With climate change pushed down the news agenda while Germany tackles an energy crisis and the war in Ukraine, environmental activists are resorting to increasingly flashy stunts to get their message across.
About a dozen activists this week sprayed a black liquid that looked like oil on the Chancellery in Berlin and stood in front of the building with a banner that read: “Save oil, don’t drill.”
Dressed in orange safety vests and hard hats, the protesters were members of the Last Generation (“Last Generation”) – a radical protest group that has become the new face of environmental activism in Germany.
“The government ignored everything else: petitions were written, a million people took to the streets,” said Lina Joansen, a 24-year-old student who took part in the protests.
The activists want the government to promise not to drill for oil in the North Sea.
“We know that fossil fuels can only aggravate the climate catastrophe that is already happening,” says law student Myriam Herrmann, 25.
Six months ago, a new coalition government was elected in Germany with a promise to make climate change one of its top priorities.
The Greens are back in power for the first time in more than two decades, forming a coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD) under Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the liberal FDP.
– Ambitious climate plans –
The Green Party’s economy minister, Robert Habeck, announced an ambitious €60 billion climate investment plan and promised Germany would end coal-fired power generation and generate 80 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030.
But since then, climate concerns have been overshadowed by the war in Ukraine, an acute energy crisis and record inflation.
Germany has accelerated plans to import liquefied natural gas (LNG) by sea, wants to explore new oil and gas deposits in the North Sea and has even decided to reactivate idle coal-fired power plants.
The government has said it is still on track to meet its 2030 climate targets, but protesters are unconvinced.
Herrmann is “incredibly disappointed”, especially by Habeck. “We don’t have time for makeshift solutions,” she said.
Last Generation was formed after a hunger strike last year by activists demanding a law banning supermarkets from destroying unsold groceries.
Earlier this year, small groups of Last Generation protesters blocked busy streets in Berlin by sitting down and sticking their hands to the tarmac. More than 100 were arrested.
A few days after the oil protest, the group used this tactic again when about 65 demonstrators blocked the Frankfurter Tor intersection in Berlin-Friedrichshain.
– ‘legitimate means’ –
Civil disobedience is “an established form of protest in the German environmental movement,” sociologist Michael Neuber told AFP, recalling the anti-nuclear movement of the 1970s and blockades by the Extinction Rebellion in 2019.
Such protests have been overshadowed by the Fridays for Future movement’s massive student demonstrations over the past two to three years, but have made a comeback more recently.
“Civil disobedience attracts more attention than demonstrations,” says sociologist Dieter Rucht.
“I see civil disobedience as a legitimate means of political protest if it’s peaceful,” 27-year-old Green Party politician Deborah Düring told RBB radio this week, claiming to share the activists’ “fear”.
In February, however, many voices within the Green Party had criticized the last generation for blocking the streets of Berlin.
If politicians want the protests to stop, there is a simple solution for Herrmann.
“It’s enough to explain to Scholz and Habeck that they no longer want to promote oil drilling in the North Sea,” she said.
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