German elections, day – 1: youth mobilize to defend the climate – archyde

With the approach of the German legislative elections of September 26, The world keeps the campaign log. A daily update, with the events, images, polls, clips, slogans, figures and keywords that make it possible to follow and experience this electoral competition at the end of which Angela Merkel will leave power, after sixteen years in the chancellery.

The last major mobilization against climate change in Germany dated back to September 20, 2019: on that day, Angela Merkel’s government presented its “climate plan” and hundreds of thousands of Germans responded to the call of the Fridays movement. For Future. In Berlin alone, it had claimed 270,000 participants.

Two years later, and while in the meantime the Karlsruhe Constitutional Court forced the government to review its copy, believing that his plan to fight against global warming endangered the younger generations, they were back, this time two days before the German general elections. According to the organizers, more than 620,000 people took part in this new “climate strike”, Friday, September 24, in some 470 German cities.

On this day of international mobilization – the Fridays For Future had announced more than 1,500 events around the world – it was Germany, because of its political news, which was this time the epicenter of the movement, symbolized by the coming of Greta Thunberg to Berlin.

“We must continue to take to the streets and demand that our leaders take concrete action in favor of the climate”, launched the young Swedish activist to a crowd of demonstrators gathered in front of the Reichstag, the building where the German deputies sit.

“Political parties are not doing enough” for the climate, lamented Greta Thunberg while the demonstrators, most of them teenagers and families, waved signs and banners proclaiming “The earth has a fever” Where “Stop coal”.

Mobilizing his supporters in Cologne, in the west of the country, the SPD candidate, Olaf Scholz promised him to embody the “Renewal” after four terms and 16 years in power for Angela Merkel, of whom he has been finance minister since 2018.

“Climate change is a major global disaster and that is why the young people who say today that something must be done now are right. This is what we will do, we Social Democrats ”, he assured.

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