The Transatlantic Climate Bridge is a climate partnership between Germany and the United States. The partnership was first proposed by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in an April 2008 lecture at Harvard University. He believed that climate policy was the core of transatlantic matters. On 29 September 2008, he and German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel wrote in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, "Together with the United States, we can make the technological breakthroughs required and successfully negotiate a follow-up treaty to the Kyoto Protocol. Only if we work closely with our partners on the other side of the Atlantic will we succeed in convincing emerging countries such as China, India and Brazil, as well as Russia, to opt for a sustainable growth model that spare