“Smile. You can’t kill them all,” says a sign on the power box in Claus Blohm’s kitchen in the Altes Land near Hamburg. It remains unclear who or what exactly is meant by this. In contrast, it cannot be overlooked: the apple farmer, gray short haircut, leathery tanned skin, looks angry and annoyed – especially when the conversation turns to the federal government.
He had to destroy 70 percent of his harvest this autumn because his apples were attacked by pests. Their larvae used to die in winter, but the warmer temperatures brought about by climate change make them feel good. “I cannot drive away the pests with ecological protective agents,” says the organic farmer.
Blohm, 65, inherited the business from his father, who died at an early age, in the 1970s. In the same decade, the physicist and recently honored Nobel Prize winner Klaus Hasselmann proved that climate change is man-made. Half a century has passed since then, and activists and researchers have increased the pressure on politicians to act, but in Blohm’s eyes Germany is still doing far too little to protect the climate.
He sees his livelihood as a farmer, nature, in danger. That’s why he sued the federal government two years ago. Together with Greenpeace and the Lütke Schwienhorst farming families from the Spreewald and Backsen from the North Sea island of Pellworm, he wanted to legally enforce climate protection. “I had to clear four hectares of cherry trees because of new pests,” said Blohm at the time before the Berlin Administrative Court.
The lawsuit was dismissed. The judges decided in October 2019 that the federal government’s room for maneuver in matters of climate protection must be respected. For Roda Verheyen, lawyer for farming families, this was more of an incentive than a disappointment. “The content of the judgment and the admission of the appeal gave us the courage to continue,” says the lawyer, who has already brought the European Union and the energy giant RWE to court for the climate.
Four months after the first complaint was dismissed, she filed a constitutional complaint with the Federal Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe, although the legislature had tightened climate protection into law at the end of 2019. The climate protection law was “not very ambitious”, Verheyen justified the step that the state was not sufficiently fulfilling its protection obligations for its clients. Younger and future generations expected “dramatic restrictions from the climate crisis”.
Climate change threatens the livelihood of many farmers
The constitutional court called the young members of the farming families: Claus Blohm’s children Franziska and Johannes, Lucas Lütke Schwienhorst from the Spreewald and Sophie, Hannes, Jakob and Paul Backsen from Pellworm. Luisa Neubauer from “Fridays For Future” also joined. “This generation has a right to the future”, explains Roda Verheyen, climate change threatens livelihoods, especially in agriculture.
A first success came in March 2021: The Federal Constitutional Court upheld the complaint, at least in part: Although the state did not violate protective obligations or the climate protection requirement in the Basic Law, the complainants – the youngest was 15 when filing, the oldest 32 years old – were in violates their civil liberties.
On the way to CO₂ neutrality, the Climate Protection Act is postponing high reduction burdens to periods after 2030, wrote the First Senate and called for a concrete plan for the years thereafter. In order to achieve the “Paris goal”, ie to limit the rise in the global temperature average to below two degrees, Germany must do more. The grand coalition made improvements in July: Germany intends to reduce its annual greenhouse gas emissions to 67 percent by 2031 and 88 percent by 2040 below the 1990 level.
For the agricultural economist Hermann Lotze-Campen, head of the “Climate Resilience” department at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), the law is a start. But it still needs to be improved, he says. The introduced CO₂ price of 25 euros today is “a central element, but is currently still too low to reduce emissions quickly enough.”
Climate lawsuits like the constitutional complaint did not solve the real problem, he explains, but they increased the pressure. “Politicians often only act purposefully after court rulings.” That would also have shown the complaints of the German environmental aid in the exhaust gas scandal.
With her participation in the constitutional complaint, Franziska Blohm helped to force the state to amend the Climate Protection Act. But it was never about winning. “With the lawsuit, we wanted to shake politics up,” says the 29-year-old, who helps out with her father twice a week during the harvest season.
Pests and fungal diseases spread at warmer temperatures
Claus Blohm drove the harvest car through the long alleys of his apple orchard. He is now standing in the grass in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt, holding two apples in his hand, representative of his problems: One is covered with gray-brown spots. “Scab,” says Blohm, cuts open the other apple and points to a tunnel system. A pest called codling moth has burrowed its way through the fruit like a mole, rendering it inedible.
“Apple growing in the Altes Land has become a lottery game due to climate change,” says daughter Franziska. Every year her father would face new problems and costs. “As much as I’d like to take over the farm – I’m afraid of what’s to come.” She is studying media studies in nearby Hamburg, while her brother is studying East Asian studies. The father understands that the two are reorienting themselves. But he also wishes that apple cultivation, which has been practiced by the family for many generations, has a future.
His children laugh at a picture on the wall when Blohm is back at the kitchen table at home with the red patterned tablecloth, the falling sun on his neck. Suddenly his cell phone vibrates. “The Backsen children from Pellworm ask if they can help me with the harvest.” He invites you.
A few days later, Hannes, 19, and Paul Backsen, 21, call from Blohm’s lunch table. They see their home island in danger. Pellworm is already one meter below sea level. The dam on which the Backsens’ sheep graze still holds, but the sea level is rising and making storm surges more and more likely. If the dam breaks, the island could fill up like a bathtub.
Hannes Backsen quarrels with German climate policy: “Everyone knows what to do, but nobody does anything. We have to save the climate, otherwise all other human problems will be solved by themselves.” He, too, is unsure whether he would like to take over his father’s arable and beef farm.
Lucas Lütke Schwienhorst is a climate plaintiff who, despite the gloomy future prospects, has taken over his parents’ farm. The trained farmer is 34, keeps dairy cows in Vetschau near Cottbus and grows grain.
With the lawsuits, he wants to make the concrete consequences of the climate crisis public, he says. “People have lost touch with nature, they can’t tell the difference between beech and oak.” The complex crisis can only be solved through education. “You only protect what you know.”
As the temperature increases, there will be more extreme weather events. This changes the farmers’ growing routines. Heat waves and periods of drought are particularly troubling for Lütke Schwienhorst in the Spreewald. Still, he’s confident. In order to prepare, he relies on diversity: “The more different the growing periods of my 15 types of grain, the more likely I will get a good average harvest,” he explains. Millet, for example, is much more productive than traditional crops in hot periods. “We have to adapt to the new conditions, then it’ll work out.”
Climate researcher Lotze-Campen and his colleagues have been advising the government for years. The rethinking among politicians gives him hope: “15 years ago climate protection was an exotic topic, now it is on the agenda.” The committed young generation also makes him confident.
When the air in this country was polluted with sulfur dioxide in the 1970s, politicians got the problem under control through clear emission regulations for power plants, he says. “Climate protection is of course much more complex and has to be solved in global cooperation.” How difficult this is can currently be seen at the climate summit in Glasgow, where the world community is struggling to achieve climate protection goals and compliance.