“SPD needs to come out on climate protection”

A coalition of German NGOs has called on the SPD’s frontrunner for this year’s federal election to explicitly endorse Germany’s climate protection targets, the environmental organisation WWF has said in a press release. The NGOs say the decision by the SPD-led federal state of Brandenburg to abandon its 2030 climate targets was a “climate policy backward roll”, and amounted to “a risk for all of Germany to meet its targets”. WWF Germany Director Jörg-Andreas Krüger said Germany “puts its credibility and sustainability on the line”, and might as well leave the Paris Agreement if Brandenburg, and also the CDU-led federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia, pull through with their plans to reduce climate protection efforts. “We demand a clear commitment to the Paris Agreement and the national climate targets by chancellor candidate Martin Schulz,” said Sascha Müller-Kraenner, head of Environmental Action Germany (DUH).

Find the press release in German here, and an open letter to Schulz by the organisations here.