With a view to the new special report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which will be presented on Monday, Federal Environment Minister Svenja Schulze (SPD) and Federal Development Minister Gerd Müller (CSU) have called for more global cooperation on climate protection.

"In the next ten years it will be decided whether we will manage to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees," said Schulze of the Rheinische Post.

For global climate protection it is no longer enough "that large industrialized countries take the lead".

At the next UN climate conference in Glasgow in November, it will be important to get as many countries as possible on board for joint climate protection.

The re-entry of the USA into the Paris climate protection agreement under President Joe Biden had "created a new dynamic".

Now the goal is "that this dynamic encompasses everyone worldwide".

"No doubt about man-made climate change"

Development Minister Müller emphasized in the newspapers of the Funke media group on Monday that 92 percent of CO2 emissions take place outside the EU.

That is why the EU must significantly expand its “Green Deal” climate protection program.

"We need a global green deal," said Müller, "with huge private investments to expand renewable energies as well as technology transfers and an investment offensive by industrialized countries in emerging and developing countries."

Hundreds of new coal-fired power plants are being built or planned around the world.

“We couldn't save this additional CO2 at all in the EU,” said Müller.

If these “climate killers” all went online, then “we will never achieve the Paris goals”, he warned.

The status reports of the IPCC are considered to be groundbreaking for global climate policy.

The first part of the new report, which will be published on Monday, covers the scientific basis of climate change.

The background to this is the question of how the goal of the Paris Agreement can still be achieved, namely to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees if possible, but at least well below two degrees.

Integrate the federal government more closely

According to Schulze, the new report “clearly” states: “There is no longer any doubt about man-made climate change.” The report also makes “unmistakably clear that we have to be prepared for more and more extreme weather events in Germany,” she told the newspaper. 

She therefore called for the federal government to be more closely involved in measures to adapt to climate change.

So far, states and municipalities are responsible for protection against floods and droughts.

Schulze wants to turn it into a joint task and change the Basic Law for it.

In order to accelerate climate protection efforts in Germany, “the blockades must come to an end” in the new federal government after the federal election in September, she demanded.

Specifically, she accused Federal Economics Minister Peter Altmaier (CDU) as well as the Union-led state governments of North Rhine-Westphalia and Bavaria with a "delaying policy" in the energy transition.

Baden-Württemberg's Prime Minister Winfried Kretschmann (Greens) has not yet triggered a “wind energy boom”, she criticized.

The climate protection activist Luisa Neubauer demanded in the newspapers of the editorial network Germany (RND) on Monday a "renegotiation" of the election programs of the parties.

"They all have to be compatible with the 1.5 degree limit," she said.

Germany is one of the “main culprits” of the climate crisis, but the “majority of the parties do not have a comprehensive answer to the severity of the situation”.

According to the RND, their hopes for a political turnaround after the presentation of the IPCC report are cautious.

She criticized that none of the previous climate reports had been able to dissuade the government from “heading towards a climate catastrophe”.