“It’s not your fault that the world is the way it is. It would only be your fault if it stays that way,” says the jukebox that the man in the light brown cap is pushing in front of him on the pram. People are walking in front of, behind and next to him, a colorful mix of young and old. Here a father with a baby in front of his stomach, there an elderly couple, at the beginning of the train two young girls carry a large banner with the inscription “Global Climate Strike”. In the end, two girls walk, their banners reading “Coal Burns Our Future.”
The afternoon sun warms the faces of the people who march through the old town of Wolfratshausen on Friday afternoon to demonstrate for the climate and peace. The group has just crossed the Loisach when the man in the light brown cap calls out in English: “What do we want?” The crowd replies loudly, “Climate justice!” He asks, “When do we want that?” “Now!” shout the others. On the raft canal, the man interrupts the music to address the crowd: “It’s great that you’re all here. There’s a lot of us today – not just in Wolfratshausen, but all over the world!” Millions of people around the world took to the streets on Friday for the “Global Climate Strike”; almost 130 of them gathered in Wolfratshausen.
The demand: Energy embargo for peace and the climate
“We’re here, we’re loud because you’re stealing our future,” chanted the crowd as they turned onto Bahnhofstrasse. “They don’t want to hear us, but we’ll be loud, they want to ignore us, but we’ll stand there,” a song came out of the speakers beforehand. In the middle of the crowd, a man in a black pullover holds up a cardboard sign that reads: “Gas, oil, coal finances war and injustice.” With the protest march on Friday, they also want to send a signal against the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.
When the crowd arrived at Marienplatz, the man in the brown cap explained that this war and the climate crisis are closely intertwined. David von Westphalen holds his manuscript in one hand and the microphone in the other and speaks to the assembled crowd. The “fossil war” must come to an end, he calls. “If you look over Wolfratshausen, you see chimneys everywhere, in which the Russian natural gas is burned.” Alternative, renewable energy sources have been around for a long time. “As long as we buy Russian natural gas, we’ll help finance the war in Ukraine.” He calls for more wind turbines in the region – also “as a sign of our independence from Russian gas”.
The demonstrators demanded an end to the Russian war in Ukraine.
(Photo: Hartmut Pöstges)
The speaker scolds politics and individual politicians a bit, calls their actions “irresponsible”, waves his manuscript and warns: “The Paris climate agreement with the 1.5 degree target must be observed.” The bystanders applaud. Von Westphalen has made it clear that he has to “release his anger,” he says. They all have to use their anger together, he shouts into the microphone, to fight for climate protection. Then he hands it over to the man in the black sweater.
Jan Reiners speaks much more calmly and analytically. “In Bavaria, we are 90 percent dependent on Russian gas. That’s even more than in the rest of Germany.” Since the city council, like many other municipalities, declared a climate emergency in 2019, far too little has happened, says Reiners. There is a lack of implementation of climate protection. “We need a climate council for Wolfratshausen.”
“Why aren’t the others angry?”
Because the climate crisis, Reiners explains after his speech, must also be solved locally. With the demonstration, which von Westphalen and he organized with the “Wolfratshausen for Future” alliance, they want to set an example. As a scientist, he has long dealt with the effects of the climate crisis. “Here in Wolfratshausen, too, there could soon be flooding like in the Ahr valley,” he says. Such natural disasters would become more frequent in the future. “We still have the chance to change something,” says Reimers. His alliance calls on politicians to prioritize combating the climate crisis, specifically to promote photovoltaics, hydropower, wind energy and geothermal energy and to tackle the mobility transition.
At every city council meeting, says David von Westphalen, activists from the alliance stand in front of the Loisachhalle. “Almost all politicians walk past us. You feel ignored.” That makes me angry. A woman approaches, her name is Margarete Moulin, she ran with the demonstration and is also a member of “WOR for Future”https://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/wolfratshausen/.”What I don’t understand: why aren’t the others furious?” She would wish for more participants in climate demonstrations in these times. At the previous protest march in September 2021, 240 people came, almost twice as many. “It’s worth demonstrating,” says Moulin. “I don’t understand this civic apathy.”
In rural areas in particular, people are confronted with the effects of climate change, see the bark beetle and feel the water shortage. “The dry March hits the farmer, hits the forester.” The energy transition, explains Moulin, must be solved in a decentralized manner, especially with the mobility transition. “It doesn’t take place in the federal government, but locally. We need a participatory turnaround,” Moulin demands in order to overcome the climate crisis. The sun is now low over the parish church of St. Andreas, the last demonstrators have made their way home. A song rings out in her ears: “It would only be your fault if the world stayed like this.”