The Munich climate activist Michael Winter is eating food again after a 31-day hunger strike in Berlin’s government district, after his life had previously been in acute danger. The 61-year-old went to the emergency room at the Schwabinger Klinikum on Wednesday evening because his health had deteriorated. The climate protection activists around Winter want to force a government declaration from Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) in which he admits that the current CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere represents an existential threat to human civilization and therefore must be reduced.
The organizers of the hunger strike “Starve until you are honest” said that Michael Winter had recently suffered from a tightness in his chest. In the hospital he then had “a sudden cardiac arrest that night.” According to the press release, this was caused by “life-threatening low levels of electrolytes in the blood, which could have led to heart failure and eventual death.”
The other climate activists continue their hunger strike
Winter himself also speaks out in the press release: “My personal conclusion is that I have put my life at risk enough to be able to conclude that Olaf Scholz would rather accept deaths than tell people the truth about the climate catastrophe accept.” He is now eating solid food again out of responsibility towards his family, “instead of paying the ultimate price for the greater good.”
The other activists involved in the hunger strike are continuing their action in the government district of Berlin. It was organized by Wolfgang Metzeler-Kick from Munich, who hasn’t eaten anything since March 7th. In a statement, Metzeler-Kick indicated that he would go further than Winter did: “I don’t want to die. But I am ready to put my life on the line so that the population learns the truth about the drama of the climate catastrophe.”