If you know Germany you know that it's pretty common, almost 'common sense', to claim that Germany is doing better than other countries re: climate & environment.
Journalist here calls it an "undisputed climate leader"
Specifically, the discourses here are no. 5 "All talk, little action" (AKA targetism), drawing attention (often presumed) achievements relative to other countries (rather than relative to the goal) and to future targets (rather than concrete achievements)
...and no. 3 "the free rider excuse", hinting that other countries are not willing to do their bit (so why should we try *even harder*)?
- or the day when German journalists will stop saying "we're *undisputed* climate *leaders*, but what can we do, we can't do everything *alone*!" (like here ⬇️)
"We've committed to stop bragging about our presumed superiority on environmental matters by 2050"
Anyway I'm sure that day will become before the phaseout of combustion engine vehicle sales because... the German government is adamantly refusing to set a date for that
#ClimateTwitter we need to talk about percentages and denominators.
Depending on what you divide it by, any measure bringing about carbon emission reductions can be made to look ridiculously small, or huge.
Good to be aware of these things [THREAD]
For illustrative purposes, let's take this measure I've been tweeting about lately: introducing a generalised 130km/h motorway speed limit in Germany (where there isn't any) would cut annual emissions by 1.9MTCO2e.
Opponents of #tempolimit in Germany argue that the resulting emission savings (2MTCO2e) are too small to matter.
In fact, they would help deliver *almost half* of the transport emission reductions (-5MTCO2e) promised in the government own emission budget for *this year*