Today the Berlin citizens are asked to vote a referendum to become climate neutral in 2030 instead of 2045.
The actual Berlin Senat is declining this initiative in total. Time, money and people would be missing to get this done in 7 years. In addition it is not only the duty of the Senat to do this but there would be many many commercial institutions/companies responsible as well and they cant control these contributors.
Why are we not debating this kind referendum in a positive – forward moving – notion? It is definitely a challenge, it is definitely in some parts not possible to achieve climate neutrality in 7 years for a city like Berlin. But we can debate that positively, support and execute doable ideas, work on the more complicated things and get as close as possible to the target in 2030. Instead we have the politics and business saying – not possible hence we dont do it – and communities saying yes, we should.
It is 2.4M citizens voting – they need 610K to be successful – 25%. So, watch how many citizens will go voting and what the result will be. Initiatives like this are great – driving concrete targets and moving forward instead of by-standing.