An "Ecological New Deal" in Germany

by Kenny Ausubel

Tapping a pen on her unassuming desk in Hannover, environmental-activist-turned-politician Monika Griefahn - the new Minister of the Environment for the state of Lower Saxony - discusses her bold political agenda. "Following the great program of social reforms introduced by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt to overcome the worldwide depression in the thirties," she explains, "we suggest an 'Ecological Deal.' We have to make a new start instead of getting deeper and deeper into a situation from which there is no way out."

Griefahn observes that industrial society's high standard of living is also plagued by a poor quality of life due to pollution and environmental degradation. Her Ecological Deal aims to reverse this situation.

If Griefahn is right, markets for environmental technologies could prove a growth engine for Germany in the foreseeable future. "Only an economy which switches over to environmentally friendly products and processes secures the basis for its own existence in the long term," says the auburn-haired official cheerfully.

Lower Saxony, with a population around 7.2 million, is probably Germany's most progressive state. It is here, Griefahn believes, that Germany will see the first successful "ecological reorganization of industry."

Incubating a Positive Future

The Ecological Deal is founded on a state investment program financed by taxes from waste disposal and water extraction. Germany invests well over 40 billion deutshemarks ($25 billion) on environmental technologies. As a result, the number of green businesses has quadrupled to more than 4,000 in just ten years. Griefahn would like to see green investments reach 600 billion dm ($375 billion). But, she insists, "The responsibility for the protection of the environment has to be transferred… to companies, and not be borne by the public."

In practical terms, this strategy entails redesigning industrial society from "cradle to cradle," as architect William McDonough describes [Spring '96, EIJ]. Michael Braungart, McDonough's business partner and Griefahn's husband, is a leading industrial chemist who has undertaken the redesign of the entire industrial cycle to use natural and sustainable materials. The system focuses on avoiding waste and on holding industrial producers ultimately responsible for the return and recycling of materials.

Griefahn's Social Democratic Party (SPD) is part of a Commission on the Protection of Humanity and the Environment that is committed to requiring that "external costs" - those environmental costs ordinarily ignored by current economics - are included into the final cost of the product.

Griefahn's Ecological Deal promotes green business practices through tax breaks and subsidies. To qualify, green business production must be free of carcinogens and mutagens and other dangerous substances that accumulate in living things and are not biodegradable.

Following this model, cars built by VW in Lower Saxony are now made entirely from reusable materials. Old cars are returned to the manufacturer, which dissembles the vehicles and reuses the components. VW also is reducing the amount of harmful materials used in the production cycle. The practice is proving to be economical as well as ecological. VW has also developed gas-saving engines that get almost 60 miles to the gallon.

In Lower Saxony, a $150 million Ecology Fund has seeded more than 6,000 green technology and community projects in energy conservation, renewable technologies, waste-avoidance technologies, environmentally friendly products, environmental education and responsible tourism.

Lower Saxony's waste tax generates $10 million a year. The money is used to develop waste-saving and waste-avoiding technologies and practices.

Similarly, the state levies a tax to discourage the wasteful use of water. The $90 million in water-tax revenue will be applied to protecting natural water resources. The levy, Griefahn adds, also supports restoration efforts "so that in the future we can drink from the rivers again."

Griefahn's next goal is to increase fossil fuel prices to reflect their true environmental costs. A fossil-fuel tax would fund an investment program for climate protection, energy efficiency and a program to institute renewable energy sources as the main sources of energy by the year 2050 - replacing coal and nuclear with solar, wind and other appropriate technologies.

"I think we now have more efficient wind generators than anybody in the world," Griefahn beams proudly. "They now generate three times more energy than they did three years ago, which makes them cost-effective. So now…, we want to make it an export market."

Another tenet of the SPD legislation is to unsnarl the nightmarish traffic that clots European roads. This environmental priority can be achieved through greater reliance on advanced railroad technologies and bicycles. Cars are to be banned from inner cities and petroleum consumption is to be cut in half by 2005.

The Ecological Deal also calls for the industrialized countries to take responsibility for closing the ozone hole by halting the production and use of the pesticide methyl bromide.

The Hard Path to Green Politics

For Griefahn, pollution and environmental hazards are not an abstraction. Growing up in the Ruhr valley, a heavily polluted coal and steel region, she remembers "seventeen million people on a very little spot and no green in between the towns." Sickened by exposure to streaming smokestacks, she was sent to the seaside each year to stop her coughing.

In 1980, Griefahn founded the German chapter of Greenpeace and lead campaigns against the dumping of chemicals and radioactive wastes in the North Sea and Atlantic. Griefahn took the German branch from zero to 700,000 members. She was the only woman on the Greenpeace International Board, from 1984 to 1990. According to polls, Griefahn notes proudly, the German people give environmentalists a 72 percent credibility rating, while politicians rank only around 20 percent.

Griefahn hardly expected to become one of the very politicians she spent much of her time pressuring. However, after former Greenpeace activist Gerhard Schroeder was elected prime minister of Lower Saxony in 1990, he insisted on appointing her Minister of the Environment.

"For me it was good to say, 'Okay, for ten years I have demanded of politicians what they should do, and now I will try to do it myself.'" Griefahn foresees that environmental protection will eventually be codified in the German constitution. As head of the national Committee on Environment, Nature Protection and Nuclear Issues, she is actively pursuing her local goals on the national level. At the same time, she also is calling for an environmental union of all European nations along the lines of the current economic union.

A World's Fair of Solutions

Hannover, Lower Saxony's capitol, is now gearing up for Expo 2000, a World's Fair for the Millennium devoted entirely to sustainability.

"We invite nations to bring and show solutions," Griefahn explains. "We will build fair halls that need no artificial climatization and are energy-efficient. We will bring 90 percent of the people by public transport instead of cars. We will show how you can feed 600,000 people in an ecological way."

Griefahn sees Expo 2000 as a crucial bridge between the nations of the industrialized North and the lesser-developed South. She is calling upon the North to "reduce their excessive consumption of resources" and cease their exploitation of Third World countries. She points out that the North, 20 percent of the world's population, consumes 80 percent of the world's resources, much of them from the Third World.

"I was not a member of a party when I was elected Minister of the Environment," Griefahn says. But today she has no doubt about the need to put ideals into political practice.

"I have little children, three and six years old," she says. "We can't wait for them to change the world. We have to do it now."

Adapted from Restoring the Earth: Visionary Solutions from the Bioneers by Kenny Ausubel (H. J. Kramer, PO Box 1082, Tiburon, CA 94920, (415) 435-5367).

Kenny Ausubel is co-founder of Seeds of Change, Inc., a pioneering enterprise devoted to the preservation of the Earth's organic and heirloom seeds. Audiotapes of the annual Bioneers Conferences are available from CHI, 826 Camino de Monte Rey, No. A-5, Santa Fe, NM 87501, (505) 986-0366.