AfD condemns CO2 tax hike for ‘imaginary climate protection’

“Again, an imaginary ‘climate protection’ against a recently so-called, dramatically exaggerated ‘climate crisis’ must serve to drastically increase the burden on citizens through taxes and charges,” said the environmental spokesman for the AfD parliamentary group, Karsten Hilse.

FDP chief Christian Lindner also criticized the plans of the federal government. Germany is building a “gigantic redistribution apparatus that is now becoming even more expensive for people,” Lindner wrote on Twitter.

Representatives of the federal and state governments have agreed in the climate committee’s mediation committee on an entry-level price of 25 euros per ton of CO2 from 2021. The original version of the Emissions Trading Act provided for an initial taxation of ten euros. By 2025, the CO2 price should rise steadily to 55 euros.

From 2026, a minimum price of 55 euros and a maximum price of 65 euros per emission certificate is planned. The Union and SPD have thus accommodated the Greens, who did not want to agree to an increased commuter fee without a higher CO2 price, reported the dpa news agency.

With the additional income from the higher CO2 price, the Federal Government wants to lower the EEG surcharge and promote the expansion of renewable energies and green electricity. The EEG surcharge covers the difference between the wholesale market price for power on the electricity exchange and the higher fixed remuneration rate for renewable energies. It is paid by consumers with their power bill.

For the commuter package, which will apply from the 21st kilometer, an additional increase from five to eight cents per kilometer is planned from 2024. The lower value added tax on train tickets, which will be reduced from 19 to seven percent, should apply from 2020.

Hilse sees no advantages in the innovations in the climate package. Energy consumption would become more expensive in every area of life. This would bring the “Minister of Finance another” billion, since “VAT also benefits from this taxation”. On the other hand, the announced reliefs are “not worth the paper on which they were written”.

The AfD wants to “resist, in every conceivable legal way,” asserted Hilse.

Green Party leader Robert Habeck, on the other hand, was pleased about an “important intermediate step that was achieved”. His co-chair Annalena Baerbock wrote on Twitter: “Now the CO2 price starts at the level of emissions trading and is increasing faster.”

The managing director of the Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation Germany (BUND), Antje von Broock, judged the 25 euros as “by no means sufficient” in her response. “An entry price of 50 euros would be offered, which would have to rise to 180 to 200 euros.” The Fridays For Future movement estimated on their Twitter account a CO2 price, which “reflects the real costs of pollution”, to “at least 180 Euros per ton ”.

The Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig (SPD, Mecklenburg-West Pomerania), Stephan Weil (SPD, Lower Saxony), Volker Bouffier (CDU, Hesse), Markus Söder (CSU, Bavaria), Armin Laschet (CDU, NRW) participated in the meeting in the mediation committee. and Winfried Kretschmann (Greens, Baden-Württemberg).

Federal Minister of Finance Olaf Scholz (SPD), Chancellor-in-Office Helge Braun (CDU) and Chairman of the Greens, Anton Hofreiter, took part on the federal side. The Bundestag and Bundesrat must resolve the remaining parts of the climate package soon so that the reduction in VAT on the railways can take effect in good time.

Environmental protection is a good thing – but without hysterical students, panicked politics and unscientific horror scenarios of the IPCC, evolutionary biologist Ulrich Kutschera told Berlin weekly Junge Freiheit, because most “climate protectors” do not even understand the importance of carbon dioxide.

While some maintain that almost all scientists – 97 to 99 percent – agree that climate change is man-made, Kutschera opposes it. “This is a myth: 97 percent was born in 2013 by the Australian cognitive scientist John Cook and 99 percent in 2016 by the US geologist James Powell. However, it turned out that the statements are unsustainable, as demonstrated by David R. Legates and co-workers in Science et Education, Vol. 24, 2015, and Andrew Skuce on www.skepticalscience.com from April 12, 2016,” he said.

According to Kutschera Cook and Powell evaluated an arbitrary number of climate publications according to questionable criteria and even interpreted studies positively, in which their question was not answered clearly. At best, it can be concluded from these analyzes that a low global warming of around 0.8 degrees Celsius has been measured since 1900 and that human influence is very likely. “I agree with this thesis of an increase in air temperature, after the end of the Little Ice Age,” he said.

At a meeting of experts in Berlin in September, Kutschera co-signed the European Climate Declaration, according to which there is no climate emergency.

He explained that he did so because extreme notions on climate should be avoided: “Both the ‘climate alarmists’ who predict a fictitious, soon-to-be ‘earth heat death’ and practice a kind of religious cult, as well as the so-called ‘climate deniers’ who see no environmental problems at all.”

He pointed out that a pseudo-scientific plant esotericism aimed against CO2 has been spreading in Germany. “As stated in my book, plants are our ‘living solar power plants and greenhouse gas disposal companies’. The so-called green stuff is therefore at the center of every rational climate debate. So since plants need CO2 as a staple food, there would be no life on earth without this trace gas.”

The German biologist Julius Sachs (1832 to 1897) is world-famous as the founder of plant physiology. In 1865 he demonstrated that green plants in the light are only able to release our life-sustaining air-oxygen by adding CO2.

“Therefore, the scientific discipline plant physiology is of central importance and CO2 is a blessing for mankind! Since around 1850, the CO2 content has increased from 0.028 percent by volume of air (280 ppm) to 0.041 percent by volume (410 ppm). This has led to an increase in global photosynthesis – the earth has become greener through us humans!”

But because the climate debate is a political issue, “it is dominated by the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, also called the World Climate Council, in which unfortunately not only scientists, but also politicians and media people are active.”

According to Kutschera, the scientific findings that contradict the “dogmas” of the IPCC are fought in a backhanded way. “As a visiting scientist at Stanford, I could tell you amazing things.”

The evolutionary biologist and physiologist, pointed out that in order to be able to assess the significance of the CO2 that humans bring into the atmosphere, it is essential to understand the so-called terrestrial carbon cycle.

Kutschera explained that plants absorb CO2 using the Rubisco enzyme and then they “exhale” the trace gas again through cell and soil breathing.

“This natural carbon cycle is changed by the additional anthropogenic CO2 in such a way that about a third of the CO2 we release into the air is currently consumed by the plants, which increases their growth. Consequence: greening of the earth by humans, including higher crop yields – from which, incidentally, agriculture benefits worldwide – in particular poor countries, which depend to a much greater extent on agricultural products than we do.”

The problem is that unfortunately, this light-driven global photosynthesis is not enough to bind “extra anthro” CO2. “Therefore, in-depth research into photosynthesis with the aim of a technical application of this sun-driven process for CO2-neutral energy generation would be very important,” the scientist added.

Instead, we have been debating climate models and predictions from IPCC scientists. “By omitting the enormous fluctuations since around 1800, it creates a false picture of reality.”

He said that the activists in the “Fridays for Future” movement are neither able to define the term “climate” nor understand the carbon cycle or the function of the Rubisco enzyme and are therefore acting purely politically. He called followers an “irrational climate cult”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday held his annual end-of-year news conference during which he answered questions from the media.

He cast doubt on the man-made origins of global warming, saying “nobody knows the origins of global climate change”.

“We know that in the history of our Earth there have been periods of warming and cooling and it could depend on processes in the universe,” Putin said. “A small angle in the axis in the rotation of the Earth or its orbit around the Sun could push the planet into serious climate changes.”