Two days before the closest elections that Germany remembers in a long time, a group of young people has set out to increase the pressure on the candidates to wrest more ambitious goals from them in the fight against global warming.
The streets of Berlin and 470 other German towns will measure this Friday the convening capacity of activists who insist that there is no time left to solve the most pressing problem facing the world.
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Germany, between addiction to coal and the need to be sustainable
Those who aspire to lead in Germany took notice on Thursday.
In a debate with the candidates of the seven parties with parliamentary representation, the reforms needed to tackle climate change were back on the table.
The Christian Democrat Armin Laschet summarized: “The task is gigantic.
It consists of transforming our industry ”.
The ordeal of the young nonconformists comes at the hottest moment of the campaign.
Despite the fact that the Social Democratic Party (SPD) has led the polls since mid-August, some studies are beginning to narrow the gap that separates it from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
The latest polls still put Olaf Scholz's formation in the lead, but only three or four points behind their biggest opponent. If to the very narrowness of these margins are added the slips carried out by the polling houses in other recent elections and the uncertainty about the possible allies of each other, the conclusion is that Germany now looks a lot like a country stupefied before an election Sunday that nobody knows how it can end.
Climate risks have been at the center of the campaign.
The parties insist on their commitment to clean energy and reducing emissions.
And very likely the Greens will enter the future government.
But for the young people of the Fridays for Future movement, the promises they hear are not enough.
They ask for much more.
Despite the many protests called, attention will focus this Friday on Berlin, where a massive mobilization is expected in front of the Bundestag (lower house of Parliament) with the presence of the great media star of this group, Greta Thunberg.
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At 20, Quang Paasch already knows what it is to organize a march with more than 100,000 people, like the one in 2019 also in Berlin. Hours before the event, the young activist did not dare to make an estimate of the number of participants, especially due to the effect of a pandemic that does not finish disappearing. But he did insist on sending a very clear message to all parties with parliamentary representation: that they will have to listen to the demands of young people, and not so young, to go out into the streets.
Candidates from the seven parties with representation in the Bundestag (Alice Weidel, AfD; Christian Lindner, FDP; Markus Söder, CSU; Armin Laschet, CDU; Annalena Baerbock, The Greens; Olaf Scholz, SPD; and Janine Wissler, Die Linke) , on Thursday in Berlin in the last televised debate. In the center, the two journalists who moderated the meeting. CLEMENS BILAN / POOL / EFE
The end of the Merkel era shows that the sometimes called
climate chancellor
leaves the work on the environment - being generous - half. It is true that it promoted the nuclear blackout in 2011 after the Fukushima disaster, but that decision caught the country on a different footing. Today, 25% of the electricity consumed by German families and companies comes from a source as polluting as coal, which is scheduled to end as far back as 2038.
Both Social Democrats and Christian Democrats promise in their programs to achieve the desired climate neutrality - to emit the same amount of carbon dioxide from which it is withdrawn into the atmosphere - at least in 2045, five years before the Brussels target for the EU. This commitment is not great news because it is what German law already establishes, in a decision imposed by the Constitutional Court. The Greens go one step further and commit to achieving a zero carbon footprint in 20 years.
But none of this convinces Thunberg and his people.
“The parties lack ambition.
But it is also that their proposals are ignorant.
Scientists have made it very clear that an industrial economy like the German one must achieve climate neutrality by 2035. It is possible and it is necessary to achieve this, ”says Paasch.
Only the post-communists of Die Linke take up this commitment.
Lack of leadership
It is not only young activists who reproach the parties for their lack of leadership on climate issues.
A recent report by the prestigious German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) a few weeks ago gave a resounding suspense to the climate promises made in the programs.
With these measures, none would achieve the goal that in 2030 the temperature does not rise more than 1.5 degrees.
DIW awarded each party a grade. The most advanced students were Los Verdes, followed closely by Die Linke. Behind came the CDU and the SPD, practically tied. In last position were the Liberals of the FDP. The authors left out of the study the extreme right of the AfD, a party that calls for Germany's exit from the Paris Agreement on emissions and rejects measures to decarbonize the economy.
Concern for the environment is widely distributed in Germany among all social segments, and at all ages.
But it is the new generations who raise their voices the most.
According to a survey commissioned last year by the Ministry of the Environment, more than half of young people are willing to get involved in the fight against climate change and demand more action from politicians.
“This fight affects us all, as it was seen in the floods of North Rhine.
I don't think it's about young people against old ”, concludes Paasch.
Last clash between the candidates of seven parties
The last chance for candidates to lead Germany left a more lively debate than usual on Thursday, in which time was finally dedicated to talking about international politics. The formula was different from the last few weeks. In addition to the two men and the woman with the possibility of reaching the Chancellery - Olaf Scholz (SPD), Armin Laschet (CDU) and Annalena Baerbock (Los Verdes) -, representatives of ultra-rightists, liberals, Bavarian Social Christians and post-communists participated.
The debate started out strong. The recent murder of a gas station employee by a denier who had been asked to wear the mask prompted Baerbock to call for tougher gun control laws. Alice Weidel, head of the list of the AfD ultras, rejected criticism of her party for having given fuel to radical movements that have criticized the management of the pandemic and asked not to "criminalize" these groups. He also affirmed that the health measures adopted by the Government are unconstitutional.
In the international arena, Scholz said he could understand the "irritation" of France after the conflict with the United States by the military alliance it has forged with the United Kingdom and Australia. “Cooperation with France is essential for us. We have to make sure that together we build a strong and sovereign Europe, ”said the Social Democrat.
Laschet, who complained that he had not been asked about foreign policy in the last three debates as if he had not been able to bring up the subject, also insisted on the need to build a strong Europe. And he threw a dart at what he defined as three leftists at the table (Scholz, Baerbock and the representative of Die Linke) for wanting to raise taxes. With him as chancellor, he said, there will be no such increases.
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