Fridays for Future’s Carla Reemtsma is taking a standoff on Last Generation actions. Mail order company Michael Otto clearly rejects one movement in “Markus Lanz” and praises the other.
The protests of the so-called last generation also polarized “Markus Lanz” on Tuesday. The host asked climate activist Carla Reemtsma from Fridays for Future what she thinks of the sticky campaigns. “What I find particularly frightening is that there are people who feel they have to do just that,” Reemtsma replied. “I don’t want to live in a world where young people feel like I have to do this kind of action that might endanger my own physical health, which definitely exposes me to a lot of hate and anger.”
The guests
- Michael Otto, entrepreneur
- Carla Reemtsma, Climate Activist
- Simon Jäger, labor market economist
- Kathrin Hartmann, freelance journalist, author
However, the spokeswoman for Fridays for Future made it clear: “In every civil society movement we had a broad repertoire of forms of protest, which were not always legal.” She referred to women’s suffrage, civil rights for African Americans or the phase-out of nuclear power: “All of this only happened through widespread protest, which was not always accepted with joy.”
Lanz: climate protest “must hurt too”
Lanz unexpectedly agreed at this point: “It must hurt too, no question.” A few months ago, the ZDF presenter accused a sticky climate demonstrator: “You are blackmailing the country”. Instead, Lanz had Reemtsma confirm numbers in this show. 71 percent of global emissions are caused by just a hundred corporations; ten percent from the Shell oil company alone. “You have to let that melt in your mouth,” said Lanz.
According to Reemtsma, such figures expose the neoliberal misconception that “we can all stop the climate crisis all by ourselves by buying another bamboo toothbrush”. The decisions of the individual consumer are important and would also add up. Ultimately, however, only state regulations could bring about a real turnaround for the industry. “Do we really want to leave the energy supply to a few profit-oriented companies that are currently making billions in profits, where we can’t even intervene politically?” asked Reemtsma.
With Michael Otto, Lanz invited an entrepreneur to his talk show, who advocates such binding rules for the economy. “I would be with Fridays for Future,” replied the “mail order king” when Lanz asked him to choose between the Thunberg movement and the last generation. “Aggressive actions, which are also illegal, draw attention to the action rather than to the issue of climate protection. That doesn’t serve the cause at all,” criticized the long-time CEO of the Otto Group.
Fridays for Future, on the other hand, has also triggered a fundamental rethink in politics, Otto said in recognition of the school strikers. “That got things moving and that on a peaceful basis. You don’t have to get stuck there.” Incidentally, Otto turned 80 at midnight during the broadcast. He was born in 1943 in what was then West Prussia and first came to Bad Segeberg in Schleswig-Holstein as a refugee.
German refugees not welcome
There, the later large businessman did not exactly experience a culture of welcome. “When we children were a bit louder, there was of course a row with the homeowner. Of course, he was nervous too, with all the refugees who were quartered there,” Otto recalled. In Hamburg, his family got a nicer landlord. His father Werner Otto founded a mail order business for shoes there in 1949, which quickly became a flourishing company.
