# taz.de -- Climate Strike during Corona: „We go onto the streets anyways“ | |
> Covid-19 is the biggest challenge ever? Wait for the climate crisis. | |
> Three climate activists report what they are doing to keep protest going | |
> on. | |
Bild: „We need to do more than take a picture of ourselves and post it.“ Gl… | |
Anna Conradie: „In South Africa our biggest worry is drought.“ | |
„Without Corona, I probably would have had fundraising events for | |
„artivists“. “Artivists“ is an organization I founded to use art as a m… | |
of protesting to draw people outside of the climate movement into the | |
climate movement. | |
Since we could not do that, I set up some meetings for a youth think tank I | |
also founded. We work with a bunch of high polluters here in South Africa | |
on how they can make their companies more environmentally friendly. How it | |
works is, that I contact big corporates, tell them that we want to work | |
with them and not destruct them or anything until we finally meet. It took | |
me nearly a year to get a meeting with one big company we now work with. So | |
that is how I started to get involved in the climate movement last year in | |
May. I started joining strikes and organized a national school climate | |
strike. | |
We were planning to do another one this year, but because of Corona that | |
plan shifted. It is very difficult to make people understand that this is a | |
very big issue, it is something that we need to act on rapidly. | |
I think where you come from defines how you see issues and how you | |
understand them. Here in South Africa, we have the richest square mile next | |
to the poorest. So, I think the youth in Africa sees climate issues a lot | |
different than European activists, we call them „the West“. African | |
activists feel very strongly about social justice, because poverty and | |
injustice is on every corner of our hometowns. | |
In terms of the climate crisis though, our biggest worry is drought! Last | |
year, two regions were declared by the UN as “national disaster zones“. | |
They did not have water for four month! We should have enough water but | |
because of lack of infrastructure, it causes us to lose about 40 per cent | |
of water that should go to homes. So our biggest concern is the fact that | |
drought will affect all of our subsistence farmers. If we do not act | |
rapidly, it will impact all of our rural areas, people will lose all their | |
livelihood.“ | |
[1][watch full interview] | |
Anastasija Sergienko: „In Russia the biggest problem we are facing are | |
fires.“ | |
„I started to be a climate activist with Fridays for Future in Russia last | |
September. One night I saw a speech by Greta and the next thing I sat on | |
the floor drawing a sign for the strike on the next day. Since then I have | |
striked on 16 fridays. Fridays for Future in Russia is not very big. When I | |
started we were about 700 people from 34 cities. I live in Moscow and here | |
we need agreements from the government to do mass strikes. They deny it to | |
us most of the times. So we go onto the street anyways, but only one person | |
can strike at a time and the others wait with their signs in their bags. We | |
call this form of protest “single picket queue“ in Russia. We put pictures | |
of our strikes into the social networks and explain different topics | |
related to the climate crisis there and I think this gives us more | |
visibility. So right now we are in self-isolation and strike online only. | |
In my opinion, the biggest problem we are facing at the moment are fires. | |
There is an awful tradition of burning grass. People think that helps the | |
new grass to grow. And they also think that burning the grass helps to | |
prevent forest fires. But thats not true. They are causing the fires. And | |
we have a huge problem with smoldering peat fires. They produce a lot of | |
smoke but you dont see flames so they are difficult to discover. So what I | |
and other people do is monitor the spots of the fires on my computer and | |
mark them on the map. I send this information to the volunteer firemen and | |
they take our spots in the navigation system and know directly where to go. | |
But I still fear that we will have an australian extent of fires in the | |
summer. And the second issue we as a movement struggle with, is that | |
government and people dont want to quit oil and fossil energies and build | |
up renewable energy. Russia is a oil and gas country. And the arguments | |
against renewables are stupid. They say windmills are dangerous for birds. | |
