“We remain silent until we’re dead”

Climate change is largely kept out of the election campaign in Germany for allegedly being too abstract and distant, but that is a flawed notion and points at a grave failure of both the media and politics, Maximilian Probst and Daniel Pelletier write in an op-ed on Zeit Online. “It’s as though one is speeding towards a wall in a car and instead of hitting the brakes, they fall asleep”, the authors say. Global warming becomes more and more evident as a problem that already costs many lives around the world, but all the media seems to care about in this election campaign period is migration or religion, they write. Ironically, they add, migration is directly influenced and fuelled by climate change, “which means combating climate change means combating migration push factors”. If Germany does not start debating this, “we will remain silent until we’re dead”.

Read the article in German here.

See the CLEW interview Dieselgate and climate fears fail to ignite voters’ passion – pollster, the CLEW factsheet German parties’ energy & climate policy positions, and the CLEW article German elections to define speed and shape of the energy transition for background.