What is the climate movement about? About the climate? If you think so. Until you start delving deeper into the true goals.
Do you know how much fuel a Leopard uses? 720 liters of diesel per hundred kilometers. Tanks are not only a disaster in terms of peace ethics, they are also climate killers. Every leopard a Lützerath on chains. I am surprised that the climate movement has not yet discovered the issue for itself and is pushing for a speedy end to the war.
But stop. That’s exactly what it says in an article entitled “Climate killer war” in the “Journal for International Politics and Society”, the foreign policy magazine of the Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation, the party foundation of the SPD.
“Bombing of fossil infrastructure leaves behind a mixture of various toxic substances that cause serious environmental damage,” it says. “At the same time, raw materials and resources are being invested by all those involved in the war in rearmament that would be necessary to deal with the climate crisis.” There is only one thing that can help: an immediate ceasefire! The conclusion is that the 1.5 degree target can only be achieved with a ceasefire.
Of course, this is bitter news for all Ukrainians. Armistice means that you have to accommodate Putin. Without far-reaching concessions, he is unlikely to agree to recalling his troops to save the 1.5 degree target. But climate change threatens not only Ukraine, but all of humanity. 43 million against eight billion: that’s the balance. Sorry, dear Ukraine.
It was only a matter of time before pacifism and the environmental movement came together. That’s the great thing about the climate, it goes with everything that’s politically en vogue. Anti-colonialism, anti-capitalism, anti-Semitism: if you look closely, there is no left-wing issue that cannot be given a new lease of life in this way.
Most think that groups like “Fridays for Future” or “Last Generation” are there to stop climate change. That’s what makes the movement so appealing. It is said everywhere that these desperate young people are only fighting to ensure that they also have a livelihood. Even the most hard-nosed cynic gets weak at the knees when it comes to children’s futures.
But is the climate movement really about the climate? I have my doubts about that now. If I were a climate protector, I would be particularly interested in the question of how I can keep our economic system running without driving the temperature on the planet higher and higher.
The fantastic thing is that with nuclear power, mankind has an energy source that is reliable, sufficiently available and climate-neutral. If the activists were only concerned with the climate, one would assume that they would be interested in anything that might offer a way out. But it is not like that. There isn’t even a discussion about reassessing nuclear energy. The only thing there is a requirement to turn off anything deemed too dirty.
By chance I came across a video clip with the entrepreneur and book author Vivek Ramaswamy. Ramaswamy made a lot of money in medical technology before he started writing. His book Woke, Inc. was on the New York Times bestseller list for months.
The actual goal of the climate movement is to get the West to apologize for the sins of the past in order to finally achieve global justice, says Ramaswamy in the video clip. Hence the aversion to nuclear power. The problem with nuclear energy is not that it has failed to live up to expectations. The problem is that she is too good. Once clean energy became available in abundance, there would be no leverage left to push through the anti-Western agenda.
Admittedly, that sounds a bit far-fetched. But if you talk to climate activists for a long time, you get the idea that maybe Ramaswamy is not so wrong after all.
Did you know that the fight for the 1.5 degree target will be decided next to Lützerath in Ramallah? Why is that, you may now ask. Because the fight against climate change can only be won if the Palestinian flag flies wherever Israel is today. Still don’t see what one has to do with the other? Quite simply: Israel is a colonial state and climate justice will only exist once “white supremacy” is broken. Those are not my words, that’s the original sound “LütziBleibt”.
Anti-capitalism is not dead, it has just taken on a new guise. Now an attempt is being made to unhinge the system by shutting off the power to industry. Of course, the fight against the cop state is also announced. “In the medium term, we must abolish the police as the body that primarily defends the interests of a capitalist system,” the anti-coal initiatives said in a statement.
The fact that the demonstrators would be the first to be crushed when the law of the fittest reigns on the streets is one of the many consequences that I don’t seem to have properly considered. It’s one thing to pour tomato soup over paintings and quite another to laugh in the face of a Hells Angel who no longer has to fear the police or justice.
I’m always amazed at the comradely tone in which activists like Luisa Neubauer are met in “Anne Will” or “Maybrit Illner”. No clear word, no critical question. Since I don’t assume that Anne Will also dreams of abolishing capitalism, her courtesy springs from opportunism or ignorance. I’m guessing both.
Of course, the flagship Greens are also spared the question of why she is a member of a group whose umbrella organization calls for bombing terror against civilians. “Yallah Intifada” was a call from “Fridays for Future” just this week. But hey, what can Luisa Neubauer do about the fact that “Fridays for Future” is full of Israel haters? Besides, it’s about the climate!
It is not far from the left-wing idea of justice to the coercive system. The doyen of the climate protection movement, Hans-Joachim Schellnhuber from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, has now proposed assigning every German a fixed CO2 budget. In principle, each person should not be allowed to cause more than three tons of CO₂ per year, so much is considered to be just about tolerable for the global climate. By 2050, emissions should be zero.
At the moment, a German citizen emits ten tons of CO₂ a year. So you can think about how you want to get off it. One cannot rely on insight alone. The details are still unclear: will there be a CO₂ declaration in addition to the tax return? How to control CO₂ offenses? How do you actually measure your own emissions? But it won’t work without supervision.
In a study published in the journal Nature, researchers from Sweden and Great Britain have played out how private emissions trading could be set up via cell phone. To do this, of course, data protection would have to be lifted. In the end it could work like in China. Every movement is recorded and evaluated for environmental impact. Instead of social points, there are climate points.
The tragedy of the modern climate movement is that it would not get through the ballot box with any proposal. How much would be enthusiastic about the medium-term abolition of the police and capitalism? Two percent, three percent? Other movements have already despaired of the intransigence of the masses.
I can understand the unwillingness to follow the climate activists politically. I also have limited faith in people who can’t think of anything else to do than turn off whatever bothers them.
• Read all of Jan Fleischhauer’s columns here.
The readers love him or hate him, Jan Fleischhauer is indifferent to the least. You only have to look at the comments on his columns to get an idea of how much people are moved by what he writes. He was at SPIEGEL for 30 years, and at the beginning of August 2019 he switched to FOCUS as a columnist.
Fleischhauer himself sees his task as giving voice to a world view that he believes is underrepresented in the German media. So when in doubt, against the herd instinct, commonplaces and stereotypes. His texts are always amusing – perhaps it is this fact that provokes his opponents the most.
You can write to our author: By email to j.fleischhauer@focus-magazin.de or on Twitter @janfleischhauer.
