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Voters in Berlin are being asked to decide Sunday whether they want the city to be "climate neutral" by 2030, meaning it won't be able to contribute to climate change any more.
The New York Times reports the referendum is being seen as a test of the German capital's political will to fight climate change, and it's not clear whether voters will be able to pull it off on a day when no other voting is taking place.
A spokesperson for the group behind the referendum tells the AP it's "a very ambitious target" and "won't be easy," but it's also a bigger challenge than most because of the effects of climate change, which killed more than 180 people in a German flood two years ago.
The group behind the referendum says it needs at least 25% of the city's 2.4 million eligible voters to vote in favor of becoming carbon neutral, and it's received more than $1.3 million in donations from US-based philanthropists.
If the referendum passes, Berlin would need to cut its emissions by almost all by 2030, a goal that's already in line with Germany's national target of 2045, though the new center-right government Berlin is likely to form doesn't support the earlier target.
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Building a Million Dollar Company Where Everyone Counts
Ganesh Natarajan is the Founder and Chairman of 5FWorld, a new platform for funding and developing start-ups, social enterprises and the skills eco-system in India. In the past two decades, he has built two of India’s high-growth software services companies – Aptech and Zensar – almost from scratch to global success.