At the weekend, hundreds demonstrated again in Berlin against Transport Minister Volker Wissing. Weeks ago, the anger of Fridays for Future and others was directed against the fact that the transport sector under its control clearly missed the CO2022 reduction targets of the Climate Protection Act in 2, but the ministry was largely unimpressed. Last week, the amendment to the Climate Protection Act provoked outrage because the impression arose that the coalition committee wanted to take the minister out of the direct line of fire.

While there was previously an obligation for federal ministries with a climate protection gap to eliminate this as quickly as possible, this is no longer necessary under the new plans of the traffic light. In future, fast-acting countermeasures such as the speed limit will no longer be introduced in every case, but only if the CO2 reduction targets are repeatedly torn and gaps cannot be compensated by other sectors.

All climate protection organizations were also alarmed by the fact that the climate emergency program actually announced for the end of last year was extremely meagre after the coalition crisis negotiations. While there had been a dispute in advance between the Greens and the FDP about whether limits, a CO2 price on fuel or an intelligent mixture of both were the best measure, it became clear on Tuesday to everyone's surprise that none of this was envisaged.

Toxic combination

This approach was justified by the fact that citizens should not be unsettled by the many upcoming climate protection measures when it comes to mobility. After the gas heating, one did not want to make the supposedly underage Michel additionally the car madig. Therefore, the citizens must now take matters into their own hands.

It should be clear to everyone in Germany that it is tantamount to a toxic mixture for the climate to combine the renunciation of a speed limit with that of a noticeably increased CO2 price for fuel and a maintenance of private transport with combustion engines (until 2035) without sufficient promotion of e-mobility. The civic duty would therefore be to comply with a speed limit on one's own initiative as well as to switch to the train, the purchase or leasing of an electric car and a renunciation of motorized individual transport wherever possible.

The voter could also make it clear to his MP, whichever party he belongs to, that although there is nothing fundamentally wrong with a well-justified flexibilisation of the Climate Protection Act, it cannot be the will of the voters to establish a non-transparent procedure that relieves a minister of criticism for failing to take protective measures until the next election. A change in the law, which would be designed in detail in this way, would have to be prevented.

Taking politics by the hand

The representatives of the Last Generation and Fridays for Future would like to be encouraged not to fight against Volker Wissing in grim actions or signature collections (current status 210,000), but rather to "Help Wissing!" campaign and, mobilising siblings, friends, parents and grandparents, to do everything possible to ensure that Germany still achieves the sector target of 2023 – bypassing the Minister of Transport.

Last week made it clear that the government will not expect citizens to undergo the transport turnaround in the near future as part of an orderly procedure. As a result, there is a danger that if, in a few years' time, there is no realistic and peaceful chance of the full introduction of the European "Green Deal" with its many packages of measures due to political negligence – in 2027, for example, CO2 emissions trading will be extended to transport in the EU – the probability increases that this would be called into question, as was recently the case with the phase-out of combustion engines.

Because one thing is guaranteed to lead to collapse in Germany and elsewhere: if, after years of political inactivity, millions and millions of combustion cars suddenly and unbuffered begin to quarrel over the CO2 certificates for fossil fuels, which then really go into the money. Then the pseudo-liberal "climate blah blah" of recent weeks will finally have reached its limits. A ministry needs our help, politics must now be taken along.