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A German government report names the pandemic as a precedent for environmental policy.  It says lockdowns show that behavioural restrictions are possible and can win majority support with the right messaging.

The German Advisory Council on the Environment (“SRU”) has been advising the German federal government on environmental policies for 50 years.  The Council is made up of 7 professors from different disciplines. On 9 May the SRU submitted a deeply creepy 200-page report to the Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke.

The SRU website is in German but there is an option to select English.

“Many people want to be more environmentally friendly, often it fails to implement it. With its special report published [9 May], the [SRU] encourages politicians to redesign the framework conditions so that environmental protection becomes the obvious option,” the press release states. “To this end, the SRU has prepared research that examines how people make environmentally relevant decisions and how politics can promote environmentally friendly behaviour in an effective and socially acceptable manner.”

In their report, “the SRU analyses when the behaviour should be addressed, which measures are suitable and how these can be implemented politically. The report provides recommendations for concrete implementation in the areas of meat consumption, smartphones and energy-saving renovation,” the SRU website states.

Eugyppius has spent some time going through the report and will write a longer article on it in the near future.  In the meantime, Eugyppius brings it to our attention by highlighting the report’s introduction.  You can subscribe to and follow Eugyppius on Substack HERE. 

By Eugyppius

The Advisory Council on the Environment is a body of experts convened by the Federal Republic of Germany to advise the state on matters of environmental policy. I’m grateful to @tomdabassman on Twitter for drawing attention to their recent and deeply creepy 200-page report on ‘The obligation of policymakers: Facilitating environmentally friendly behaviour’. It abounds in remarkable and revealing statements, and I’ve spent a good part of the day studying it for a longer post that I hope to write in the coming weeks.

For now, I want to draw your attention to the introduction, which is bad enough. Its authors depart from the premise that the state currently lacks “policy measures … targeting environmentally relevant behaviour,” and join others in affirming that it is the job of the state to nudge individual decisions in the right direction. Tellingly, both the pandemic and the sanctions-induced European energy crisis play a very large role in their thinking:

Although the key environmental crises, such as loss of biodiversity and climate change, are less directly visible and tangible than the energy crisis and the pandemic, environmental policymakers can learn from the sometimes painful but also important experiences of recent years: Behavioural changes in the population can be a part of the solution to crises such as these, and it is possible to adopt and implement policies aimed at changing behaviours.

For example, Germany introduced a series of measures in mid-2022 to alleviate the energy crisis … These measures targeted the behaviour of citizens. In addition to general calls to save energy, building owners were obliged to optimise their heating systems, employees had to accept lower room temperatures at work and it was forbidden to heat private swimming pools …. Earlier, Germany imposed far-reaching pandemic measures to contain the spread of Corona. For example, since 2020, the stated adopted and imposed various lockdowns and social contact limitations. Both highlight the contribution of behavioural changes, whether in energy consumption or social behaviour, to the project of combating a collective problem …

The aforementioned measures doubtless demanded a lot from people and in the specifics of the necessary extent of the restrictions, they proved controversial, as also in their unequal impact on different social groups. Nevertheless, the two crises show that political measures to carefully restrict the behaviour of citizens are possible if the threat is correspondingly great and the importance of the protected good – in these examples, health and energy – is recognised. The state has succeeded (even if not in every individual case) in devising measures such that they achieve their goal while maintaining proportionality. It is also clearly possible for these policies to be designed and communicated in such a way that the majority support them.

Emphasis mine. All of this speaks for itself, and I don’t have much to add, except to observe that the only way for restrictions to be “communicated” such that “the majority support them,” is by renewed forays into state media-fuelled mass panic and hysteria. Corona has taught our rulers that a great deal more is possible than they ever imagined, and they will spend the coming years exploring the limits.