It started with Angela Merkel receiving Greta Thunberg and three other representatives of climate activists in the Chancellery. It was August 2020 and the Chancellor gave the school strikers official legitimacy for their actions. On this occasion, the head of government even put compulsory schooling into perspective by pointing out that there were “other considerations”.
The traffic light government continues the fatal example, but now it’s even worse. The Federal Minister of Transport gave his credit to the supposedly “last generation” climate stickers. What a fatal signal: You only have to block the road and keep people from working – at least that – and you get an appointment with the minister.
“Last generation” at Wissing: What the climate stickers pull off is blackmail
But that’s not all: The climate stickers, which get on the nerves of thousands of drivers and whose criminal actions cost a lot of citizens a lot of money, are talking about a continuation of the ministerial talks, about a second round.
What is Volker Wissing thinking? And does the former general secretary of his liberal party believe that he would be doing the FDP a favor by doing so? And if so – which one? So far we have considered the FDP to be a party based on the rule of law, now we have to see how negligently one of its ministers deals with this valuable trademark.
What the climate stickers pull off is blackmail. Since when has the German constitutional state been negotiating with blackmailers? And what about? Is the FDP now giving in to the speed limit because the activists were able to convince the liberal Minister of Transport of its climate-friendly effect?
Unlike a federal minister, the climate stickers are not legitimized by anything but themselves. In the name of an allegedly imminent end of the world, they have authorized themselves to severely restrict the freedom rights of citizens. That’s why they are now on trial and are being sentenced to some severe penalties, and that’s right.
How should a court still convict the climate blackmailers if they have a “date” with the minister the next day?
However, a liberal minister in particular makes the judges look old: How should a court still convict the climate blackmailers if they can ask the man from the judiciary what the whole thing is about, because the next day they have a “date” with the minister in Berlin? What does the Federal Minister of Justice, also an FDP man, think?
If there is one task for Berlin politics and its top representatives in relation to the climate glue, then this: to address the increasingly authoritarian tendency of this new social movement. The activists think very little of the representative democracy that has been tried and tested for 75 years now. That’s why they want a clever social council for the stupid democracy – yes, what: put it aside, or is it actually superior?
The members of this social council should be drawn from all social groups – drawn, you have to imagine that. All the rules of democratic, transparent co-determination by voters would simply be overridden by a random assembly.
When the climate movement says “the” science, they always mean “one” of the sciences
And then: A society is more than the addition of its groups. The group-related identity politics, which the Greens in particular have made their trademark, leads – see self-determination law – to an over-representation of minorities.
The social council, as envisaged by climate activists who are averse to the rule of law, would first be classified by science, i.e. brought into line with the “last generation”, whereby science is consequently exclusively climate science. There is no mention of social science that could deal with the social consequences of climate policy. Not even from economics, which could make forecasts about what a forced climate policy could do to Germany as an industrial country.
When the climate movement says “the” science, they always mean “one” of the sciences. And here is the root of the problem: a society has many problems, and climate change is one of them. It’s also an important one. But not the only one. And democracy is about balancing different interests, not subordinating a society to a single goal. Incidentally, below one, which cannot even be achieved in Germany.
Volker Wissing should not have given these presumptuous people a platform
The rigor, the relentlessness and certainty of truth with which the climate stickers appear on German talk shows is in stark contrast to the potential impact of the measures they are demanding. And more and more people understand that too. In the meantime, it is highly controversial whether those who need the climate use their concerns or harm them. There is much to suggest that they are driving climate protection, which, like everything else in a democracy, depends on the support of the population, to the wall.
Climate protection will only succeed if people feel like it. If you show them what solutions can look like. What they can contribute themselves (this worked well when it came to saving energy last winter). Robert Habeck is currently experiencing the consequences of climate protection being combined with threats and repression in his family, pardon me: economics ministry.
If the climate activists were a party, they would fail miserably at the five percent hurdle. Volker Wissing should not have given these presumptuous people a platform.
