Climate protection | Extreme blinders

Substations should be better protected against attacks in the future. Photo: dpa/Henning Kaiser The federal government is apparently nervous. The recent attacks on the substations have once again shown how vulnerable the infrastructure is. Complete monitoring of the power lines will be difficult. How irritated Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt is was evident in his choice of words. After a letter of confession from a 48-year-old suspected lone perpetrator, he spoke of “climate extremism”. This is reminiscent of a statement by Dobrindt from 2023, when he - then still CSU regional group leader - warned of a “climate RAF”. With this he wanted to stir up fear of the Last Generation. That was “nonsense,” said the then President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang.

The Last Generation demonstrated peacefully and saw their protest as an act of civil resistance. With a similar motivation, the alleged perpetrator apparently wanted to use his sabotage to rouse the public and raise awareness against the use of fossil fuels. But such an attempt, apparently driven by desperation, achieved nothing. Productive debates never provoke such acts of sabotage, but rather shaking heads far beyond the Union milieu. Because of all the infrastructure that is needed every day, it was attacked.

Nothing will change for the time being. A policy that takes climate change seriously is just as important as the decision about war and peace. Global warming is progressing at a fatal pace and could rise well above 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels in the foreseeable future. Climate researchers have been warning for years about the serious consequences of such a rise in temperature for living conditions on earth.

The federal government, however, is acting in a similar half-hearted manner when it comes to climate issues as it did with Deutsche Bahn: of course it wants functioning public transport, it repeatedly asserts, but there is simply not enough happening to stop the decline. She also has blinders on when it comes to climate protection because it won't win elections and because it also requires frugal economic activity, which runs counter to neoliberalism. Nevertheless, uncompromising action against global warming in all questions of political decision-making would be necessary.

To put it in Dobrindt's words: This constant attitude of refusal can definitely be viewed as extremist. Because there is an explosive power hidden in it that can acutely endanger our free, democratic basic order within just a few years.

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