Environment a vote bank for German's Green party

COLOGNE, Germany, Dec 3: Germany's Greens party, hoping a global wave of anxiety about climate change will sweep it back into power, is setting aside its liberal-left campaigns to return to its original cause -- the environment.

The 26-year-old party spent nearly five hours yesterday at a party congress pushing for radical cuts in carbon dioxide emissions and honing their strategies to make the environment the country's top issue.

''We want to send a signal from here that we will push the fight against climate change to the centre of politics in Germany,'' Ralf Fuecks, head of the Greens' Heinrich Boell Foundation think-tank, said in a speech to the 735 delegates.

''We're not a small fringe group of ecology freaks shouting into the night but the driving environmental force in a major industrialised society.'' The focus on the environment was a new turn for the Greens, which had earlier sought to widen their appeal by championing a range of causes from women's rights to gay marriages.

The Greens had already travelled a long way from their origins as a fringe party of ecological idealists to become coalition partners to Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats.

But after falling on hard times when that government lost power last year, they are hoping the same issues which once marked them out as eccentrics will lift their fortunes now that the environment has become a major issue.

''We need to turn this into our campaign,'' said Reinhard Buetikofer, Greens co-chairman. ''We need to make climate change the all-dominating issue. It's our issue.'' Fuecks said the Greens were returning to their roots because they want to win voters and because the focus on ecology was encouraging firms to make pro-environment investment decisions.

''The climate issue is vital to all voters and the industry too,'' Fuecks said in an interview. ''Smart companies know that already and are taking steps now.''

''RADICAL CHANGE, NOW''

''We'd been criticised in the past for focusing too much on the one issue and then spread to other topics,'' Paula Riester, a Greens leader, said. ''Now there is a new focus on after new studies showing the great threat.'' Greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2), produced by burning fossil fuels, trap heat in the atmosphere. Scientists say that if emissions are not curbed, sea levels will rise and drought and floods become more frequent.

Chancellor Angela Merkel has said she wanted to make climate change a focus of Germany's European Union and G8 presidencies in 2007. But on Friday her government said it would ignore an order by the EU to cut CO2 emissions further than planned.

In Cologne, Greens leaders and delegates attacked Germany's right-left grand coalition government for becoming complacent.

Greens leaders said they want to become the country's third largest party -- they are now the fifth -- by the next election in 2009 when they hope to be kingmakers again.

One Greens measure yesterday was a new push for a speed limit on Germany's motorways, which have no upper limit.

Greens delegates also passed a new platform of ''radical measures'' that call for cutting CO2 emissions to zero in the second half of this century and for tolls on city traffic.

''We're not going resolve the climate warming problem unless we push radical change now,'' said Rainhard Loske, a member of parliament. ''It's wrong to say 'we've done enough'.'' Loske said the Greens can win over voters by showing the courage to take on the powerful car, air transport and energy industries for breaking promises on reducing emissions.

''We're the 'original' on the environment and the other parties co-opting our ideas are just cheap imitators,'' he said.

REUTER