The Big Climate Strike

[delosharriman]

As part of the ongoing “Fridays for Future” campaign, the 20th of September had been announced some time back as a date for major rallies in many places, Munich among them. I had been promising myself for some time that I would get involved, in support of evidence-based, implementable solutions, & in opposition to the anti-science which is as prevalent among the campaigners as among their opponents.

Despite being woefully ill-prepared — having come up short money-wise in my efforts to obtain suitable stickers & buttons, & brain-wise in my attempt to prepare German-language pamphlets — I took what I had & headed downtown. That included a lollipop-style sign, with 40 cm discs carrying the motifs seen below. The stick I attached it to was a meter-long steel tube made as a practice sword, with a hilt-grip which was very well adapted to being gripped for extended periods. The tube itself, however, was heavy, & I could have wished for aluminium instead, especially as I did not in the event have to fight my way free of an angry mob.

 

In case there was anybody to give them away to, I brought stickers bearing the smiling atom, & motto “Kernenergie? Ja Bitte!”, as well as both stickers & buttons with the atomic fist & “Atomic Power to the People!” For the occasional person impressed by charts & graphs (in the minority, as witness the failure of H Ross Perot to win the US Presidency), I printed out pages from the latest OECD/IEA Key World Statistics, & highlighted some comparisons between France & Germany. I also carried with me some books, including a copy of a lovely, lavishly-illustrated hardback entitled Kernkraft heute und morgen by Robert Gerwin, which was translated into English as Nuclear Power Today and Tomorrow, & handed out for free by the German government at the 1971 Geneva “Atoms for Development” conference (formally the Fourth Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, of which the previous three had been commonly known as “Atoms for Peace”).

The march began & ended at Königsplatz, at the edge of the Old City, passing through some of the central high-rent districts along the way. The figure for attendance reported in the newspapers was 40 000, but 60 000 was announced by one of the speakers, & a local who had also attended an event earlier this year, in the same place, reported as 30 000, said he thought there were more than twice as many people this time around. Surprisingly to nobody who knows me, I was late, so I leapfrogged the line of march in order to join it in progress at the front, a little past the Feldherrnhalle. (As a matter of historical interest, the Feldherrnkellar is currently occupied by a restaurant which attempts to re-create 14th-century food & the accompanying dining experience, & charges a pretty penny.) I was gratified to see that there was somebody quite near the head carrying a pro-nuclear sign, so I fell in with him for a few minutes, then tried to proceed a little more slowly than the overall march, so that I would drift backwards.

I had various encounters — can't really call them conversations, especially as it was so noisy — which ran more or less as follows :

“Why did you show up with a sign totally opposed to the theme of this march? Did you think it would be funny?”
“Opposed in what way? According to the most recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, nuclear power” as practiced in France, with fuel recycling “is responsible for life-cycle emissions of 6 grams CO₂ per kilowatt-hour. For wind, the figure is 15, for solar 30 to 45, for Germany 600. So if you want lower emissions, how does it make sense to keep closing nuclear power stations?”

This was typically followed by

“But it's destroying the Earth!”
“According to whom?”

to which of course no good answer was forthcoming, or by

“But we want to build a better world!”
“So do I, which is why I want to use the most powerful tools available.”

which could be, although it mostly wasn't, an opening to discuss why atomic energy (which I was repeatedly told was not needed, without any obvious basis for the assertion) would be useful in that effort. Sometimes I got asked what my sign meant, allowing me to explain that Prometheus signifies the creative power inherent in humanity, & the application (technology) of our understanding of the natural world (science), the most powerful & indispensable tool in dealing with the challenges of life. Of course there was the occasional

“But if it goes wrong, it'll kill us all!”

to which I had to restrain myself from answering, “how stupid are you anyway?”

One young man, to all appearances a football hooligan who had learned all his English from British counterparts, blew cigarette smoke in my face (yes, there was quite a bit of smoking at a march allegedly protesting the bad consequences of the indiscriminate use of combustion!), called me bad names, & told me to go back where I came from. This was probably the most negative interaction I had, although an older man did roundly abuse me at one point in German, which I did not really understand at all, then depart before I could ask him to repeat his remarks in English for my edification.

I also had some reasonably constructive conversations. In particular, being able to show that French emissions are half those of Germany, per head of population or per dollar of GDP, had some persuasive force. After all, the people in Germany are well aware that the French have the same overall standard of living as they do, drive cars as much as they do, et cetera. And yet, for all that the slogan “system change not climate change!” was constantly being repeated, this one minor technological difference, not something a casual observer would ever even notice, gives France pretty much the lowest emissions of any industrial country. Perhaps it would still not be sustainable on a global scale, but it certainly suggests a useful start to make!

One person thanked me for showing up in obvious opposition to anti-science, & another wanted to know if I were associated with the nuclear research center at Garching, north of the city. One of those who approached me wanting to know what my reason was for coming, and wanted to reject my position but could marshall no arguments for her side, complained bitterly that I was “a professional” & so of course would always have better answers than she did. I was unable to persuade her that I was simply a well-informed concerned citizen.

One of the minor political parties set up a little windmill of the sail type, as part of a display to promote their energy policy. It didn't spin half the time, which I thought was rather instructive. As I repeatedly said to people, “how many wind machines have you installed in the past 15 years? and yet emissions have not decreased at all” according to official figures from the Federal Ministry of Economy & Energy. The only emission reductions they can claim come as a result of selecting 1990 for the baseline year, being referrable to the de-industrialization of the eastern States (former DDR), a national catastrophe & major source of political unrest. Likewise I saw a woman who had mounted a model wind turbine on her bicycle helmet in such a way that, if it did turn, it would cut her head clean in two. On the other hand, one or two people had signs (one was illustrated quite charmingly with a bee) with the slogan “Short-distance flights, only for insects” which may have been aimed especially at government officials — there was something in the newspaper about civil servants & members of the Bundestag taking an absolutely absurd number of flights between Berlin & Bonn every year.

I saw my picture taken several times, which suggests it was taken rather more often than that. Perhaps, as they circulate around the Social Internet, some of them will make their way back to me, with more or less of commentary.