the UK was the EU model in the fight against the earth rhitzung. The Brexit makes it all the more difficult to reach the climate goals.

more and more clean power: building a wind turbine in the Lake District photo: imago

BERLIN taz | In the year 2020, Europe has a lot of: The EU wants to specifically decide how you will launch up to 2050 greenhouse gases; with the Green Deal billion are expected to flow in the protection of the environment; the CO2 reduction targets for 2030 is to strengthen the EU-Commission.

Also want to make the Europeans with China, a Deal for joint climate protection. And the UN-conference in Glasgow in November will oblige all of the countries in the world to make more efforts. Europe has only one Problem: All of these objectives will be achieved through the Brexit is considerably more difficult.

the United Kingdom on the 31. January leaves the European Union, a European climate Champion of the Board. The mother country of the industrial Revolution and the use of Coal with a loss of nearly 45 per cent, a model for the reduction of greenhouse gases, while the economy is growing. It is pushing ahead with climate policy at home and abroad.

British representatives from diplomacy, academia, business and politics have in recent decades, the climate policy of the EU. You have stood against the Laggards of Eastern Europe, the funding pushed through and the EU's international weight. "With the British, we lose a lot of weight in terms of climate protection," says Audrey Mathieu, with responsibility for European climate policy in the development organization Germanwatch.

From the 31. January, that is to say: no British MEPs, no official involvement of the British in the EU-Commission. This weakens about the green group, whose British wing of the third-largest after countries.

In the current tug-of-war to the EU Budget is about 11 billion euros are missing with the exit of the British, appreciates Mathieu. A quarter of the budget to be invested by the Boss of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, in the climate of this cake is now smaller.

climate protection is through the Brexit for the rest of Europe more difficult and more expensive: Because the British have disproportionately saved a lot of CO2, the EU is now about 2 to 3 percentage points more of their climate target, experts estimate. Other countries must now contribute more to the EU target of minus 40 per cent in 2030-and more so when the mark is to be screwed on to 50 or 55 percent.

"to come As the effects of higher obligations on us," schwant a German officer. It is unclear yet whether the British in the EU emission trading remain or only connect, as Switzerland has just done.

But also the British need to make more of an effort. Because you no longer sail under the EU umbrella, you must submit to the UNO, quickly a own climate plan (NDC). "This should be done in the spring," says Antony Froggatt from the Thinktank Chatham House in London. Prime Minister Theresa May had spent last summer with the goal of making the UK by 2050, "net zero", i.e. climate-neutral.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has taken on the goal, "but that will require tough decisions for the next few years," says Froggatt. "We will quickly see if this is serious or just rhetoric was."

on the one Hand, the fight against the climate crisis in the UK for years a broad political consensus. In 2008, the Parliament adopted praises the first climate law, and an independent Climate Change Commission and blames regularly to the government on progress and failures.

On the other hand, played by Boris Johnson as a columnist for the newspaper the Daily Telegraph in 2013 with theses that deny climate change. And in the "Leave"campaign, prominent "climate skeptics gathered" as Michael Gove, Owen Paterson and Lord Lawson of Blaby.

so Far, both national policy as well as EU-committed to the Kingdom rules for the protection of the climate. "This obligation falls away now," said Froggatt. A conservative majority in the house of Commons could change the climate law.

Richard Black, of think-tank the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit is more relaxed: climate protection is rooted in the UK underground and barely stifling: "That would be so unpopular, as if you wanted to introduce in Germany the nuclear power again." For broad support for a "citizens Assembly on climate change concern" with 110 randomly selected members, which meets until April to propose measures.

The climate change conference COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland in November is certainly a test of endurance for the British claim to leadership in world politics. The nearly 200 UN member States should commit to tougher targets, so far, hardly an important country is ready for it. Although the UK is cooperating closely with Italy at the conference, the EU is directly involved in this.

But the crucial EU-China summit in October to bring under the German EU presidency in Leipzig, a Deal of climate protection-a pioneer, not sitting in the British side officially at the table.

In the process, Glasgow is chosen as the site of the conference well: Scotland would have remained after the surveys on the favourite in the European Union. And the Region is on a good way to provide by the year 2020, 100 percent renewable electricity.