Wolfgang Metzeler-Kick: After hospital: climate activist wants to continue hunger strike

After treatment in hospital, climate activist Wolfgang Metzeler-Kick wants to continue his hunger strike for a government statement by Chancellor Olaf Scholz. This was announced by the “Hunger until you are honest” campaign on Tuesday morning. The 49-year-old was taken to a clinic the evening before. The reason was a circulatory collapse after 89 days of hunger strike. However, he stabilized in the clinic after being given an electrolyte solution and returned to the activists’ camp at the Federal Ministry of Economics in Berlin.

Metzeler-Kick explained: “I have already decided: If I go to hospital, I will continue to starve afterwards. I will continue to starve until Scholz finally says what is a fact: There is no remaining CO2 budget.” Metzeler-Kick and three other hunger strikers are demanding a government statement in which the Chancellor should say, among other things, that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is already too high and that there is no CO2 budget left. They are demanding a radical change of course for more climate protection.

Scholz recently appealed to the participants of the hunger strike to call off their action. He emphasized his commitment to climate protection, but did not specifically address the activists’ demands.

Metzeler-Kick began his campaign on March 7th, and the others followed one after the other. He drank some juice every day for the first 78 days, and since then, according to the campaign, he has been on an “absolute hunger strike,” meaning without these carbohydrates, but with liquid.