“Maybrit Illner”: “The penalties must be stronger,” says Dobrindt to the climate activist

Status: 04:02 a.m| Reading time: 3 minutes

Mith numerous protest actions this week, 800 activists from the “Last Generation” alliance tried to block the streets of Berlin in order to force more intensive climate protection. Resistance to this is not only being felt in the capital. In mid-March, 80 percent of those questioned in the ZDF Politbarometer said that the protest was going too far.

“Is the traffic light failing because of climate protection?” Maybrit Illner asked SPD Secretary General Kevin Kühnert, CSU regional group leader Alexander Dobrindt, WELT journalist Robin Alexander, economist Karen Pittel and Carla Rochel, spokeswoman for the “Last Generation”.

The federal government describes itself as a “coalition for the future”, whereby the parties “actually only block each other”, criticized Rochel in the introduction. In recent years, she has been involved with petitions and protests alongside “Fridays for Future”. “None of that worked. Everything was ignored.” That’s why she’s now relying on civil resistance. “We only have a few years left to get the climate crisis under control. That’s why we need these protests now,” the activist insisted on the necessity of the demonstrations.

Instead of watching “how we continue to race into the escalating climate crisis”, their alliance carries the topic “in the middle of society”. Alexander Dobrindt countered that she did not take the protest “to the center of society”. “They coerce the middle of society – and that every day”. He perceives a radicalization in parts of this movement. In doing so, he referred to the activist Tadzio Müller, co-founder of the “Ende Gelände” alliance. He had announced a “triple radicalization” that will include the climate crisis, ignorance and climate protests.

Even the much-criticized expression “Climate RAF” by the CSU regional group leader was originally his “wording”. “The penalties have to be stronger,” Dobrindt demanded to prevent imitators. Although “no one” would think of considering the “last generation” as a “terrorist organization”, the CSU politician also criticized their understanding of democracy. “Parliament does not implement my will, so other means must be used,” he reflected Rochel’s reasoning.

The alliance “makes its own will absolute,” confirmed Robin Alexander. The “intellectual flirt with the authoritarian” is what worries him. In contrast, “Fridays forFuture” was “very intelligent” in “understanding the system”. They succeeded, for example, in getting a “new concept of freedom” from the Federal Constitutional Court.

In the second half, Illner focused on the amendment to the Building Energy Act. “Obviously this law is botched,” criticized Dobrindt harshly. So far, the draft only includes threats and penalties, but not possible funding. The traffic light government unsettles people and threatens “massively” the owners. In addition to the heat pump, the law lacks the necessary openness to technology. Biomass should no longer be installed.

“Please just stick to the truth,” demanded Kevin Kühnert from the CSU politician. From the supply of biomass to green hydrogen, the law enables numerous options. The discussion became increasingly frayed. The participants touched on economic and social issues, price developments, a lack of craftsmen, party tactics, the sense and nonsense of importing heat pumps and Germany as a role model in climate issues.

Alexander switched to a meta-debate by referring to the “contradiction in the discussion”. “We spent the first time explaining to the activist why she should trust democratic processes,” said the Welt journalist, “and since then representatives of democratic processes have been explaining why things can’t go so quickly. If you conduct the debates like this, you fuel the protests.”