We may miss Green Tech Boom: Germany
Europe must seize the “enormous economic opportunities” offered by the Green Technology Boom, Germany said on Wednesday – adding that it was up to the United States if it decided to miss.
Since the return to the White House, the government of President Donald Trump has withdrawn the United States for the second time from the Landmark Paris agreement and promised to concentrate heavily on the extraction of fossil fuels.
The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said at a climate conference in Berlin that he “deeply regretted” the United States and left the Paris climate agreement and emphasized the “enormous” economic opportunities it was missing.
“The worldwide market for climate -friendly important technologies continues to grow rapidly,” Scholz told Petersberg’s climate dialogue.
He said that investments in the global energy transition had surpassed the $ 2 trillion marking, which “corresponds to the volume of the entire global oil trade today”.
The host of the meeting, Minister of Foreign Affairs Analena Baerbock, said that the economic data contradicted the “old prejudice” that investing in climate protection was “priceless”.
“We all know that there are currently spoilers in the world who want to prevent” larger climate investments, she told the first major meeting of the year with regard to the COP30 top that took place in Brazil in November.
Baerbock added that “today climate protection and economic growth no longer contradict each other”.
“Climate protection opens enormous economic opportunities, and we as Europeans want to seize them,” she added.
Europe mainly wants to work with “companies and countries in Latin -America, Africa and other regions around the world,” said Baerbock.
“If others, such as the United States, decide to stay outside, that is their decision.”
– ‘innovative economies’ –
Secretary-General Antonio Guterres of the United Nations repeated Baerbock’s message and told the Berlin meeting in a virtual address that “renewable energy sources are renewing”.
“They feed, create jobs, lower energy bills and cleaning our air. And every day they become an even smarter investment.”
Baerbock also greeted a recent agreement in Germany as a “historical” to channel an additional 100 billion euros ($ 107 billion) to climate measures.
Her greens, who are ready to leave the government after having done it badly in the February elections, rubbed the concession of other political parties in exchange for the agreement with supporting plans for more defense and infrastructure expenditure.
EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra meanwhile warned that the world lived in “huge difficult times”.
“We are literally confronted with problems from every direction – and clearly also in the domain of climate action,” he told the meeting.
In addition to the United States who withdraw from the cooperation between climate, there have also been worries that the issue is pushed the global agenda for national security and economic pressure.
“But there is no alternative,” Hoekstra emphasized. “Humanity has no alternative and can’t wait.
