Farmers’ protests: A danger to the open society – and the climate

The farmers’ protests are another example of the lack of compromise in responding to the necessary adjustments in the transformation to a climate-neutral economy. In the long term, this is not only destructive for the climate, but also for the open society, writes Felix Ekardt. As head of the Leipzig Research Center for Sustainability and Climate Policy and as a professor at the University of Rostock, he researches policy concepts for greater sustainability. Because of his often very controversial positions, he seeks discussion with the readers of ZEIT ONLINE. This time too, he responds to reader comments directly below the article. Join the discussion!

There is widespread scientific and political consensus: Modern societies must transform quickly and move away from fossil fuels. Coal, gas and oil are the main drivers of climate change, species extinction, disrupted nutrient cycles and pollution. And fossil fuels also play an important role in wars.

But when it becomes concrete, politicians, companies and citizens are not so keen to leave the usual fossil-based economy and life behind. From a behavioral perspective, this is not surprising, as factual knowledge and values ​​are often pushed aside as behavioral drivers by self-interest, convenience, habit or the tendency to make others a scapegoat. Consequently, Germany now also has its yellow vest movement in the form of the farmers’ and craftsmen’s protests. Ultimately, the protesters are demanding that the steps towards a more sustainable economy, which are unanimously recognized as necessary, be slowed down, even if this only increases the damage for future generations.

It is remarkable
how quickly parts of the federal government put their own plans to cut a small part of the subsidies for agriculture back up for discussion. Contrary to the statements of farmers’ and craftsmen’s associations, cuts in agricultural subsidies and increases in the CO₂ price are neither anti-social nor uneconomical. Continuing the fossil-based economy causes far higher costs and affects poorer people in particular much more severely than the most ambitious climate policy could ever achieve. The widespread subsidization of the current fossil production method therefore seems out of date. In the future, public money should only be paid for public services, for example when farmers implement nature conservation measures or better animal protection.

Not all farmers are under economic pressure, as the protesters suggest – the large agricultural factories, especially in intensive livestock farming, are certainly not among them. It’s more about the small farmers. Of course, they have to be able to operate adequately. However, the way to get there in the long term is not through subsidies with which we use taxpayers’ money to compensate for the harm to other people by exacerbating the climate and biodiversity crisis. But rather about reasonable food prices. Most consumers can certainly absorb this, provided that not so much food is thrown away and people eat less animal products and more seasonal and regional products.

If high government subsidies are intended to reduce the price of fossil fuels, this is going in the wrong direction. A higher CO₂ price accelerates the expansion of renewable energies, energy efficiency and energy saving. This means that everyone will be in a better financial position in the long term than with the foreseeable spiraling prices of fossil fuels. Security of supply will only be achieved when the culture of waste ends.

It is particularly inconsistent when, in the last few days, farmers’ protests have been publicly celebrated, even after their demands have already been largely given in, while at the same time climate protests have been condemned by many. While the farmers are at least largely concerned with their income interests, climate activists are committed to an altruistic cause: for better climate protection, as is currently required by fundamental rights in the opinion of the Federal Constitutional Court and by the Paris 1.5 degree target . In general, civil disobedience can only ever have a limited place in democracies. If so, please do so where altruistic goals are involved.

Differences of opinion become culture wars

Protests against post-fossil transformation are not surprising. What is new, however, is the lack of compromise with which social conflicts are increasingly being resolved here and elsewhere. In principle, competition and competing offers are equally productive in politics and business. But the whole thing only works if a common framework such as the rules of representative democracy and its majority decisions are accepted. On the other hand, it endangers democracy in Europe – which is already existentially threatened by the Russian war of aggression or the rise of populists – if political differences of opinion can increasingly no longer be pacified through discussions, compromises and majority decisions, but instead turn into culture wars. And in the worst case, end in violence at some point.

80 years after the end of the Second World War, the ability to compromise within society and increasingly between states appears to be dwindling. A feeling of “Now it’s my turn” seems to be affecting more and more people, political movements and even governments. This fits fatally well with a world in which the echo chambers of social media increasingly enable us to only perceive our own perspective on things. In human history, democracy and peaceful coexistence are the exception rather than the rule. The great danger is that it stays that way.