I don’t know if you’re sometimes on Twitter, where it’s so nice to listen to the roar of the waves of indignation. I can’t recommend it unreservedly because it’s easy to get tempted to get upset. About the outrage or about the cause or simply about the many crazy people in the world and especially on Twitter, it doesn’t really matter, anger is definitely not healthy, and anyone who wasn’t angry about something on Twitter wasn’t there.
In any case, in the past few days it would have been better to stay away from Twitter and television at the same time, because then you would have missed how Markus Lanz said very strange things about paintings in his talk show to an activist from the “last generation”. but could save them from the end of the world in the Dolomites instead of throwing mashed potatoes at them (do you sometimes have the feeling that everything is just getting more and more crazy? Or does it just seem that way because I’ve been scrolling through Twitter?).
CO₂ emissions are increasing instead of decreasing, none of that can be true
Of course, that was a wonderful reason for many to get upset about Lanz for a change instead of about the activists and their sticking, who actually appeared to be the voice of reason in comparison, which can also give you food for thought. Because how exactly all the superglue is supposed to save the climate, when everyone is always just getting excited about the actions (you notice, I’m running out of synonyms for excitement, that’s also a worrying symptom), has not yet become clear to me, at least not yet .
On the other hand, one could really despair every day from morning to night and actually also at night: that global CO₂ emissions are likely to rise again this year instead of falling, as the researchers from the Global Carbon Project report today in their annual balance sheet. We can’t even get the direction right, none of this can be true, and no, the current climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh won’t change anything in the short term. But of course it’s more pleasant to be indignant about Markus Lanz, who accuses young activists of a lack of optimism.
My colleague Nele Pollatschek writes that the activists who stick to the streets are the most optimistic of us all: “They believe that a lot can still be prevented if we just shout out loud enough.”
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