Climate activists are becoming more radical: a social scientist finds protests justified

“Last generation” paralyzes BER

Social scientist on the radicalization of the climate protests: “Such actions can successfully change politics”

Climate activists from the environmental movement “Last Generation” are sitting on the street and blocking traffic.

With the “Last Generation” the climate protests have become more rigorous. In fact, the climate movement is becoming more radical, says social scientist Ilona Otto. She still thinks the protests are justified.

At first they only demonstrated with self-painted posters. Now they soil works of art, stick themselves to the streets and shut down airports. “The climate movement is becoming radicalized,” Ilona Otto stated in an interview with the editorial network Germany (RND). She researches the social effects of climate change at the Wegener Center for Climate and Global Change at the University of Graz and finds: The protests of climate activists are justified.

“We simply do not react enough to the consequences of climate change,” she said. “It’s all going too slowly. Policy makers and companies still have priorities other than climate change.”

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Otto: “Take protests seriously”

Otto hopes that protest actions like those of the “Last Generation” will further sensitize and shake people up. “We should take these protests seriously and think about the reasons for these actions.”

Most recently, the “Last Generation” briefly shut down operations at the Berlin Capital Airport BER, causing a stir. “There are enough examples from the past to show that such actions can successfully change society and politics,” said Otto. She refers, for example, to the women’s movements or the protests by farmers in several countries such as the Netherlands.

Actions by climate activists cause trouble

So far, the protests have mainly caused dissatisfaction among the population. The climate activists are now referred to as “road blockers”, “museum rioters” and “criminal offenders”.

Social scientist Otto also observes that people react angrily to the actions of the climate movement. However, she argues: “The roads to which members of the ‘last generation’ are stuck could also be blocked by wildfires or floods, as we are already seeing in some parts of the world. And in the future this will happen even more often due to climate change.”

Read the whole interview here: www.rnd.de/wissen/frau-otto-wie-Radical-darf-klimaprotest-sein-PT44Z3KALJFTNMB5H2KNTXRMVA.html

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