ABSTRACT

Germany has been a consistent advocate of binding international climate agreements, passed various rounds of legislation to curb CO2 emissions and reduced emissions to a considerably higher extent than many other countries. German industries have made more than ninety voluntary commitments concerning environmental and climate protection since the 1980s. This chapter focuses on the analysis of over thirty-five core publications of relevant climate change actors in civil society and among think tanks and government institutions; and of sixty relevant parliamentary debates on climate change. In the 1950s and 1960s, rapid construction and economic growth led to visible environmental pollution in Germany. Important impulses for German environmentalism thus came from the newly introduced American environmental policies and the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm. Triggered by the oil crises of 1973-74 and 1978-79, the idea of saving energy and using alternative energy sources gained popularity.