German car lovers want to challenge Fridays for Future
It all started with a disgruntled Facebook post in late September. Christopher Grau, an expert car mechanic, was fed up with what he sees as hysteria around climate change, which he felt was being exacerbated by the constant protests.
His post found many people who agree with him, mostly fellow car enthusiasts.
“We asked ourselves: ‘How many car drivers are we out here? Let’s just make a Facebook group,” he said. “It totally escalated.”
Within a few days, the group had racked up more than half a million likes. Its name: “Fridays for Hubraum.” That is German for “Fridays for Cubic Capacity.”
An alternative to Fridays for Future?
The name is an obvious reference to Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future movement, which has struck a chord in Germany. On November 29, Germans poured into the street for the fourth time this year to join a global strike for climate action.
For these mostly young protesters, the government’s new package aimed at combating climate change, which envisages more expensive flights, cheaper train tickets and a CO2 traffic charge, is too little too late.
Read more: Marches worldwide ahead of UN talks
Protesters rallied at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate for the fourth global Fridays for Future strike this year
Sustainable cars
Grau’s movement brands itself as a rational response to Fridays for Future. He says it is not a climate-change denial group, as many people, including a wave of now-expelled far-right members, thought in the beginning.
Fridays for Hubraum also wants to protect the climate, he says, but without forcing Germans to give up their private automobility.
That means no taxes on CO2 usage, no low emission zones in city centers and no speed limit on the highways — although traffic causes almost 21% of all CO2 emissions in Germany.
Why not focus on improving technologies that make cars more sustainable instead, asks Grau. Or work harder to target those sectors with higher CO2 emissions, such as the energy industry.
When cars are a necessity
Visiting Grau’s car workshop in Nordkirchen, a small municipality in western Germany, it becomes clear why cars are so important to him. It goes beyond mere professional passion. In Nordkirchen, as in most smaller German cities, cars are ingrained in the culture.
Grau’s “Beast Factory” is about 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) from the closest train station. But the only direct bus connection is a “Bürgerbus,” a minibus citizens have organized to make up for the gaps in public transport. Volunteer drivers serve the route every two hours, going past sheep grazing on fields, quiet neighborhoods and, of course, a driving school.
Tuning cars is Christopher Grau’s profession, but also a passion
“You need a car here, or you can’t get out,” Grau said.
Whether Fridays for Hubraum supporters want to protect their cars out of pure necessity or because they want to maintain a hobby is up for debate.
But Grau says his issue with climate protesters is that they single out car drivers when many Germans do not have an alternative to get to work or go to the supermarket.
Read more: Tomorrow’s transportation will be electric and shared
Tackling the CO2 tax
In his opinion, a CO2 traffic charge, as was planned in the latest government climate package, would make little difference and hurt only the most vulnerable.
“The people who drive cars as a hobby won’t be bothered at all by the three extra cents they have to pay per liter. The low earners are the ones who will feel it,” he said.
Read more: German advisers recommend CO2 pricing as ‘central instrument’
The main suggestion made by Grau’s group is that alternative fuels like hydrogen fuel or biodiesel should be adopted. They are more climate-friendly and work in combustion engines.
Currently, only 5% of fuel consumers use alternative sources, according to the German Energy Agency. Critics blame the government for prioritizing electric cars to the expense of other options.
Protests being mulled
These are ideas the 563,000-plus members of Future for Hubraum discuss only in their private Facebook group and with the media.
Now, Grau is thinking of making the jump from Facebook to the streets. The administrators started recruiting organizers in each state to plan meetings — and maybe more.
“If the politics don’t work, we will have to think about doing protests,” he said. “But it has to be very orderly, very civilized.”
The car enthusiasts’ movement currently has more than five times the followers that the German Fridays for Future page has.
But only the turnout at a demonstration would show how much of a competitor they actually are for Greta Thunberg.
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Diving in with the rest
Young activists in Berlin took a dip in the city’s Spree River to demonstrate their desire for more action on climate change. Their protest took place as Germany’s upper house of parliament passed a raft of measures aimed at cutting emissions. However, critics of the package said it did not go far enough.
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Climate change strikes worldwide — in pictures
Wanting a new start
Thousands of protesters gathered in front of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate to voice dissatisfaction with a perceived lack of urgency on the part of the government. Some 50,000 people took part, demanding a “new start” for the government’s climate policy.
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Climate change strikes worldwide — in pictures
Tide of opinion
“The climate is changing, why aren’t we?” ask these protesters Rome. The historic Italian city of Venice was recently flooded, with the local mayor blaming climate change for the highest tide in 50 years. Climate protests took place in 138 Italian towns and cities, according to Fridays for Future Italia, including in major urban centers like Rome, Milan, Turin, Naples and Palermo.
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Climate change strikes worldwide — in pictures
Message for the government
Activists and schoolchildren in Sydney kicked off the latest round of global protests against climate change on Friday by picketing the headquarters of Australia’s ruling party. The protesters — brandishing placards that read “You’re burning our future” and chanting “we will rise” — turned out as Sydney was again enveloped in toxic smoke caused by bushfires.
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Climate change strikes worldwide — in pictures
Koalas under threat
The protests have taken on extra urgency in Australia — the country’s southeast has been devastated by hundreds of damaging bushfires in recent weeks. Wildfires and drought have left the koala bear on the verge of “functional” extinction.
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Climate change strikes worldwide — in pictures
Japan — a victim of extremes
Hundreds of people marched through Tokyo’s Shinjuku district to show their support for the Fridays For Future movement. Japan is no exception to abnormal weather patterns around the world in recent years. The island nation has been hit by increasingly frequent typhoons, and also by hotter weather. In October, Typhoon Hagibis ripped through central and north-eastern Japan, killing scores of people.
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Climate change strikes worldwide — in pictures
Forests For Future
Demonstrations also took place in Indonesia, where – in an effort to to protect tropical forests – the government has issued a temporary ban on permits for palm plantations. However, critics say a lack of transparency has made it difficult to evaluate the moratorium’s effectiveness. The global palm oil trade has been blamed as a major contributor to climate change by causing loss of vegetation.
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Climate change strikes worldwide — in pictures
Something in the air
In Delhi — the world’s most polluted capital — students staged a march to the environment ministry carrying placards and demanding that the government declare a climate emergency. The country is one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gases and has 14 of the 15 most polluted cities in the world, according to a UN study.
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Climate change strikes worldwide — in pictures
Targeting international talks
The protests took place as negotiators from some 200 countries prepared to meet for the COP25 climate conference in Madrid. Participants are seeking clearer rules on how to meet the requirements of the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change. The accord aims to limit the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius.
Article source: https://www.dw.com/en/german-car-lovers-want-to-challenge-fridays-for-future/a-51465631?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf