Habeck at Munich Security Conference: More solidarity needed for fighting global warming

(dpa) At the Munich Security Conference, German Economy Minister Robert Habeck called on Friday, February 17, 2023,  for greater cooperation in the fight against global warming.

Moral reasons alone were insufficient to win this battle, he said.

“Climate protection will only be successful if it is in the economic interest of states,” he said in a roundtable discussion highlighting the role of geopolitics in ecological change.

Habeck pleaded for more common rules to strengthen trust so that the law of the jungle would not apply internationally.

The industrialized nations need to realize that there is a cost involved in the path toward working together and that profits can no longer be made at the expense of others.

The Earth has already warmed by about 1.1 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times. In Germany this figure is 1.6 degrees. The fatal consequences are, depending on the region, more weather extremes such as droughts and floods as well as storms and rising sea levels.

Risks of crop failure also increase, often fuelling simmering conflicts in poor countries and migration. Experts have therefore long considered faster global warming to be a major threat to peace and security.