Yes. But oil, gas and coal are dangerous for health, nature and our future. | |
We should put solar panels on the top of our houses instead of bringing in | |
the oil and coal from far away. It would be better to have renewable | |
energies surrounding our big cities. One day I want to see windmills from | |
my window. I might put it there myself. | |
[2][watch full interview] | |
Xiye Bastida: „We need to make sure that we know what has worked, what has | |
not worked and what we have to get to work.“ | |
„I live in Manhattan, New York, almost at the heart of the city and in the | |
middle of the epicenter of the pandemic. I spend my days inside, doing | |
homework and activism and at the same time hearing the ambulances going and | |
going. I dont go outside, I dont want to risk other people or myself. | |
I am one of the lead organizers of Fridays for Future in New York City and | |
we havent been on the streets for seven weeks now. If we want other people | |
to listen to the science, we need to do so as well. We do the same thing as | |
Fridays for Future international: keeping the community going with digital | |
strikes. | |
But to ensure that climate activism works I think we need to to more than | |
take a picture of ourselves and post it. Thats why I started | |
re.earth-initiative. It began as a campaign but now has become a youth | |
organisation. We teach people about different aspects of the climate crisis | |
and how they can get involved on an individual and systemic way. Each week | |
we are focussing on a certain topic. This week its the global water crisis. | |
Then there will be a plastic week, a food week, a fashion week. All the | |
resources will be available on our website. | |
When we climate activists hear politicians say “we should go back to | |
normal“ we shake our heads. The normal means burning fossil fuels, it means | |
keep exploiting the planet, keep polluting. And that can not be the normal. | |
I dont know how that became the normal. I come from an indigenous | |
background, my dad is Otomi, which is an indigenous group in Mexico. I | |
lived in Mexico until I was 13 years old. My relationship with the earth | |
has always been: I take care of the earth. It gives us everything we need | |
and all that it asks is that we protect it. When I saw that the normal for | |
the world was destroying, contaminating and polluting, I decided to try and | |
change. | |
My parents met at the first Earth Summit in Rio 1992. 10 years before I was | |
born. My dad has been a public speaker and I learned it from him. I learned | |
to speak from my heart. To speak from what I care about and to give all my | |
thoughts this kind of energy. The first time I spoke publicly was when my | |
dad was invited to Mauritia to a UN conference and couldnt go, so he sent | |
me. I was 15 and I saw that people were impressed when a young voice | |
brought up climate. | |
As kids we think that we are the first ones to think that the planet has to | |
be protected. Obviously this has been going on for a long time. We need to | |
make sure that we know what has worked, what has not worked and what we | |
have to get to work. This is why I'm going to go to university for the next | |
four years to study environmental studies, concentrating on policy and | |
international relations.“ | |
[3][watch full interview] | |
13 May 2020 | |
## LINKS | |
[1] https://www.instagram.com/tv/B_iFfuUnuoS/ | |
[2] https://www.instagram.com/tv/B_ow2kcH2Or/ | |
[3] https://www.instagram.com/tv/B_0GA0jHEna/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link | |
## AUTOREN | |
Leonie Sontheimer | |
Celine Weimar-Dittmar | |
## TAGS | |
Schwerpunkt Klimawandel | |
Schwerpunkt Fridays For Future | |
Globalisierung | |
taz in English | |
taz international | |
klimataz | |
Schwerpunkt Klimawandel | |
Schwerpunkt Utopie nach Corona | |
Schwerpunkt Fridays For Future | |
## ARTIKEL ZUM THEMA | |
Climate Strike and Corona: „Not back to old normal“ | |
The pandemic did not replace climate crisis. It is adding to it. What does | |
that mean for the movement? Three activists tell their stories. | |
Konjunkturprogramm in Grün: Jetzt oder nie | |
Corona bietet die Chance für einen grünen Neustart der Wirtschaft – doch | |
die „braune Industrie der Vergangenheit“ lauert schon. | |
Zukunft der Klimabewegung: Ende Gelände – und wie weiter? | |
Ende Gelände, Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion – die Klimabewegung | |
erlebt einen Höhenflug. Das stellt sie aber auch vor grundsätzliche Fragen. |