Most Fridays, young people demonstrated for the climate. Now Fridays for Future is changing its strategy: it should be more about concrete climate protection measures – and about democracy.
The climate movement Fridays for Future wants to insist more on the concrete implementation of climate protection measures and also work to protect democracy. Activist Luisa Neubauer said on Thursday in Berlin: “We see that we no longer have to fight for climate as a headline, but now we have to work more concretely to implement it.” Fridays for Future will also continue to accompany the anti-right demonstrations that have been going on for weeks.
The climate protection movement, together with the Verdi union, is calling for nationwide demonstrations on March 1st. This is intended to build pressure for a radical change in transport and better working conditions in local transport. “Democracy also breaks down where people feel left alone, where they no longer feel welcomed because there is no connection to them in rural areas,” said Pauline Brünger from Fridays for Future Germany. “It also falls apart where, after years of promises, climate money is still not paid out to provide relief.”
According to the Traffic Light Coalition’s plans, climate money should compensate for the additional burden on citizens caused by rising CO2 prices when refueling and heating with fossil fuels. However, it is controversial whether and when the coalition will implement this.
Neubauer: FFF plant Europawahlkampagne
Brünger reiterated the call for an “end to the federal government’s austerity measures”. There must be a large investment package for climate protection and social cohesion. “It can’t be the case that the money isn’t there to expand public transport,” she said. “It cannot be the case that in these times, in the struggle for distribution of the budget, we end up making savings in natural climate protection, i.e. in protecting, for example, the seas and the moors.” Continuing to defend the debt brake in the name of the young generation is disingenuous. The debt brake anchored in the Basic Law only provides for a very limited net borrowing for the federal budget.
With a view to the upcoming European elections and the three state elections in the eastern German states of Brandenburg, Saxony and Thuringia, Neubauer said that it was primarily about mobilizing young people. Fridays for Future is planning a European election campaign.
In August 2018, the then 15-year-old Swedish student Greta Thunberg sat down in front of her school for the first time and went on strike for climate protection – and thus launched the Fridays for Future movement. Thunberg also got students in Germany to take to the streets to protest against climate change, usually on Fridays instead of going to school.
