climber
Reinhold Messner rejects blockades by climate activists
Reinhold Messner has been fighting against environmental destruction and climate change for decades. photo
© Roland Weihrauch/dpa
Reinhold Messner and Arved Fuchs are passionate about the environment and against climate change. But they don’t like radical forms of protest like blocking streets. On the contrary.
The extreme mountaineer and author Reinhold Messner (78) rejects the blocking of roads by sticking activists as a means of climate protest. “It creates opposite emotions in people,” said Messner of the German Press Agency. The founder of the museum and former MEP is thus in line with the Schleswig-Holstein polar researcher and author Arved Fuchs, who had already criticized such actions in January. In 1989/90, both of them were the first people to cross Antarctica on foot.
According to Messner, people don’t believe that people who are stuck on the streets want to enlighten. “People know they just make terror.” Anyone who is blocked on the street and misses appointments due to such climate stickers does not say that it is necessary to change something. “Then I say, please leave me alone with your forms of protest.”
From Messner’s point of view, something else is needed: “We have to get to the people with science and stories to get them to the point where they help to slow down and stop global warming.
Fuchs had told the dpa that he didn’t think it was good for works of art to be smeared. “I don’t think it’s good to get stuck either. “But I can understand the anger of young people.” They had the feeling that they were not being listened to, said the 69-year-old. Messner and Fuchs have been giving lectures and books since decades for the protection of the environment and the climate.