Germany’s Last Generation climate activists announce strategy change, ditch roadblock protests

Climate activist group Last Generation, whose members are famous for gluing themselves to roads to halt traffic, have announced that they will no longer use this controversial form of protest. “A new era of our peaceful, civil resistance begins – the chapter of sticking and road blockades ends,” the group said in a press release on their “Strategy for 2024”. According to a report by public broadcaster ARD, Berlin police counted 550 Last Generation protests in the capital alone last year, and the city’s public prosecutor launched 3,700 proceedings against the activists over the past two years.

Gluing themselves to roads enabled a small number of protesters to cause considerable disruption. However, their actions have provoked mainly negative reactions from politicians, the media and the general public, following overwhelming sympathy with the broader Fridays for Future movement. The group says that over the past two years their numbers have grown, and they will instead hold “disobedient public assemblies” and increase their actions at “places of fossil destruction,” such as oil pipelines, energy company headquarters and airports. They are also calling on president Frank-Walter Steinmeier to “speak publicly and honestly about climate destruction and the necessary changes,” saying that honesty about the scale of the problem “would create a sustainable social foundation of trust.”