Climate activists have to pay for the police themselves

At 7.45 a.m., shortly before the first day of school after the Christmas holidays, “traffic-calmed zones”, as the activists called them, were created in front of school buildings on Burggasse, Gymnasiumstrasse and Roßauer Lände. According to the police, there were “extensive traffic delays”.

Use must be paid for

A blockade on Wiedner Hauptstrasse was prevented by officials before it was implemented, police spokeswoman Barbara Gass reported. The three other non-registered meetings were officially dissolved and traffic was allowed to open again after around 45 minutes. A total of 14 people were involved in the blockades. Gass explained that 38 reports were placed under the Assembly Act, the Security Police Act and the Road Traffic Act. Furthermore, the activists will be charged for the costs of the operation according to the Security Police Act.

There were no reasons for arrests during the Monday morning operations, so the climate protectionists involved are likely to continue their campaigns in Vienna announced for the whole week in the coming days. “We’ll be back tomorrow,” tweeted the “Last Generation” after the blockades ended in the morning. After a break of several weeks in its road blockades in Vienna, the organization announced that it would hold a wave of disruptive actions in the federal capital from Monday. Above all, the participants wanted to ensure that motorized traffic came to a standstill in places by sticking it to various lanes. Demonstrators from groups from Graz, Linz and Innsbruck had also announced their participation in the actions.

Photo gallery: Climate activists started with a wave of blockades in Vienna

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In a broadcast on Monday morning, the organization called on the federal government to “finally take its own climate goals seriously and immediately implement the simplest, cheapest measures such as 100 km/h on the autobahn”. However, the governing party ÖVP also described the blockades in a broadcast as “irresponsible” and “sabotage, which we as a people’s party strongly condemn”. This is “not a trivial offense”, emphasized ÖVP General Secretary Christian Stocker. “These obvious professional demonstrators are taking our society hostage.” The Viennese FPÖ leader Dominik Nepp also demanded “custody for climate chaos” and a related adjustment of the criminal law.

According to experts, it will not be possible to achieve the Paris climate goals without rapid and far-reaching measures such as stopping the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. The implementation of the goal of limiting the average global temperature increase to well below two degrees, if possible to 1.5 degrees, compared to the pre-industrial age is being implemented much too slowly by many countries, emphasizes the scientific community. Austria is also in default.

The most recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published last year again warned of the “red lights” of the climate crisis that is already having an impact. Exceeding this threatens to turn the earth into a planet uninhabitable for humans in the future. According to various calculations, Austria emits an above-average number of greenhouse gases per capita and is well above the average for the world population. According to the Federal Environment Agency alone, 830,000 tons of climate-damaging CO2 per year could be avoided by driving at a speed of 80 instead of 100 on open country roads and at a speed of 100 instead of 130 on motorways.

A climate protection law has also been missing in Austria for 739 days. Negotiations on this are still ongoing, and a solution has long awaited coalition implementation. The ÖVP has so far had little or nothing to do with some of the demands of the Greens, such as anchoring the climate goals in the constitution or creating binding force for the federal and state governments. ÖVP climate spokesman Johannes Schmuckenschlager said in November that the climate protection law was not “top priority”.

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