Wednesday December 22, 2021
“We are very spontaneous”
Thunberg wants to put pressure on the traffic light coalition
For weeks, the public debate has mainly centered on the pandemic. But that will change, says Greta Thunberg. The activist announces that “Fridays for Future” will not let up in the coming year either. She is unimpressed by the promises made by the new federal government.
Climate and environmental activist Greta Thunberg wants to push the political decision-makers and also the new federal government in Berlin to significantly more climate protection in the coming year. The pressure must be generated from all sides and awareness of the urgency of the climate crisis must finally be increased, said the Swede in an interview with the German press agency.
After the World Climate Conference in Glasgow, it was initially extremely quiet about climate protection, Thunberg complained. “It feels like everyone who reports on the climate is exhausted and has taken a break.” Maybe people didn’t want to hear about the climate at the moment, but maybe it’s because the media didn’t cover it. “I hope we will talk about it again soon,” said the 18-year-old.
In view of the goal of the German traffic light coalition to bring forward the coal phase-out, which has been set for 2038, Thunberg warned against too much focus on setting points in the future. “We can’t just talk about dates, on that date we will get out of fossil fuels, that date off coal and so on. We have to talk in CO2, we have to talk in CO2 budgets,” she said. “If we carry on as we are now, then we will have used up our CO2 budget before the dates announced. It’s about thinking holistically.”
Coalition agreement does not cause jubilation
The new federal government of Chancellor Olaf Scholz has stipulated in its coalition agreement that the phase-out from coal combustion agreed so far for 2038 should “ideally be brought forward to 2030”. This should succeed through the expansion of renewable energies and the construction of new gas-fired power plants. At the beginning of 2019, the coal commission set up by the then federal government agreed on a compromise on Germany’s coal phase-out in 2038. “Germany wants to burn coal by 2038. That is absolutely absurd,” Thunberg said.
The fact that the Scholz government has committed itself to stronger climate protection does not cause the high school student in Stockholm to immediately cheer. “Well, we have also got a new government in Sweden. That does not necessarily mean that there will be action,” she said, referring to the change of government in her country a month ago. “We are still hopeful and will continue to put pressure on no matter what, whoever is in government.”
“We adapt to everything”
There are still no concrete plans for the actions of the Fridays for Future climate movement, which she initiated, in the new year, partly due to the imponderables of the corona pandemic – and that is one of the movement’s strengths, said Thunberg. “We are very spontaneous. We adapt to whatever happens.” While the corona numbers are rising again, you don’t yet know whether you can gather in large numbers like before the pandemic.
In August 2018, Thunberg sat alone in front of the Reichstag in Stockholm to call on Swedish politicians to do more climate protection. Thanks, among other things, to their clear words and the dissemination through social networks, a global climate movement emerged that has since exerted great pressure on decision-makers. Until the start of the Corona, hundreds of thousands of mostly young people in dozen countries took to the streets for the climate, including a particularly large number in Germany. Due to the pandemic, such large-scale protests were hardly possible any more.