If this year’s German election can be ground down to a nutshell it is this: climate change is the central challenge facing mankind, we need either 1) more state intervention to ensure that resources are centrally directly towards low-carbon solutions, or 2) less state intervention to ensure that businesses and entrepreneurs can invest their money in the type of innovations that are going to get us out of this mess.
The premise itself is never questioned. Favour a state-led solution? Then vote Social Democrat or Green. Believe the market has the answers? Vote CDU or FDP.
Egged on by Fridays for Future activists who have gone on hunger strike in front of the Chancellery, the political class are convinced that talking about the weather is the zeitgeist issue to motivate voters to the polls on Sunday.
On the one hand, this isn’t so surprising.
After the last national election in 2017 - one dominated by migration, domestic security and Europe - the Gods threw us three swelteringly hot summers…
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