A court ruling triggers a big change in Germany’s climate policy

THE “EIGHT arseholes in Karlsruhe”, otherwise known as Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court, have been perennial irritants for politicians, as this outburst from an irate minister in the 1970s suggests. Yet on April 29th, when the court’s first senate declared Germany’s climate-change law partly unconstitutional, ministers in the ruling coalition fell over themselves to hail the judges’ wisdom in rejecting an act they had passed less than 18 months earlier. The judgment was “epoch-making”, said Peter Altmaier, the Christian Democrat economy minister. “This is a very special day,” added Olaf Scholz, the Social Democrat finance minister. The pair then bickered over which of them was to blame for the terrible law in the first place.