Scientists unite to back strikes for climate action

Academics in Germany, Switzerland and Austria have joined forces in support of the ‘Fridays for Future’ school strikes addressing climate change. They call for urgent action to halt global warming.

A joint petition written by ‘Scientists 4 Future’ and signed by more than 23,000 academics in the three German-speaking countries calls for immediate steps to be taken to tackle climate change and emphasises that the school protests initiated by Swedish campaigner Greta Thunberg are fully justified.

The petition stresses that a range of social and technological innovations already exist that “can maintain quality of life and improve human well-being without destroying our natural resources”.

Scientists 4 Future was initiated by Gregor Hagedorn, coordinator for national and international research infrastructures at the Museum für Naturkunde – Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science in Berlin.

The scientists criticise the failure of Germany, Switzerland and Austria to achieve the necessary scale and speed in the restructuring of the energy, food, agriculture, resource and mobility sectors. The petition notes that “Germany will fail to meet the climate protection targets it has set itself for 2020”, while “Austria has set itself goals that do not in any way do justice to the Paris Agreement”, and “Switzerland has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions only slightly since 1990”.

The scientists back the demands of Fridays for Future campaigners that sustainability and climate action be prioritised and maintain that “without far-reaching and consistent change, their future is in danger”. Such change has to include a swift transition to renewable energy sources, implementing energy-saving measures and a transition to new patterns of nutrition, mobility and consumption.

“The enormous mobilisation of the Fridays for Future or Climate Strike movement shows that young people have understood the situation,” the scientists and scholars note, and add that they “emphatically approve their demand for rapid and forceful action”.

“Only if we act quickly and consistently can we limit global warming, halt the mass extinction of animal and plant species, preserve the natural basis for life and create a future worth living for present and future generations,” the petition concludes. “This is exactly what the young people of Fridays for Future or Climate Strike want to achieve. They deserve our respect and full support.”

The petition was presented to Fridays for Future campaigners at a mass demonstration of school protestors in Berlin on 15 March.

“Climate change is real, created by human beings, and its impacts can already be seen today. Current climate policies are not sufficient to achieve the Paris global climate goals,” says Reto Knutti, professor of environmental systems science at ETH Zurich, and a former member of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), commenting on the outcome of the initiative.

Knutti adds that he is not surprised so many researchers signed the statement within just a few days.

Austrian Scientists 4 Future activities are above all supported by the research network Climate Change Centre Austria (CCCA). The centre was founded in 2011 to promote a sustainable dialogue on climate change in society, and it is headed by scientists and scholars at Austrian universities and federal research institutions such as the Vienna-based Zentralanstalt für Meteorologie und Geodynamik.

The petition was also supported by scientists at Germany’s Max Planck Society. “The young people were right to demand that society focus on sustainability,” comments Jochem Marotzke of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology.

Marotzke, who participated in the latest IPCC Assessment Report, adds that the concerns raised at the school strikes are not only justified but are also backed by scientific insights. “Without calculated rule-breaking, which also calls for courage, their demands will not be heard,” Marotzke says.

Peter André-Alt, president of the Hochschulrektorenkonferenz or German rectors’ conference, representing the heads of higher education institutions in Germany, welcomes the engagement of individuals in the Scientists 4 Future campaign.

“Initiatives like Scientists 4 Future can really contribute to strengthening science itself, its positions and its non-partisan approaches,” André-Alt maintains. “Scientists are speaking out in the framework of their constitutionally guaranteed freedom and responsibility.”

However, he stresses that they are doing so as individuals contributing their academic expertise to societal discourse.

Michael Gardner Email: michael.gardner@uw-news.com