They stick to the road, creating havoc on the roads. The climate stickers carry a message to the world: it will perish if we don’t act now. Apocalypse Today!
The latest generation climate stickers speak of the “climate emergency”: “We are the will of society to survive” – ”We are all the last generation that can still stop the total collapse of the earth.” With an emphasis on “maybe”. Extinction Rebellion, brothers and sisters in spirit, meanwhile talk about “social and ecological collapse”, about “mass extinction”. And they say: “Rebels” have a “duty to rebel,” “to defend their lives and the lives of their children.”
Klima-Radikalinsky demand environmental commitment from society. Hardly anyone today denies climate change, but they may object to the fixation of the end times by this enlightened sect. It is no coincidence that this is reminiscent of the state of mind of the disciples of Jesus in the New Testament: climate adepts live, like Christians, with confidence in the near end.
Sorry, the founder had something else in mind
“But he said to them: You see all this, don’t you? Amen, I tell you: there will be no stone left unturned here, everyone will be broken.” Then: “For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes here and there.” Finally: “He who endures to the end shall be saved.” (Matthew 1-14)
Last Generation and Extinction Rebellion present themselves as practices of civil disobedience, which sounds friendly and harmless. But if you read the founder of the idea, the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau, you will see that there is a big misunderstanding here.
The libertarian Thoreau refused to pay taxes to an American state because that state supported slavery. His transgression of the norm was not an act, but an inaction. And it was directed not against extraneous third parties, but against the state, which, according to Thoreau, had committed injustice. That’s why he refused tax obedience – hence the talk of civil disobedience.
The fact of the matter is that the need
Climate stickers are completely different. They don’t refrain, they do. They are not disobedient, but by their stupid actions interfere with the freedom of their fellow citizens. They resort to violence and meet the criteria for coercion.
Christians are still waiting for the end of the world and the return of the Lord. Life on earth is harder than you think. Feverish climatic glue must urgently use the time to cool their heads.
René Scheuil is a philosopher and director of the Swiss Institute for Economic Policy (IWP) in Lucerne. He writes to Blick every second Monday.