Enlarge image
Protest in front of the entrance of the German Farmers' Association (archive image, August 2021)
Photo: Christoph Soeder / picture alliance / dpa
With some amazement, I've been watching videos online lately showing young climate activists sticking their hands to the asphalt to block major roads.
I didn't think something like this would even work.
As a little boy I once glued my thumb and forefinger together with "super glue" (please don't copy it!), that's all my experience in this area.
Friendly police officers usually get rid of the young people with a brush full of olive oil, but in Berlin someone has had to be removed from the asphalt with a scalpel.
Apparently, some drivers under professional deadline pressure found the blockades impossible, not everyone has time for climate rescue when it is already late in the morning.
Some rough scenes took place there, but the young people had prepared for them in role-playing games, as you could read.
The central point: to “emotionally connect” to the climate crisis, which strengthens the spirit and defenses against the displeasure of those blocked and the tangible crackdown of the police officers.
In some forums and media in the liberal-conservative milieu, young people are declared products of a bourgeois neglect of affluence and are mocked, because their search for meaning is a despicable end in itself. And indeed, the climate protection movement is becoming increasingly broader, but political criticism that only delights in childish behavior or crying makes it too easy for itself. When it comes to what these protests are supposed to bring to the matter, then one must also ask what these jokes are supposed to achieve,
capisce
? So no jokes about world saviors today.
So I don't deny anyone the fervor of the individual conviction that it is five past twelve to save the world from heat death and that politics is as ignorant as it is derelict.
Nevertheless, it must be allowed to question both: the fervor and the conviction, after all, the validity of goals should not be judged by the zeal with which they are pursued.
We're not listening to the loudest person at the table, no, we tell him to talk normally or shut up.
The loudness of these groups is their hermetically silent sincerity of conviction, and that only sounds paradoxical.
The absolute inevitability of a locally and globally infinitely diversely influenced development until well into the middle of this century is the core of this conviction, which only takes note of scientific studies and their interpretation.
Political criticism or new ideas or social optimism don't get through because they supposedly disqualify themselves: because they often come from people like me, who won't be walking this planet as long as the young people.
In this way of thinking, self-reflection is weakness in faith and self-criticism is only something for others,
But that's not how it works in a democracy.
The climate crisis is not abstract.
The climate crisis also includes hundreds of millions of people who, for example in China, have been lifted out of absolute, starving poverty by the imperative of economic growth.
Climate crisis, that is when everyone on the planet should have an equal chance of a carefree childhood, a school, a job and a long life through growth.
And yes, if things go wrong, the climate crisis can also be exactly the opposite.
This contradiction makes it so politically complicated, but the climate protectionists want it easy and at any price.
What doesn't fit there is flattened at the top morally under hashtags like #full throttle in the crisis of world rescue.
Let people heat with cake if they don't have any bread.
more on the subject
Report on greenwashing at companies: big climate promises and nothing behind them? By Susanne Götze
Even though I've been reporting on politics as it's usually done for a long time, I haven't lost my respect for it, but many of the blockers have.
This policy has succeeded, for example, in closing the hole in the ozone layer, decoupling energy consumption from economic growth and reducing CO₂ emissions in Germany by 40 percent (since 1990).
If the radical climate protectionists take their own warnings and scenarios seriously, they would have to ensure that we reach zero CO₂ in Germany in just a few years.
But that can never be done with the Bundestag, at best with the Bundeswehr.
And that's why I come to a question for all climate protectionists, from the mild to the wild: if you still (like you) fear to the core (like you) that democracies are not able to get climate change under control, then you should rather have democracy abolish?
Bernd Ulrich from "Zeit" said no to the question in a radio conversation with Jakob Augstein some time ago, before he was asked it.
In essence, he said that when in doubt, he would rather
see the demise of democracy
.
I admit to my shame: I was not sure that he would say it so clearly, because many similarly moved dodge it - and that is their shame.