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One hundred guests gathered on Monday evening at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church to listen to Prof. Dr. Haspel’s discourse on engagement for freedom and justice as an imported tradition of the Reformation to the Civil Rights Movement. Through separated in time and space, Prof. Haspel eloquently bridged the gap between Martin Luther, the German Augustine monk who started with his ninety-five theses the protestant reformation in 1517, and Martin Luther King, Jr., the Baptist minister and activist who became the most visible spokesperson and leader of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States in the 1950s and 60s. Both men, deeply grounded in their unshakeable belief that men must follow their conscience, committed their lives to non-violent resistance against oppression and injustice. Co-hosted by the N.C. Zeitgeist Foundation and the American Council on Germany, the program was sponsored by The Federal Foreign Office of Germany, the Institute für Auslandsbeziehungen, and JP Morgan Chase. The United States is doing injury to itself, to us Europeans and to all other peoples of this world. Those who deny climate change and do not combat it will not only have to deal with the consequences of ever more extreme storms, droughts and floods, but this “not with me” strategy also impedes economic growth and technical progress. Saving energy and using free resources such as the sun and the wind would still be a great economic success, even if there were no such thing as climate change. They have created more than 400,000 jobs in Germany alone!
Withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement is detrimental to economic growth – and to the key life resources of future generations. Withdrawing from the Paris Agreement is also a political mistake, as it undermines legal certainty at international level. The principle of pacta sunt servanda (agreements must be kept) is intended to ensure security and certainty. This is one of the most important practices followed in international politics. “The land of the free and the home of the brave” is acting contrary to its own principles and thereby setting itself against a worldwide consensus. Our sound climate policy and our intensive international cooperation with other countries to protect the climate have already forged a strong alliance against the isolationist approach of the new US Administration to climate issues. Major nations such as China, Brazil, India and Russia stand shoulder to shoulder with us, as do the many countries which are particularly hard hit by climate change, such as the African states and the small island states. And let’s not forget that even in America there are a crop of federal states, local administrations and companies who have assumed a pioneering role in climate policy. We all support the Paris Agreement. We will keep the door open to the United States should it wish to accede to the Agreement again at a later date. Let us not be swayed by the short-sightedness of a single party. The international community must stick together. Climate policy is a policy for peace.
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