When the German Greens minister and climate activist Robert Habeck announced on Sunday that the coal-fired power stations will run faster to compensate for missing Russian gas, there was no revolt from his party. No one shouted that Habeck was denying his principles. Well, there was a bit of criticism from the environmental movement Fridays for Future, but otherwise mostly understanding: it is war and nobody wants thousands of jobs lost because German industry is at a standstill.
Moreover, Habeck has explained it before: we can’t have everything, especially not now. In April, when a talk show host attacked him on his visit to gas producer and human rights abuser Qatar, the minister responded with a lesson that is how the world works. “What do our cars actually run on?” Habeck asked the host, Marcus Lanz. ‘Could it be that it contains oil from Saudi Arabia? Where’s the Marcus Lanz broadcast about how hypocritical we are for getting excited about Putin but driving around on Saudi oil? Let’s face it: we leave a trail of destruction over the earth with our daily lives. Whatever we do has consequences.†
Krass† Robert Habeck is vice chancellor, Greens politician and ‘super minister’ in the new and powerful Department of Economy and Climate Protection. He is the dream one macher of the intended German transition to a completely green economy, a task of historic proportions. But there he is, calmly explaining that we need more coal energy. With Marcus Lanz, he even defends the purchase of fossil fuels from a country with a dubious human rights history. And the voter? He loves it, according to the polls.
First rank
Habeck has been by far the most popular German politician for months now. Annalena Baerbock, Minister of Foreign Affairs and the other top politician of De Groenen, follows after him. She caused a furore with her fervent advocacy for Ukraine’s arming, an equally remarkable position for a leader of an originally pacifist no nukes-environmental party. Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) follows third, at a great distance. As a party, the Greens have now surpassed the SPD in the monthly ‘what would you vote now’ question from the most important German political pollster† With 25 percent of the vote, they are one percentage point behind leader CDU, and that gap is shrinking every month.
The Greens took office in the current government as idealistic sky stormers, the middle party in a coalition with the centre-right FDP, led by the social-democratic SPD. The coalition agreement was bursting with environmental ambitions: tens of billions of euros a year in investments in a comprehensive ecological and economic transformation, 2 percent of the land area earmarked for wind turbines, closure of coal-fired power stations brought forward from 2038 to 2030 and a climate neutral economy in 2045 instead. by 2050. “Probably the largest modernization project in Germany in more than a hundred years,” says Scholz.
But since Russia invaded Ukraine and plunged the European continent into a historic crisis, Germany also seems to be doing something else, so to speak. Habeck and Baerbock, however, make a virtue of necessity: they put De Groenen on the map as a mature governing party. It helps that both ministers are on the first rank. Baerbock, as Minister of Foreign Affairs, but even more so Habeck, with his powerful Ministry of Economy and Climate Protection.
After Scholz – or better: next to Scholz – Habeck is the one who has to navigate Germany through the crisis. His ministry must both green the economy, keep German industry going, and ensure that Russian gas continues to flow to Europe, and implement the sanctions, and protect employment, and issue export licenses for German weapon systems. “It’s as if all the great crises of the earth have agreed to report to Habeck’s ministry for processing,” the statement wrote Süddeutsche Zeitung in a profile of Habeck†
Openness
This creates dilemmas, and they offer a welcome opportunity to take citizens and voters along in what is happening in Germany. starting to stand out as a new management style: openness, also about your own doubts. Habeck likes to explain his policy in videos on Instagram. In doing so, the minister often bends forward and addresses the viewer as if he were a friend, with which – the metaphor is already appeared at several German media – Habeck has a good conversation while enjoying a beer: it’s not all that nice, but let’s make the best of it together. When Gazprom cut gas through the Nordstream pipeline to Germany by two-thirds last week, saying it was due to maintenance issues due to sanctions, Habeck explained the situation.
‘What Russia is saying isn’t right,’ Habeck started from his office, two jackets loosely on the back of his desk chair. In the four minutes that followed, he explained with casual hand gestures how a compressor in a pipeline works, what the maintenance cycle is, why it only becomes relevant in the fall and how he came to the conclusion that Russia is selling nonsense. ‘This is a political action; the technical reasons are a pretext’, according to the minister. “As we feared, Putin is gradually reducing gas supplies to Germany. We are prepared for it. We don’t have a supply problem, but it is getting more expensive.†
It functions. In the recent elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state with 18 million inhabitants, the Greens tripled their number of seats. They owe their election victory to votes from Germans who are concerned about the climate, maintain confidence through their transparent handling of dilemmas, and attract new voters now that they prove they can cope with major crises.
icarus
But communication skills alone are not enough. ‘Not every contradiction in society can be solved through dialectics’, warns weekly newspaper Die Zeit in a piece about the ‘uncanny’ success of De Groenen† In addition to the comparison with a friendly interlocutor in the pub, the German media have therefore devised another metaphor for Habeck: that of Icarus.
Baerbock and Habeck link clear language with decisiveness. As foreign minister, Baerbock appeared in Kyiv a month before Scholz did. She says unequivocally that Ukraine must win the war, while Chancellor Scholz restricts himself to saying that ‘Russia must not win the war’. Like a chess player, Habeck fends off one Russian attempt after another to bring Germany to its knees through energy restrictions. He placed Germany’s most important gas storage facility under receivership when its owner, a subsidiary of Gazprom, threatened to close it. He seeks other sources of energy, ensures that Germany can survive the winter and pledges independence from Russian gas by 2024†
It helps that the whole country, from politicians to voters, is still gripped by shock and horror at a large-scale land war on European soil. But the war in Ukraine is not yet won. And whether Germany will get through the Russian gas stop that has taken shape in recent days is still open to question. Once the voter has gotten over the initial shocks, they may well start to wonder when the end will finally be in sight. What if energy and fuel prices continue to rise, inflation is not curbed, industry starts to falter or gas shortages threaten despite all measures?
But for now, The Greens are flying close to the sun. And while Habeck won’t comment publicly, many at home and abroad are speculating that he hopes to run for the highest office in the next election in 2025.
When Scholz and Habeck addressed 1,500 managers of German water and energy companies in Berlin at the beginning of June, a German comedian praised the high level of the invited guests shortly after their performance. Olaf Scholz would have been nice today, said the comedian. And the chancellor too.