Stefan Theil | Newsweek International | 05.26.2008

While the future effects of global warming are still hotly debated, the one very real thaw it has already produced is between the world’s environmentalists and their foes on the political right. Think John McCain’s embrace of the climate-change issue, or the greening of Britain’s Tories under their leader, David Cameron. The latest ice to break is between Germany’s once radical, antiestablishment Green Party and their erstwhile archenemy, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU). In a formerly unthinkable and possibly far-reaching realignment of German politics, conservatives and the Green Party have been entering alliances in local and regional parliaments, creating new power options for both parties—and a laboratory for breaking the logjam that has paralyzed German politics.