A Leading Voice in the Climate Justice Movement Speaks at GW

October 11, 2024

Authored by:

Greg Varner

Climate activist Luisa Neubauer shared lessons she has learned as Germany's leading voice for environmental justice in an address at the George Washington University, later joining a panel with several other leaders in the movement for climate justice.

The Oct. 3 event was jointly sponsored by GW's Alliance for a Sustainable Future, the nonprofit Heinrich Böll Foundation, GW Law's Environmental and Energy Law Programand the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies(IERES) at the Elliott School of International Affairs.

The international Fridays for Future youth movement built by Neubauer, Greta Thunberg and others has brought hundreds of thousands of people into the streets demanding serious action on the climate crisis. One of Neubauer's three books, "Beginning to End the Climate Crisis: A History of Our Future"(Brandeis University Press, 2021), is available in English. In 2021, Neubauer and fellow activists won a landmark legal case against the German government, forcing it to strengthen environmental protections.

In welcoming the audience gathered in GW Law's Jacob Burns Moot Court Room, Frank Sesno, SMPA professor and executive director of the Alliance for a Sustainable Future, praised Neubauer for making "an incredible difference very early on in life" while grappling with "the moral question of the century." Germany, Sesno said, is home to the largest climate movement in Europe.

Activism, Sesno said, is "taking it to the streets, it's taking it to the halls of Congress, it's taking it to the city council." It can also be recruiting other people into an activist movement. "Activism today takes many shapes and forms."

In her address, Neubauer echoed Sesno's claim, saying activism can range from a mass protest to something quietly bureaucratic.

"Sometimes our movement is working in the streets," Neubauer said, "but mostly it's working somewhere else-at breakfast tables and in living rooms and small conversations happening quietly in which people change their minds."

Describing how she was drawn to environmental activism, she said she learned about the climate crisis as a student, but came to feel disempowered.

"There was something wrong about learning so much about the breakdown of our world, when no one would mention what to do about it," she said. "I felt more and more that we were being trained to some kind of moral apathy."

The feeling of having been betrayed by older generations pulled Neubauer irresistibly toward activism, which she has never viewed as a form of charity to the world or a way of improving other people. Rather, she said, activism starts with respecting ourselves and the Earth we call home.

"We should respect the idea that we are useless if we're simply living in the world and pretending, we don't have a relationship to the planet," she said.

Anger isn't enough

It's not enough simply to be angry, Neubauer cautioned. Effective activism is also about striving for what you want. While clearly seeing what is wrong, we should also find things we can affirm. Human beings, she said, easily embrace utopias of the past, but find it harder to embrace dreams of a brighter future.

People who are excited about reaching a better future are more apt to feel hopeful instead of trapped. The real work, Neubauer said, is to figure out how to get people to feel joyous, hopeful and excited.

"Hopelessness and despair don't necessarily arise from the darkness of the world," she said. "They mostly arise when people feel they can't do anything about it."

Surveys show that a majority of people will say yes if you ask them if they would do something for the climate, Neubauer said, but they haven't been asked. It's important to give people something specific that they can do.

Storytelling is important, she said. The right story can make all the difference in lifting people out of apathy and persuading them to work for a better future. One such story tells how people rise when they work together. Still, there will be conflict, and it shouldn't be sugarcoated. "A movement without conflict is a county fair," Neubauer said.

To balance the conflict and avoid tumbling into despair, she added, it's important to spend more time with allies than with enemies, to find spaces for joy and camaraderie.

A majority of people want climate justice, she said, but they don't always know they're a majority. This phenomenon is known as pluralistic ignorance.

It isn't enough to bet on the marketplace to solve the climate crisis, she said. Exnovation-the opposite of innovation-is necessary.

"There's the idea of innovating ourselves out of the climate crisis. We have solar panels, we have wind and ideas to grow food sustainably," she said. "But in order to make space for those innovations, we are asked to exnovate, to say goodbye to some of the old ideas."

While the world will never be perfect, Neubauer said, we can move it along a spectrum from very desperate to better. And it's important to celebrate the many little victories along the way.

Panelists add their voices

After Neubauer's address, a panel of activists focused on various topics surrounding their work. The panel was moderated by Noah Gordon, co-director of the Sustainability, Climate and Geopolitics Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Panelists included Anna Shah, B.S. '24, a co-founder of POP!, a sustainable thrift store.

"Everyone can be a climate activist," Shah said. "For me, it's about sustainable fashion." Her POP! (short for Power of the Purse), lessens waste by contributing to a circular economy.

Sophie Holtzman, a fourth-year student in the Elliott School, is president and cofounder of the GW chapter of BridgeUSA, a student movement dedicated to building democracy.

"I think the biggest barrier to activism is accessibility," Holtzman said. "Being able to get out there on the street, having access to educational resources, knowing where to protest, how to protest and how to speak freely about these things."

Helena Marschall is a filmmaker whose work, "Another World Is Possible,"has aired on PBS and elsewhere. At one time, she said, she felt powerless and alone and despaired of being able to do something about the climate crisis.

"When lots of people come together, then they do have power," she said. "Most things don't start big and powerful-they're kind of sad at the beginning-but the most important thing is to keep doing it anyway."

When Gordon asked the assembled experts for their advice on how to get involved in the climate movement, they offered wisdom gained by experience.

Marschall said she had never called herself an activist because she thought you had to be qualified to join the ranks, but then she realized that you're an activist as soon as you take action.

"I think that feeling is probably a lot of the reason why people aren't active," she said, adding that you get more effective as you go.

Giving a shout-out to Sesno and his project Planet Forward, Holtzman said she thinks more people would become activists if they knew about the exciting work activists are doing.

"Climate communication and climate media-what they're doing at Planet Forward-is really important," Holtzman said.

One of the questions from the audience was from a teacher who wondered about how to inspire suburban teens to get involved.

Holtzman suggested talking more about climate-related events. If she had more access to such knowledge, she said, she would have been involved earlier in the climate justice movement.

Frame activism and the movement not as a sacrifice, and not as boring homework, but as joyous, Marschall advised

Appeal to the natural desire of teens to fit in, Shah suggested, by stressing the community aspect of activism.

Neubauer stressed the need to make the movement more inclusive. The key, she said, is finding the right people to tell the right stories.