Climate crisis: Fridays for Future demonstrates at UN climate negotiations

The climate protection movement Fridays for Future is planning protests during the ongoing interim negotiations in Bonn for the next world climate conference. Today they want to “remind the fossil parts of politics, finance and business that the age of coal, oil and gas is over,” said the activist Luisa Neubauer of the German Press Agency in Berlin.

While the climate crisis is escalating unmistakably, lobbyists for oil, coal and gas are trying to defuse climate targets, soften language and extend fossil fuel business models under the guise of green promises. “But we won’t allow that.”

Scholz should “correct the fossil course”

Neubauer said there should be no further financing for new oil, gas and coal projects – neither from banks nor from states. “Instead, we need a global target for the expansion of renewable energies.” This is the only way to halve the climate-damaging greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 and prevent the worst climate catastrophes, said the 27-year-old, who is also a member of the Greens. “We only have seven years left for that.” All states are responsible. And Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) also has a duty to “correct his fossil course”.

Six months before the next world climate conference COP28 in Dubai, ten-day interim negotiations began on Monday in Bonn. The negotiations are rated as particularly difficult because the host United Arab Emirates is not expected to take any steps to end energy production from oil and gas.

The goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees compared to the pre-industrial period is considered increasingly unrealistic in view of the sluggish climate protection efforts around the world. Greenhouse gases such as CO2 released when burning gas, oil and coal are the main cause of global warming and its fatal consequences such as droughts, heat waves, hurricanes, floods and rising sea levels.