(de-news.net) – Extreme heat, wildfires and drought are highlighting the economic and social costs of a warming climate, adding to pressure on Germany to strengthen both climate protection and adaptation measures. The debate is unfolding as the government also confronts a difficult economic environment, forcing policymakers to weigh the urgency of climate action against concerns about growth, investment and public finances.
Andreas Jung, deputy chairman of the CDU and a climate policy specialist for the conservative Union bloc, argued that Germany must continue advancing climate measures while taking account of the country’s precarious economic situation. He said climate policy could not be pursued in isolation from broader economic conditions, particularly as Germany prepares for more frequent episodes of extreme heat and other climate-related hazards.
According to Jung, financing climate-related investments at the municipal level does not require an amendment to the Constitution. Germany has already adopted ambitious climate goals and implemented a range of measures, he said, but additional work is needed both to reduce emissions and to prepare for increasingly frequent heat waves. Climate policy should also be designed to support economic competitiveness, Jung maintained. Under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, he said, innovation could provide a link between economic expansion and climate protection, allowing Germany to develop technologies that could later be deployed and exported internationally.
That approach, Jung argued, could give climate investment an economic dimension beyond Germany’s own emissions reductions. Because Germany accounts for only a small share of global carbon dioxide emissions, technologies developed domestically could have a broader impact if they were adopted elsewhere. The central challenge for the government, in his view, is therefore to bring economic policy and climate policy together rather than treating them as competing priorities.
Yet the financial constraints facing local governments make climate-related investment difficult when municipalities are left to shoulder the burden alone. Jung pointed to schools and daycare facilities as examples where the effects of extreme heat have already become tangible. Temperatures of 30 to 35 degrees Celsius and higher have demonstrated the need for public buildings that are simultaneously energy-efficient and resilient to heat.
Jung said responsibility for those investments should be shared by municipalities, states and the federal government. At the same time, he emphasized that the existing constitutional framework already permits federal support, meaning that a constitutional amendment should not be necessary before action can begin. The issue, in his assessment, is therefore less about creating a new legal mechanism than about using existing ones more effectively.
As an example, Jung cited an energy-efficiency program introduced for municipalities during the 2009 financial crisis. The initiative operated under the existing constitutional framework and, he argued, provides a model that could be replicated without delay. Available resources from special funds and climate financing, including revenue generated through carbon pricing, could be directed toward public buildings. Such investments, Jung said, could advance climate protection while also making buildings better able to withstand extreme heat.
Counties reject any new constitutional climate role
The German County Association also opposed establishing a new joint federal-state responsibility for climate adaptation in the Constitution. Achim Brötel, the association’s president, argued that adaptation measures required immediate action and practical solutions rather than extended constitutional debate. Additional forms of shared financing could further blur the division of responsibilities without guaranteeing municipalities adequate and sustainable long-term funding.
Brötel argued that Germany’s broader problem was not simply a lack of responsibility but an unclear distribution of it. Rather than creating additional arrangements in which several levels of government share authority, he called for clearer rules identifying who is responsible for specific tasks. In his view, strengthening accountability would be more effective than expanding what he characterized as diffuse responsibility.
At the same time, Brötel stressed that municipalities need reliable, sustainable funding to fulfill the responsibilities already assigned to them. The Social Democratic Party proposed a new constitutional joint task for climate adaptation in response to the summer’s extreme weather and concerns about inadequate preparation. Brötel said the federal and state governments should instead move quickly to strengthen municipal finances on a lasting basis and in proportion to the responsibilities local governments are expected to carry.
Wildfire preparedness is among the areas where Brötel sees particularly urgent adaptation needs. Germany is increasingly experiencing conditions that were once more commonly associated with southern Europe, he said, making stronger defenses against large-scale fires necessary. The measures he identified include maintaining accessible forest roads, ensuring dependable and sufficiently capable water sources for firefighting, and expanding the use of modern equipment such as drones and firefighting robots.
The challenge extends beyond emergency response, however. Over the longer term, forests would need to be transformed into diverse, site-appropriate and climate-resilient mixed stands, according to Brötel. That transition would require sustained effort over generations, reflecting the long time horizons involved in adapting forests to changing climatic conditions.
The Greens, meanwhile, have called on Merz to change course on climate policy following remarks he made during a visit to Hürtgenwald in North Rhine-Westphalia, where a wildfire had caused damage. Katharina Dröge, a parliamentary group leader for the Greens, criticized the governing CDU/CSU and SPD for policies she said were worsening the climate crisis and called for a federal climate emergency plan.
Dröge urged the government to withdraw or substantially revise measures concerning building modernization, electricity grids, renewable energy and energy efficiency. She also called for a faster expansion of renewable energy and stronger safeguards against the consequences of climate change. Her demands put the government’s broader response under scrutiny as extreme weather increasingly becomes part of the domestic policy debate.
Rising economic costs as extreme weather intensifies
During his visit to Hürtgenwald, Merz warned that Germany would have to prepare for major damaging events occurring more frequently, identifying climate change as a key factor. Drought, wildfire risk and the wider consequences of climate change are expected to receive significant attention at the federal cabinet’s retreat on Tuesday and Wednesday, placing climate adaptation alongside the government’s broader economic and policy priorities.
The summer’s heat has also underscored the economic stakes. Greenpeace estimates that heat waves caused at least 36 billion euros in economic damage in Germany, equivalent to nearly one percent of the country’s gross domestic product. The losses resulted from crop failures, wildfires and health-related costs, with the labor market accounting for the largest share.
Based on an estimated 25 days of intense heat, Greenpeace calculated that productivity losses and heat-related absences amounted to 10.8 billion euros. The estimate illustrates how the effects of extreme temperatures extend beyond direct physical damage, affecting workplaces and economic output as well as agriculture, forests and public health.
The environmental group called on the Federal Government to respond decisively at the cabinet retreat, arguing that the scale of the losses demonstrated the economic risks of delaying action. Mauricio Vargas, Greenpeace’s finance expert, said the figures showed that Germany could no longer afford to maintain the status quo in the face of mounting climate-related costs.
Climate researcher Stefan Rahmstorf, meanwhile, expects Europe to experience particularly severe weather extremes as global temperatures continue to rise. Areas undergoing greater warming are also likely to experience stronger extremes, he explained, while the frequency of such events is expected to increase as temperatures rise. Events that once occurred only once every several centuries could therefore recur within a matter of decades.
Rahmstorf also cautioned that the most severe consequences associated with the current level of global warming, about 1.4 degrees Celsius, have not yet fully materialized. That means the extreme events already being observed should not be viewed as the upper limit of what Europe may experience. With a warmer climate expected in the coming decades, he indicated, the risks and intensity of weather extremes could become substantially greater.
