does, saying that ‘Merkel makes a serious mistake in not seeing the economic potential of Climate Change, and endangers jobs and industries by serving short-term lobby interests.’ The recent German ‘transformation’ does not bode well for action on Climate Change, and that might turn out to be an economic, as well as an environmental, policy error.

Not precluding the results Poznan will have, there are warning signs that the global economic crisis has reduced the scope for the ambitious action that is needed to tackle Climate Change. A case in point is German policy these days, where the disjuncture between rhetoric and actions taken becomes harder to ignore.

Changing Direction in Germany? (Source: cgommel @ flickr)

With a declaration on Climate Change by Angela Merkel coming tomorrow, environmentalists warn that Germany has moved dangerously towards blocking progress in a time when action is sorely needed. Member-NGOs of Klima-Allianz following the events in Poznan conclude that the EU and Germany are close to losing their credibility in dealing with Climate Change: While the talks of Poznan are just starting, Germany is negotiating hard to try and soften up the impact of any EU agreement on coal-fired power stations, car-makers, and the most CO² -intensive industries. WWF and VDC (a transport NGO) warn that failure to take action on innovation and CO² reduction in transport will come to haunt Germany and Europe, who risk falling behind a possibly much more ambitious US-agenda on Climate Change. And while Sigmar Gabriel, the German environmental minister says that it would be unrealistic to expect something more concrete than the basic ‘architecture’ of a post-Kyoto framework from Poznan, the political signals coming from Germany these days sounds markedly less ambitious than they did just a few months ago.