TL;DR
A climate policy died not on its technical merits but because the government lost the framing war and let its opponents name the law.
Germany's coalition government, elected in 2021, wanted new home heating systems to run on 65% renewable energy from 2025. After Russia invaded Ukraine, that deadline was pulled forward to early 2024.
A tabloid gave the law a name
In February 2023, Bild, Germany's biggest tabloid, got hold of a leaked draft and branded the reform the 'heating hammer'. It claimed the law would force owners of old homes to rip out their heating at their own expense, or ban boilers outright. None of that was in the draft Bild itself published.
Bild also hung the whole thing on Robert Habeck, the Green economy minister, making one man the face of the law and driving a wedge between the coalition partners.
The first to jump ship drowned last
The Liberal Democrats, who had backed the bill, saw which way the wind blew and publicly distanced themselves to score points in the press. The article calls this the start of a habit: bailing out the moment a reform met resistance.
The infighting eventually collapsed the coalition and triggered snap elections, in which the Liberal Democrats lost their seats in the Bundestag entirely. The law was watered down into irrelevance, and Germany's ambitious net-zero plans stalled with it.
The author's conclusion is blunt: get the media onside before you govern. If you can't, you need a stubborn leader and strong communication. He names Britain's Labour and America's Democrats as having neither.
Why it matters
The real export here isn't German political gossip but a reusable failure template: a policy's fate is often sealed in the first news story about it. Once your opponent has named your reform a hammer, winning stops being about how well the bill was written and starts being about whether you spoke before they did.
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