Our author is a climate activist. Here she writes about the feelings that the storm triggers in her. And formulates a clear requirement. Clara Porak The first thing I feel is emptiness. A numb feeling in my chest, it eats between my ribs, makes me tired, speechless, lame.
In my Twitter feed, a fire truck is struggling to drive through a flooded street. There are pictures of houses being torn away by the masses of water, people who blankly look into the camera and say that they have lost everything. Hence the emptiness.
This week extreme storms shook Germany: In West Germany there was massive flooding, thousands of people had to be evacuated, houses, entire villages were destroyed, the number of deceased is still increasing.
Helplessness. Sadness. At some point: anger.
I close Twitter and at first I don’t know what to feel. Helplessness. Sadness. At some point: anger.
I’ve been a climate activist for around five years. I know these pictures. I grew up knowing that I was going to lose my future. So I’m not shocked by what’s happening, tragic as it is. But it makes me sad and it makes me angry.
On Wednesday the EU presented a climate package and celebrated it as a success. In it, she presented her plan to achieve the new ‘ambitious climate target’ of reducing her emissions by 55 percent by 2030. The program is titled ‘# fitfor55’. The EU sold this package as a success. I get angry at that name. It is not a success. On the contrary.
How the hell can it be that this is all we are offered? Reducing emissions by 55 percent by 2030 is absolutely insufficient. It is not enough to achieve the goals set out in the Paris Climate Agreement. We are thus heading for the so-called ‘Hothouse Earth’ scenario, in which we can expect even more drought, extreme heat, hunger and, in all probability, wars. In which human life is becoming increasingly unlikely in the long term because the earth is becoming a greenhouse. Specifically, this means that if we fail to achieve the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, we are heading for the tipping point. From this moment on, climate change becomes irreversible.
Politics fails. We fail. Farther.
Please do not get me wrong: Of course there are important approaches in the package, it is a step in the right direction. But steps are no longer enough. What the climate crisis means has been known since the 1980s. 40 years later, the ‘ambitious solutions’ are nothing more than a bad joke. Politics fails. We fail. Farther.
Eifel town with 740 inhabitants
Residents return to guilt – and find their village in ruins
Calling this package ‘fitfor55’ is cynical. Because it doesn’t make the climate fit. In truth, it is the opposite, it is another mockery of people in the global south who are already feeling the existential effects of the climate crisis, of all those in Germany who are losing their home because of the storms that they will lose in the next few years become. How dare you do that? How can you watch how storms like this week’s one take so much from us – and still pretend that the climate crisis is a problem for many, one of the future, of the other?
Weeks like this, in which we lose too many people, in which we have to rebuild livelihoods, are already part of our reality. And they will get more and more and more. All of this has real consequences for our lives. All over.
These people, in Germany and elsewhere, we are not indifferent to me. But so far I have the feeling that they are in politics. This catastrophe was foreseeable. How can it be that we still do not give everything to prevent it?
Dramatic situation in Erftstadt
Masses of water tear gigantic holes in fields, cars are washed away like toys
We need better, more radical solutions. This week has shown that we will lose a lot. We need space for this loss. Instead of a society that is geared towards economic growth, we need a society that looks at each other. In the space for the pain is that so much that I already feel every day, that we will all feel more and more every day. We will not save everything, we will not be able to create everything. We have to learn to get used to the loss. The despair, the fear.
We have a decision to make. And we have to meet them together. I am 23 years old. My whole life will be shaped by the fight against the climate crisis. I don’t think we can decide whether we are going to fight this. But we can choose how to lead it. Either we do it as we did now: by looking away as long as we can. By belittling and playing down. By closing our borders and looking at Europe, clinging to economic growth, to a system that, in my opinion, has long since become obsolete.
Or do we change what needs to be changed? It is possible. Still.
Or we decide differently. We are fighting the climate crisis together. We protect those in Germany and beyond who need our protection. We change what needs to be changed. It won’t be easy, but it is necessary. And above all: it is possible. Still.
Germany is only a single country. We certainly cannot stop the climate crisis on our own. But we can choose a society that we believe we are anyway: a society that protects all life. Who stands up for human rights. That holds together. Which does not let itself get down. That creates a future worth living for everyone.
I am firmly convinced that if we want it, then we will make it.
