An eventful year 2021 lies behind us.
The ongoing corona pandemic continues to leave visible traces in all of our lives and is temporarily displacing the ecological emergency as an issue. Connections between the two crises and the debate about species extinction are not recognized. Also a real summer of fire – as the FAZ calls him – can hardly change anything: Turkey, large parts of the Mediterranean region, California and even Siberia are in flames.
However, floods in the Ahr Valley and other areas here in Germany must first destroy lives and 500-year-old churches before the impending ecological catastrophe really finds its way into the political debate.
While half the world is burning, Germany is dealing with a childish election campaign full of personnel debates, ridiculous scandals and strategic low blows. While in In Madagascar, around 1 million people are starving due to a lack of rainfall and it takes another extreme weather event, a flood, to put out the fires, a coalition agreement is being drawn up in Germany. With this, the new federal government is committed to combating the climate crisis - but it is also loud about gaps and a lack of ambition scientific analysis inadequate to preserve our livelihoods.
But there is also a year of hope behind us.
More and more people are committed to preserving nature and safeguarding human lives. With the Citizens' Council on Climate For the first time, the population itself - or a representative number of selected representatives - is advising on how to deal with the climate crisis and agrees on effective measures.
There are also many activist actions and protests against policies that consciously place the right to life behind short-term profit and power interests. Countless climate strikes, the establishment of many forest occupations and climate camps, the blockade of gas infrastructure End of story, nothing to add and the fight for more environmental protection and a change in politics August RiseUp and the protests against the IAA characterize the political summer.
In the election month of September, some people from the last generation in Berlin refused to eat and ultimately drink in protest.
The hunger strike is successful. The hunger strikers implement their demand public conversation with the new Chancellor. The conversation shows that Olaf Scholz does not recognize the urgency of the climate catastrophe. When asked why he went through Secret agreements with the US government and billions in subsidies for fracking promotes and thus a “Genocide in the Global SouthThe Federal Chancellor doesn't know the answer. Scholz finds the hunger strike undemocratic because it is extortionate, but in the conversation he himself mentions figures from the Federation of German Industries - whether the industrial lobby also had to go on hunger strike in order to be able to present its figures?
A wave of solidarity has reached us in the last few months.
The ÖDP expressed solidarity in the course of our “container” campaigns in Berlin and Nuremberg explicitly with our first demand.
Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck as federal chairmen of the Greens have also been with us in the last few days a statement on our demands sent. In it they write that they share our goals and want to advocate for the implementation of “reduction in food waste and restructuring of agriculture”.
We welcome the fact that the Greens, as a government party, also want to support our concerns.
Unfortunately, there is no specific mention of a food-saving law and 100% regenerative agriculture in 2030 is rejected.
This is far from enough to secure our food supply and is therefore not adequate our demands, which correspond to those of the Citizens' Climate Assembly, their implementation in According to a representative survey, 80% of the population supports it.
While following us Statement from leading climate experts If there are still three to four years left to stop the climate catastrophe, the new federal government is promoting electric cars instead of public transport, industry instead of regenerative agriculture, fracking, natural gas deliveries and further brown coal mines instead of the promised energy transition and thus preferring to promote the interests of a few rich people instead of the billion people who through the ecological crisis and the associated food and water wars for their survival will have to flee from their homeland.
The federal government has so far failed to implement even the simplest measures.
There is still no Food Saving Act introduced as the simplest emergency measure that is effective, can be implemented immediately and doesn't cost anyone any money, even though the federal government is calling for it Page 45 of the coalition agreement aims to combat food waste.
We are pleased with the support from parts of the government too.
But we were also very clear that if at least our first, very easily implementable demand was not met at the end of the year, we would cause permanent disruption with massive civil disobedience from January until the demands were met. However, none of the demands were met.
However, lip service is no longer enough in 2022.
It is this deadly form of politics that we must and will put an end to.
Because if we do not implement what is necessary politically, our lives will suddenly and catastrophically change - the consequences will be devastating for all of us.
We are the last generation that can stop this ecological catastrophe.
And we dare to rebel.