Germany's growing climate movement demanding action

"Why study, if our future is being destroyed?" This sign features a sentiment shared by increasing numbers of German students, who have joined young people worldwide in using Friday school strikes to call for action on climate change. The movement was inspired by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who began her protests alone in front of the Swedish parliament in August 2018.

With the 2015 Paris climate accord, nearly all of the world's countries committed to limiting global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, preferably 1.5 degrees (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), by 2100. The hope is that this target will prevent the worst effects of climate disasters. Concerned by the dire predictions from climate scientists, more and more people have called for immediate action.

Despite urgent warnings, politicians have dragged their heels on important climate decisions. It's become clear that Germany will miss its targets for 2020. Climate protection was an important factor in the European elections in late May, with the Greens winning more than 20% of the vote in Germany alone, more than double previous results. Among 18-24-year-olds, 34% backed the party.

Germany's climate movement is fighting on many fronts. In recent years, activists have fought to preserve Hambach Forest in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, building treehouses to prevent the old-growth forest from being felled to make way for the mining of lignite, or brown coal. Energy giant RWE has launched legal action, and police have cleared the camp several times.

In September 2018, a few days after the camp was removed again, a court ruling suspended the clearing of the forest until late 2020, after a lawsuit by environmental group BUND. RWE has argued that the forest has to be cut in order to ensure the coal necessary for Germany's electricity supply. Around 50,000 activists celebrated the victory.

Protests organized by groups such as Ende Gelände have increasingly been making headlines. Thousands of young activists have come out to staged events, blocking railway tracks used to deliver coal to power plants near Cologne and occupying huge coal excavators, as seen here in the open-pit mine in the east German town of Welzow in 2016.

In January 2019, after seven months of negotiations, a coal commission set up by the federal government to work out Germany's plans to phase out coal power released its findings. It recommended that Germany should continue coal mining until 2038, at the latest —far too late for the country to meet the targets of the 2015 Paris climate accord.

An increasing number of young people in Germany are demanding that the government find a way to meet the 1.5-degree target. The emerging Fridays for Future movement has been getting support from longtime environmentalists, teachers, academics and parents. They have called for all German coal-fired power plants to be shut down by 2030, and for renewable energy initiatives to be vastly expanded.