| Germany’s Greens have tried to placate critics by pretending that a strict climate course would not change their lifestyle in any way, but few believe them and the party has become the second-most disliked party in the country. The party is in crisis as Germany’s Greens begin a three-day party conference in Wiesbaden near Frankfurt. Not only did the former three-party government, which gave the party its biggest-ever influence over national politics, collapse last week, but it is also polling poorly. It currently manages to get only 11-12% of the national electorate after winning 14.7% of the vote in the last election and scoring well over 20% in polls both before and after the 2021 election. The party is fragile in the former communist east of the country, where poor results in the three state elections this autumn have even led to the resignation of the national leadership. However, what should worry the party most is a reverse question that the INSA polling institute has been asking since 2018: Which parties can you not imagine voting for in principle? While the far-right AfD has topped this ranking in every poll, the Greens are now in second place: 42% of voters rule out ever voting for them, up from just 27% in 2018. This marks the failure of a strategy that the now resigned leadership, along with their predecessors and now senior ministers Robert Habeck and Annalena Baerbock, have been pursuing since taking office in 2022. “Economy and climate without crisis” was Baerbock’s pledge in her 2021 candidacy for German chancellor. This task later fell into the hands of Habeck, who has served as vice-chancellor and economy minister in Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government since 2021. But what followed was a worsening of the climate crisis – see, for example, the floods and forest fires across Europe – and an economic crisis that lasted longer than any short-term downturn since 2005. | 