Bikes, vegans and taxes: how one German city is helping the country go net zero
In Germany’s southwest, a pretty university town near the Alps is showing the rest of the country how to go green.
Tübingen is blessed with higher days of sunshine than much of the rest of the country and, out of a population of 90,000, almost a third are students. As one of the centers of the German student protest movement in the late 1960s, it’s no surprise that Tübingen is also one of the country’s most environmentally aware cities.
Tübingen spends three times as much on bicycle infrastructure than the Danish city of Copenhagen, the city’s mayor, Boris Palmer, told the BBC. Palmer, first elected in 2007, is credited by many for shaping the city's green policies — such as mandatory solar panels on roofs and free buses on Saturdays.
Palmer says the city has seen a reduction in t...