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The other day I watched a lot of green parakeets picking out sand and pebbles from the joints on the façade of a boxhouse from the sixties. They have made a neighboring tree their WG, it is fluttered and screamed and it all sounds like in a nature documentary from Costa Rica, but the birds live and work in Wiesbaden and it is mid-November. In Paris, the radiant heaters remain switched off over the cafeteria terraces - not because of ecological reason, but because it is so warm that you can sit on the chair in front of the house without being freezing: outside is always heated.
Climate change is occurring, and it affects everyone, there is no country, no region where its effects would not be observable. But the political institutions are actually still written nationally and easily put under pressure by the powerful interest groups of fossil energy consumers. Therefore, it is important that people throughout the world demonstrate a different way of doing business and a smarter climate policy. These protests offer a unique opportunity:
- To coordinate civil society and political initiatives not nationally, but with those of many countries.
The markets for oil and gas have been international events for many decades, but dealing with the consequences of their production and consumption was not; this was negotiated as a collection of isolated cases and fizzled out.
Today, the collective demands are not about saving the planet, it will continue to rotate, in need of a barren pebble. To preserve, as the French philosopher Cynthia Fleury put it, is the "common humanity of humankind" - that life remains dignified even under conditions of moderated, possibly mitigated, climate change.
Many institutions are already working on it, especially the cities: In India, Cool Cities are researching central cooling systems, and London and Paris are doing a lot to push cars out of the city and renaturate green spaces. It is far from enough, and for the pace of reform and innovation to intensify, protests are the best means. However, one should not give in to the illusion of a comprehensive commonality, as if all the actors were to be impressed by pictures of the ecological catastrophe and demonstrations.
Some of the most disagreeable political systems - Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia - derive their power from the profits they derive from trade in oil and gas. And with these immense sums they are quite successful in politics.
Today's protests are directed not only at a few world community, but directly against some of the most powerful political and economic actors we know. To move forward, you need political power and it results through elections, coalitions and compromises.
For that you need the support of more people than you are already convinced. The symbolism of the protest becomes important: Anyone who wants to make politics in the Berlin Olympic Stadium by signing mass online petitions irritates more than he can convince. The same applies to the nasty relativization of the mass murder of European Jews by Roger Hallam of "Extinction Rebellion."
- Good intention alone does not provide political power and scientific evidence is not yet laws.
The necessary change in our way of consuming, living and working is far-reaching and therefore needs irrefutable legitimacy. It can only be achieved by bringing together social and environmental, political and economic aspects and creating a new vision of the future, such as the concept of the "Green New Deal", which was taken up by Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Housing, public transport, the world of work - the most pressing social problems are those in which the greatest ecological impact can be achieved.
A policy that takes climate change into account is anything but a prohibition policy, but an exciting future project in which everyone can participate. So there is a chance that politics ceases to be a television sport where everyone watches as the professionals struggling. Reshaping of residential areas, renaturalization of urban forests, creation of communal vegetable gardens, revitalization of wetlands - there are virtually endless possibilities, such as climate salvation and civic engagement, such as community-based politics and associations can work together.
What rescues nature also heals signs of fatigue in politics and affluent society, so today, on Friday's protest day, besides anger and impatience, there is also a need for confidence, curiosity and daring: this can be a beautiful day.