Climate: Fridays For Future: Party election programs are not enough

The climate protection organization Fridays for Future has criticized the parties’ climate policy plans for the upcoming federal election. At a press conference in Berlin, one of the movement’s spokespersons, Carla Reemtsma, accused the SPD of not mentioning the phase-out of coal, oil and gas in its election program. “Instead, over the past few years, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has pushed ahead with fossil fuel projects again and again,” said Reemtsma.

She accused the Union of refusing any responsibility for climate policy, for example by rejecting the ban on combustion engines. According to Reemtsma, the Greens are the clearest when it comes to climate goals, “but they would be much more credible if they were not questioned by their own candidate for chancellor, as he did, for example, with the coal phase-out in 2030.”

Fridays for Future also made its own climate policy demands. These include, among other things, a gas phase-out by 2035 or a fund for protection against the consequences of climate change. This should be financed by taxing fossil fuel companies.

With a view to the voting behavior of young people in the upcoming federal election, Luisa Neubauer, also a spokesperson for the organization, emphasized that politicians are not paying enough attention to their problems. “It’s a bit of a lie that after every election we see how democratic politics are astonished by the fact that young people who haven’t had a math lesson in three years don’t feel seen or heard by politics.” On February 14th, Fridays for Future wants to demonstrate again nationwide before the federal election.