Exactly two years ago, the Last Generation group began its road blockades for more climate protection. For a while the activists made a big fuss. Now it has become quieter. Permanently?
When angry farmers blocked roads in early January, the climate protest group Last Generation was there again. With cardboard tractors. Once again activists glued themselves to the road, this time with slogans like: “Listen to us, we have tractors!” It was ironic, but there was also frustration. “We wonder why our government is so much more open to farmers’ protests than to those of the climate justice movement,” said Lina Johnsen, one of the group’s spokespeople.
Exactly two years ago, on January 24, 2022, the Last Generation began its roadblocks for a radical climate change. There were also protests in museums, stadiums and ministries. The Berlin police alone counted 550 actions last year, and the capital’s public prosecutor’s office has now conducted 3,700 cases. At times, half of the country was upset with the activists, with some suspecting them of being future “climate RAF.” But things have been noticeably quieter around the last generation for some time now.
It is in the shadow of the loud farmers’ protests and now also the large demonstrations against right-wing extremism. She canceled her next planned “mass blockade” on February 3rd in favor of an action against the right. Is the air out of the movement? Not quite yet, says Berlin protest researcher Dieter Rucht. “But the movement is stagnating, and that means that we can expect a leveling off in the future.”
Last-generation founders are retiring
In fact, things seem to have been going wrong internally since autumn 2023. There was talk of problems on last-generation Telegram channels, mostly in somewhat cryptic terms. At the beginning of November it was announced that co-founder Henning Jeschke was leaving the management team and wanted to become more active internationally. Shortly afterwards, the next withdrawal: “This morning Lea Bonasera decided to resign from her roles and leave the campaign,” explained the Last Generation. “The news really upset us.”
Glued, sprayed, walked
With God’s blessing and scientific solidarity: The last generation will not leave Berlin in peace
Bonasera and Jeschke were the two who went on a week-long hunger strike in the summer of 2021 to win a conversation with the future Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD). Now a new “core team” has taken over. “The current development is part of a foreseeable exhaustion and the realization that one cannot continue with the same intensity in the long term,” says protest researcher Rucht. “But there are also doubts about what the whole thing achieved.” The climate issue was kept on the agenda. “But no breakthrough has been achieved in terms of climate protection.”
The mood has changed
Quite the opposite: at least in public opinion the issue has lost ground. In the summer of 2021, 68 percent of those surveyed in the ZDF “Politbarometer” said that politicians were doing too little to protect the climate. For 22 percent it was just right, for six percent it was too much. Almost two years later, in April 2023, in the same survey, only 48 percent said that too little was being done to protect the climate. 23 percent said “just right,” but for 25 percent it was too much.
The mood in the country had changed. While in 2021 68 percent of 2,000 respondents to the Kantar Institute expressed fundamental support for the climate and environmental movement, in May 2023 it was only 34 percent. Only eight percent understood the roadblocks of the last generation. “This protest is preventing a majority for climate protection,” complained Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens) at the Evangelical Church Congress in 2023. “It is driving people away.”
“Traffic light climate policy is anti-social”
The last generation vehemently contradicts this. The traffic lights themselves are responsible for any setbacks, says activist Theo Schnarr, who has been taking part in blockades since 2021. “The traffic light’s climate policy is simply socially unfair. If it increases CO2 prices but does not introduce the promised climate money, then that is massively unfair.”
However, the 32-year-old sees the outcome of his own protests as positive. “We have achieved a shift in how the issue is talked about.” There is no longer any talk of “climate terrorists”. Relatives and acquaintances wondered why someone like him, a friendly person and a doctoral student in biochemistry, was stuck on the street.
The current rest phase of the last generation is more of a breather for new things, says Schnarr. “This is currently in the works.” In any case, he himself will continue. Because the consequences of global warming were simply stark in 2023.
“Climate change continues unabated”
Globally, 2023 was the hottest year since records began. Storm Daniel, with its extreme rainfall, was the deadliest to date in Africa. Hurricane Otis over Mexico is considered an unprecedented event, according to French researchers. In Germany too, the heavy rain this winter – with flood alarms in many regions – could be related to global warming. “Climate change continues unabated,” warned Tobias Fuchs, climate and environmental director at the German Weather Service, at the turn of the year.
Climate research agrees that radical political changes will have to be made within this decade in order to contain global warming to a tolerable level. This refers to the goal agreed in Paris in 2015 to limit global warming to as much as 1.5 degrees compared to pre-industrial times. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), greenhouse gas emissions would have to be reduced by 48 percent by 2030 compared to 2019.
That seems hardly possible, because CO2 emissions are not decreasing worldwide, but are still increasing. Emissions are falling in Germany, but the government is still chasing its own targets. There seems to be a great temptation to give up – or simply to deny the human contribution to climate change, as the AfD, which is so strong in surveys, is doing.
Activist Schnarr hopes that the majority will not give up but will take action. “Everyone now has to ask themselves the question: “Do I accept it like that?” or, thinking further, “What will I tell my children in 20 years about what I did in these crucial years?”, when all the facts are on the table. ” The temperature increase in this country is already an average of 1.6 degrees.