Conclusion: riding the green tiger
Is there a fast track? This is the question driving this chapter. Posing it is somewhat
cheeky without asking the prior question: is the green transformation possible?
The German Advisory Council for Global Change (WBGU) and its research staff
have addressed this very question in some depth and gives a categorical answer:
the technological potential for comprehensive decarbonisation is available .
. . and the policy instruments needed for a climate-friendly transformation
are widely known. Now it is foremost a political task to overcome the barriers of
such a transformation, and to accelerate the change.
(WBGU, 2011, p1; emphasis added)
This is precisely the starting point for this concluding chapter and indeed the entire
book.
In this chapter I have tried to decompose the fast-track question and distil some
of the insights that can be derived from the literature and experiences on the ground.
What I have not done is ask what it means to investigate the politics of acceleration and at what level of abstraction? One approach would be to test the reality
of those insights for those countries that have made the biggest progress. Take the
case of Germany. There is a transformative alliance, but who has the convening
power? Is Angela Merkel riding the green tiger? This is very relevant for the fasttrack issue and a cartoonist’s dream, but how real is it?
The answer is that Angela Merkel is far too clever to pose as the queen of lowcarbon prosperity. As a former research scientist (physics and chemistry) she
understands and accepts the arguments of climate and earth scientists. As a politician,
however, she knows that accelerating the pace may require working – at particular
moments – with those who do not accept that case (recall transitional arrangements).
And it requires taking advantage of opportunities when they arise. Within days of
the Fukushima disaster she put her foot on the accelerator (recall Geels’s windows
of opportunity due to change in the landscape). And acceleration happened because
the legislation was in place and because thousands of small investors and hundreds
of municipalities responded to a policy designed for them (recall Lockwood’s
argument on the knock-on effects of policies – see Chapter 6). More recently,
Merkel found that she had to put the brake on because too much renewable energy
is being generated and the cost to consumer and taxpayer is very transparent –
while the cost of fossil-fuel energy is not (Luetkenhorst and Pegels, 2014).
4 Her
new economics and energy minister (leader of the Social Democratic party) is now
in charge of administering the slow-down. The green tiger is in a cage – for now.
The battle is on for when it will be let out again and in what shape. Leaner and
meaner? The key point is that this battle is now taking place on an economic and
political platform which is more advanced and very different from five or even
three years ago (recall the earlier point which emphasizes trial and error, and uses
the metaphor of climbing a tree by swinging upwards from branch to branch –
with the occasional fall).
Green transformation: is there a fast track? 181
Is there a fast track? This is the question driving this chapter. Posing it is somewhat
cheeky without asking the prior question: is the green transformation possible?
The German Advisory Council for Global Change (WBGU) and its research staff
have addressed this very question in some depth and gives a categorical answer:
the technological potential for comprehensive decarbonisation is available .
. . and the policy instruments needed for a climate-friendly transformation
are widely known. Now it is foremost a political task to overcome the barriers of
such a transformation, and to accelerate the change.
(WBGU, 2011, p1; emphasis added)
This is precisely the starting point for this concluding chapter and indeed the entire
book.
In this chapter I have tried to decompose the fast-track question and distil some
of the insights that can be derived from the literature and experiences on the ground.
What I have not done is ask what it means to investigate the politics of acceleration and at what level of abstraction? One approach would be to test the reality
of those insights for those countries that have made the biggest progress. Take the
case of Germany. There is a transformative alliance, but who has the convening
power? Is Angela Merkel riding the green tiger? This is very relevant for the fasttrack issue and a cartoonist’s dream, but how real is it?
The answer is that Angela Merkel is far too clever to pose as the queen of lowcarbon prosperity. As a former research scientist (physics and chemistry) she
understands and accepts the arguments of climate and earth scientists. As a politician,
however, she knows that accelerating the pace may require working – at particular
moments – with those who do not accept that case (recall transitional arrangements).
And it requires taking advantage of opportunities when they arise. Within days of
the Fukushima disaster she put her foot on the accelerator (recall Geels’s windows
of opportunity due to change in the landscape). And acceleration happened because
the legislation was in place and because thousands of small investors and hundreds
of municipalities responded to a policy designed for them (recall Lockwood’s
argument on the knock-on effects of policies – see Chapter 6). More recently,
Merkel found that she had to put the brake on because too much renewable energy
is being generated and the cost to consumer and taxpayer is very transparent –
while the cost of fossil-fuel energy is not (Luetkenhorst and Pegels, 2014).
4 Her
new economics and energy minister (leader of the Social Democratic party) is now
in charge of administering the slow-down. The green tiger is in a cage – for now.
The battle is on for when it will be let out again and in what shape. Leaner and
meaner? The key point is that this battle is now taking place on an economic and
political platform which is more advanced and very different from five or even
three years ago (recall the earlier point which emphasizes trial and error, and uses
the metaphor of climbing a tree by swinging upwards from branch to branch –
with the occasional fall).
Green transformation: is there a fast track? 181