climate activists
Habeck: Last generation group harms climate protection
An activist from the Last Generation group taped his hand to the street, blocking an intersection. photo
© Swen Pförtner/dpa
Federal Minister of Economics Habeck considers actions of the last generation to be counterproductive. It is important to take as many people as possible with you on the way to better climate protection.
According to Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck, the last generation group’s pasting campaigns are damaging efforts to protect the climate. “This process prevents a majority for climate protection,” said the Green politician at the Evangelical Church Congress in Nuremberg. “It’s not helping with climate protection.”
He also warned against subordinating everything to climate protection. “If we put the climate issue above everything… what does that lead to,” asked Habeck. Energy was also used for the Kirchentag, for screens, lighting and the arrival of tens of thousands of visitors. But would it be better not to hold the Kirchentag, he asked. “The question of guilt basically means that you are unable to act and think.”
“Shouldn’t I have had four sons because then CO2 emissions would be reduced? That’s hopeless,” emphasized the minister. The question must therefore be: “How do we create climate neutrality under the conditions of a functioning society?”
Don’t divide society, take it with you
It is important to take as many people as possible on the way to better climate protection, said Habeck: If politicians stop addressing and taking people with them, don’t work to ensure that there are majorities, then that opens up space for populism.
In this context, he also acknowledged communicative omissions in the debate about his controversial heating law. His approach initially “didn’t get through,” he admitted. But in the meantime one is “back on a path of solution orientation”. Habeck emphasized again: “This is a crucial law.”
The spokeswoman for the last generation, Carla Hinrichs, responded to Habeck’s criticism during a panel discussion: “Since when does the government consider the protest against itself to be right or wrong?”
Shortly before the discussion, members of the Last Generation had glued themselves to the street in front of Nuremberg Central Station. Some of the asphalt around the eight activists was cut out, a police spokesman said. The climate protection group wrote on Twitter about this action: “No and Amen.”