Mount Everest icon Reinhold Messner tackles the “Fridays for Future” generation hard (organically) in a new book. The legend Reinhold Messner almost gets angry and practically clenches his fist at the mountain skies when – as in many interviews about his book “Sinnbilder” – he is asked about young climate defenders of today. He argues to the “Fridays for Future” protesters, who are running down the street, encouraged by the “eco-saint” Greta Thunberg, that this makes no sense in the long run.
The extreme mountaineer, otherwise sober, accuses the young of having grown up in the prosperity made possible only by burning fossil fuels. He vehemently opposes the layoff that his generation has devastated the environment. “This made it possible for the young ladies and gentlemen who skip school on Friday to protest! Otherwise they would have to stand in the fields and dig potatoes,” Messner adds to German journalist Philipp Hedemann.
Specifically, he does not focus on Greta, but on the youth as a whole. “They don’t think about what they’re doing. They certainly need to address the current problems, but they need to think about the position from which they’re doing it. I won’t let this generation say we deliberately destroyed the earth,” it sounds from the Juwal castle in South Tyrol, where the mountaineer has retired. In the ZDF conversation with Markus Lanz, he confirms: “I am not plagued by guilt.”
‘Consumption-oriented youth is often arrogant’
Current appeal to Thunberg supporters: “The order of the day is reduction and innovation.” Some are praised (“there are many young people with their start-ups looking for solutions to slow down global warming, with inventions, improved technology, logistics, saving fossil energy”), others criticize: “There are more many more who accuse my generation of having consumed resources unrestrained, without considering that the wealth they enjoy is precisely due to this consumption.I often experience these consumption-driven youths as arrogant and unwilling to accept their own criticisms in their lives eyes. They leave the light on during the day, bread that is bitten or apples on the kitchen table, no sense in separating waste.”
And yet, in the “Call to Renunciation” he co-wrote with his wife Diana, Messner admits a “debt”: “We didn’t willfully upset the world, but we didn’t foresee the consequences…”
“We need these protests”
„krone“: Mrs. Schilling, Reinhold Messner will not expose himself to the charge that his generation willfully destroyed the Earth.
Lena Schilling: I don’t blame his generation, there are many people his age who are by our side. I blame the decision-makers, the political leaders. Highways were expanded, the railways dismantled. It has been known for 50 years that resources will not be enough, but we live as if they are enough.
He describes the younger generation as consumption-driven, arrogant and unwilling to endure criticism.
How does he know? I would like to have a critical discussion with him at any time. A large part of my generation is environmentally conscious. But I don’t want to justify my generation at all, I think it’s a shame that he apparently shifts the responsibility to young people.
Protests are not the solution.
We need these protests. Without “Fridays”, people would talk less about the climate.
Source: Krone
I am Ida Scott, a journalist and content author with a passion for uncovering the truth. I have been writing professionally for Today Times Live since 2020 and specialize in political news. My career began when I was just 17; I had already developed a knack for research and an eye for detail which made me stand out from my peers.
