"Fridays for Future" activist calls for a move away from private transport

The Hamburg climate activist Annika Kruse calls for a radical departure from motorized private transport and a change in lifestyle. For example, people would have to "get away from the need for everyone to somehow have a car or two," said the spokeswoman for "Fridays for Future" Hamburg in an interview with the news department of radio station "Hamburg Zwei" for the podcast "Hamburg Aktuell". Kruse called for a massive expansion of rail transport and local public transport. “And better infrastructure. It must also be possible to make life more climate-friendly.”

Germany has "an enormous historical responsibility for the climate crisis," said Kruse. The fact that people "have lived intoxicated for decades is also a sign that we now have to scale back and that Germany must start to actually make progress in climate protection," she said.

In Kruse's view, the climate protection measures are not coming quickly enough, and they are also too vague. The most recent proposals, such as a 70 percent reduction in CO2 emissions by 2030, the installation of heating systems that are operated with at least 65 percent renewable energy, and a solar roof requirement are steps in the right direction, but it all comes “a lot a lot too late".

The Fridays for Future spokeswoman said: "We must not measure what we need to do about the climate crisis by what we have done in the past or by what we can somehow just do right now, but we must do what can be measured against what is actually necessary. And that's much, much more."

According to the police, around 7,000 people are expected in Hamburg on Friday for a so-called global climate strike by Fridays for Future. Meeting point for participants in the demonstration is at Jungfernstieg. It is the twelfth global climate strike. More than 200 campaigns are planned nationwide this time. According to the activists, demonstrations are also planned on all continents.

As early as Thursday evening, activists from the "Last Generation" movement had glued themselves to the asphalt of a lane at the main train station in protest against climate policy. The action resulted in long traffic jams in the inner city area. epd/jlau