BERLIN — On a brisk spring afternoon in Berlin, cars fill the curb space bumper-to-bumper outside the Zeit fur Brot cafe. Johanna Gary, using the energy-efficient option, rides up on her bike and locks it to a street pole before entering the cafe to order a drink.
“Our summers are getting hotter and hotter,” she said. “We can feel it. We know we have to do something against it, but other issues have overtaken it. At least for now.”
Gary works for Diakone, a charity organization of Protestant churches in Germany, and she’s worried about the climate crisis. She said she is so worried that she voted for the country’s Green party because climate action has not been prioritized on the global stage in this election cycle.
During the country’s recent federal elections, the leading conservative parties — the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) — focused on combating a surge in immigration, pointing to asylum seekers as a leading cause of strain on the economy.
Germany adopted the Federal Climate Protection Act six years ago, aiming to achieve greenhouse gas neutrality by 2045. Conservative representatives have been speaking out against expensive renewable energy investment, but where environmental progress weakens in its momentum, church leaders have picked up the slack with a campaign called #klimafasten.
The movement is just over seven years old, and in the 40-day season of Lent before Easter Sunday, congregants are encouraged to reduce their individual carbon footprint.
This year, the theme is “Setting into the future together — climate protection in the community” — pointing to the necessity of community engagement in protecting the environment.
Voters in Germany’s election say religion does not intertwine with the country’s politics as it does in the United States, since the majority of Berlin’s population is largely secular. But when it comes to the church’s role in politics, Giancarlo Walter, a theology student working in the environmental bureau for the Evangelical Church of Berlin-Brandenburg-Silesian Upper Lusatia, acknowledged a sense of duty for the church to engage.
“Yes, political changes are always ‘a problem, or not a problem’ in the church because we are an actor in the political sphere also,” Walter said.
The EKBO is one of 24 Protestant and Catholic churches in Germany that participate in the #klimafasten campaign.Walter helps create digital brochures with information about the biblical texts of service from the Bible and suggestions for how individuals can get involved.
“Climate change and doing something for the climate is not number one anymore, so it’s a little bit of pushback,” said Walter. “But we as a church — especially as EKBO — it’s Berlin’s church. We have our legislation, we have to do these things. So if nobody is speaking about it, we have to do it.”
Gary recalled that in the past, when she participated in fasting, she made a conscious effort not to use her washer and dryer for a month.
Others choose to ride their bike every day or rely more on public transport.
According to reports published last year by Statista, almost 86 percent of the German population had access to public transportation in 2022. For just 58 euros per month, commuters can use the train to travel between states, yet much of the economy relies on an expensive fossil fuel car industry.
“I think it’s a psychological question in Germany, because the car industry is so big and so strong and wants to make more money with fossil fuel motors, so that they don’t want to progress in this direction of electric cars,” Gary said.
Roman Simon, parliament member of the leading CDU party, attributed rising energy costs to the closure of Germany’s last three nuclear power plants.
“The last government, they shut them down, and therefore we had a big rise in energy costs,” Simon said. “The working class is not able to cope with that much of a rise.”
Simon also pointed to the reliance on American imported oil as a contributor to the strain. Since Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has escalated, Germany has moved to eliminate the direct import of Russian gas into the country.
On the far-right side of the aisle, Ronald Gläser, parliament member of the AfD, also finds Germany’s movement away from fossil fuels unreasonable.
“This is not a nice utopia. I wished it to be true, that we can rely only on wind and solar power,” Gläser said. “The day will come, yeah, gas and oil, they will be empty one day, but the day is not now, not tomorrow.”
Gläser had a solar panel installed on his balcony, though, in an interview with Annenberg Media, called the push for decarbonization “bullcrap.”
The AfD has received criticism from voters who consider the party values in line with a rise of Neo-Nazi ideology.
“We can’t be one of the most important industrial nations on earth and relying on wind energy and solar energy,” Gläser said. “We need nuclear power plants. We need gas and coal. This is probably kind of familiar to the discussion you have with: ‘drill, drill baby.’”
Simon Boiser, a priest at the Catholic Church of the Holy Spirit in Berlin, disagrees. He attributes the current state of environmental harm to overindulgence.
“We are living in a consumerist society,” Boiser said. “We are just consuming and not thinking of the consequences of actions. How we destroy the environment. How we kill life from animals and plants.”
He added that Catholic doctrine calls for taking care of the environment.
“God is the creator,” Boiser said. “And mankind is called to be a steward of this creation.”
Pope Francis himself called for climate change awareness. Ten years ago, the late Pope issued a letter acknowledging climate change as a global issue, attributed to the reliance on fossil fuels and wasteful consumeristic practices by developed countries like the United States.
“There is an urgent need to develop policies so that, in the next few years, the emission of carbon dioxide and other highly polluting gases can be drastically reduced,” the Pope wrote. “For example, substituting for fossil fuels and developing sources of renewable energy.”
As Gary finishes her drink at the Zeit fur Brot cafe, she echoes Boiser’s sentiment, noting that Germans have been fixating on making a profit off nature, rather than protecting it.
“We didn’t focus on keeping it healthy, making it work for future generations,” Gary said.
She said she feels hopeless because of global developments because she suspects that Freidrich Merz, the current chancellor of the CDU, does not hold climate issues close to his heart.
“The Christian Democratic Union also has Christian in its name, but they see us as ‘too green’, ‘too left wing,’” she said.
“They don’t really want to be associated with this kind of church that is socially active and trying to fight the climate crisis.”