Enlarge image
Photo: Dominik Bund / imago images
SPIEGEL:
You wanted to turn the upcoming federal election into a climate election together with 18 other organizations, but the idea does not seem to have worked: the only party that has made climate policy a central issue is weakening.
What was the issue?
Bautz:
On the one hand, we already have a climate election.
The issue has gained a presence that it has never had before and is more important to the electorate than ever before.
The Trielle, the programs, the posters, the climate is talked about everywhere.
SPIEGEL:
On the other hand, any top politician can pose as a climate protector without really taking the issue seriously.
Bautz:
Most of the candidates have not internalized the dimension of the crisis and the rigor with which action should be taken. In addition, the TV rounds only ask the question: "What will climate neutrality cost us?" It would be much more important to think about what it would cost us not to act. It was also difficult because the content of the election campaign was overshadowed by debates about people, plagiarism and coalition options. So it is true: we do not have the climate election that we hoped for and that we would have needed in view of the dimensions of the climate crisis.
SPIEGEL:
You wanted to use the resources of your organization to put pressure on Campact. Almost 400,000 people signed a climate campaign promise that you made online.
Are such digital indignation machines, where anyone can vote against dolphin death or for climate protection with a few clicks and calm their conscience, possibly the wrong, too invisible means of protest?
Bautz:
The click alone doesn't do it, that's why we want to shift the protest from the virtual space to the street.
We are now mobilizing together with Fridays for Future and other NGOs for the climate strike two days before the election.
SPIEGEL:
Isn't that late?
Bautz:
Not necessarily.
Many people are still undecided, as the surveys show.
We are also currently running other campaigns: 30,000 people have ordered our door tags with messages about the climate change online and will be hanging them on around five million house doors in the next few days.
At the IAA in Munich, 25,000 people were just active against the car lobby.
Campact also mobilizes in constituencies where climate blockers are running for their opponents.
Unlike the Springer press, which is now criticizing it, I find that completely legitimate.
SPIEGEL:
Still: Isn't so-called click activism, that is, the illusion of protesting from the sofa on the computer, the death of many movements?
Bautz
: I don't think so, digital tools like this tend to help us.
Against the TTIP free trade agreement, 250,000 people suddenly stood in front of the Brandenburg Gate, many of whom had previously been mobilized online.
Fridays for Future brought 1.4 million people onto the streets two years ago.
Many do not even shy away from civil disobedience: Over 4,000 people have sat in front of the coal excavators in North Rhine-Westphalia.
I am confident that people will continue to take to the streets.
That will also be evident after the election; there will be rumors at every coalition round.
SPIEGEL:
What makes you so sure about that?
Olaf Scholz reassures the lignite workers and many other citizens in Brandenburg by saying that he does not want to get out of coal earlier than 2038.
Bautz:
Scholz is deceiving the workers because he knows that without a coal phase-out as early as 2030, we will break our climate targets. Sure, many people still think of climate change as abstract, as it has not yet ripped their homes away, as in Ahrweiler. But like Mr. Laschet to claim that his program is 1.5 degrees compatible, that is simply a lie. Strictly speaking, this is not one of the party programs, not even that of the Greens - even if it comes closest to that.