Travel and climate protection – a contradiction?

The term Fernweh describes a feeling that most people have probably experienced at some point. And yet there is hardly another language in the world that dedicates its own term to this feeling. Goethe had already written about Fernweh when there was not even a word for it yet. In his campaign in France he writes of a sense of escape that seizes him when observing a river: "I would like to call this a reverse homesickness, a longing for the wide world instead of the narrow one". The feeling is thus apparently deeply rooted in human nature. And the tourism industry takes advantage of that. One finds the term Fernweh probably even more frequently on the cover pages of tourism magazines and in the windows of travel agencies advertising flights and cruises than in Tinder profiles and travel blogs. At the same time, budget airlines such as Ryanair contribute to the fact that the desire for distant places can be satisfied even if one does not belong to the wealthy upper class. This combination means that travel is firmly embedded in the DNA of the young generation. Travel has become a lifestyle, and during the summer months Instagram is full of images from the most diverse corners of the earth.

This is about the same generation that mobilised hundreds of thousands of people, preferring to take to the streets on Fridays for genuine climate protection rather than go to school. The generation of Greta Thunberg, who stands before leading politicians from around the world at the UN climate summit and asks them how they dare to do too little for climate protection. Is that a contradiction? Must one lead a climate-neutral life in order to demand swift action from politicians? One might get that impression if one listens to people who criticise the movement. Time and again one hears of city centres littered with placards after FFF demos, of participants who were driven there in their parents' SUVs, or of frequently-flying green politicians. A lot of energy is invested in proving to green activists and politicians that they themselves are not saints. Dieter Nuhr once said in his show that he had turned off the heating in winter for his daughter because she wanted to take part in a Friday demo. Following the motto: whoever wants change should please lead a flawless life themselves, and do so before they publicly demand anything or even show their face at a demo. The example makes clear where the problems in the debate lie. On the one hand, there seems to be a strong need among some people to use every small deviation from sustainable living as evidence of hypocrisy. You spread butter on your bread at breakfast? How dare you demand more climate protection from politicians?!

That is probably because the perception often prevails that people from the green spectrum are all too keen to point the moral finger upwards. Meat-eaters and frequent flyers feel judged from on high and close themselves off to any constructive discussion in a defiant reaction. The problem is to be found on both sides. Whoever wants to convince other people of their worldview usually achieves little by raising the moral finger. At the same time, the other side must stop treating every demand for more climate protection as a condemnation of their own lifestyle and actually engage with the substantive level. Because here lies the second problem in the discourse: subjective sacrifice is sensible and symbolically important, but far more serious changes can be achieved through systemic change. And if one were to listen properly to Greta Thunberg and other FFF activists, one would recognise that that is exactly what is being demanded. Greta did not ask the average consumer how they dare to fly to Majorca for five euros or decide on cheap meat at Aldi. She asked leading politicians how they dare not to change the system. FFF does not want to achieve that Dieter Nuhr's daughter goes without heating in winter, but rather that politicians in future promote climate-neutral alternatives to oil heating. The goal is also not that the young generation can only post holiday pictures from the Bavarian Forest in future. Rather, conditions should be created in all areas that make it easier for us to live climate-neutrally. More trains instead of flights, more solar energy instead of coal power, more e-mobility instead of combustion engines etc. It is the task of politicians to ensure that, not of citizens. These need only signal to politicians that they want genuine systemic change. FFF has been demonstrating that this is the case since 2018. In that respect, it is more than justifiable to be both a climate activist and a globetrotter at the same time.