The climate activists from Scientist Rebellion and Debt for Climate received support from church circles on Friday. The Jesuit priest and doctor of social ethics Jörg Alt took part in a traffic blockade at Stachus. Alt took to the streets as a kind of representative for 90 theologians and Christians who expressed their solidarity with the demonstrators with a written appeal.
Since October 10, activists have been drawing attention to the climate crisis with campaigns nationwide, and since this week also in Munich. On Friday, the Palace of Justice was the scene of an action, at the intersection of Sonnenstrasse and Prielmayerstrasse, a dozen people blocked the road. As part of the campaign, the Bavarian Minister of Justice Georg Eisenreich should also be given a message before he left for the CSU party conference in Augsburg: “The state government is forcing us to protest because of their inadequate and wrong action in the face of the climate catastrophe,” explained Jörg Alt.
The action began exactly 100 seconds before noon – that’s the time left on the symbolic doomsday clock. Nuclear scientists set them up to indicate the nearness of a global catastrophe. In an open letter published on Friday, more than 1,000 academics from 50 countries once again pointed out that the global goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees can no longer be achieved.
In a kind of lecture, Jörg Alt and ecotrophologist Cornelia Huth tried to explain the background and context of their concerns to passers-by. Huth hoped that “the form of protest would not be discussed, but rather the content”. As expected, this did not work.
Police let activists read to the end
The drivers, who were slowed down by the activists at the traffic lights, honked their horns and complained about the forced stop. But it wasn’t just because of the traffic noise that Alt and Huth were hard to understand, even though they used a megaphone: they simply spoke too softly to be heard by a larger public. Only the student Luca Thomas could be heard clearly, he explained: “We don’t like to disturb, but we feel compelled to do so because all other means have been exhausted.”
The police let the activists do their thing until they finished their lectures. Then they were taken off the road. Only Jörg Alt and one other demonstrator had to be detached, they had glued themselves to the asphalt. All activists were taken to police headquarters to be identified and reported on suspicion of coercion in traffic and violations of the assembly law.