Scientists who glued themselves to the floor of the Volkswagen museum in Germany demanding action on climate change say they were left without food, light and heating for more than 20 hours. On Twitter, researcher and activist Gianluca Grimalda recounts his participation in the protest and denounces the “hypocrisy” of the car brand.
Academics and researchers from Scientist Rebellion settled last Wednesday in the Autostadt museum in Wolfsburg, in order to force the giant Volkswagen to participate in the decarbonization of the transport sector. Nine of the fifteen protesters present stuck their hands on the floor of the Porsche pavilion while waiting to meet the CEO of the Volkaswagen group, Oliver Blume.
Among their demands, they want the car giant to put pressure on the German government to limit the speed on the motorways to 100 km/h. The measure could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 4.3 million tonnes a year, according to ecologist Wolfgang Cramer, who has contributed to several IPCC reports and is a scientist associated with the group Scientist Rebellion.
The occupation, which was supposed to last only a few hours, lasted for 42 hours. “Since Volkswagen seemed open to hearing our claims, we decided to stay,” said scientist Gianluca Grimalda in a press release issued Monday.
After a few courteous exchanges with the CEO of the museum, Armin Maus, the researcher affirms that the latter “carried out a series of actions aimed at exhausting our physical endurance”.
Mr. Grimalda said that no food was provided to them for more than 20 hours, that heating and electricity were cut off and that requests for medical assistance were delayed for several hours. “The security guards came two or three times during the night, laughing at us and pointing flashlights at our faces to prevent us from sleeping,” he continues.
I simply wanted to highlight the @Autostadt director’s hypocrisy in first saying that “they wanted to support our right to protest” and then carried out a series of actions to drain our physical endurance. More specifically:
1) At first @Autostadt showed a nice face. 4/ pic.twitter.com/SZ4BzOKCP0— gianluca grimalda (@GGrimalda) October 24, 2022
For its part, the Museum rather declared last Friday by press release that he provided “appropriate care in the given circumstances” to the demonstrators. According to him, the action of Scientist Rebellion is a “bad” way to protest and has caused material damage. The protest ended with the intervention of the police on Friday morning.
Autostadt’s press release, seen by The duty Wednesday morning, disappeared from the museum site during the day. Together with Toyota, the Volkswagen Group is the largest car manufacturer in the world and the first on the European market. In the past, the company caused a scandal by rigging diesel engines to make them appear less polluting.
Wave of demonstrations before COP27
Scientist Rebellion’s action is part of a wave of climate protests taking place a few days before the start of COP27, which will be held in Egypt. Among these, a painting by Van Gogh was sprayed with tomato soup in London, an oil loading site was occupied in Montreal and activists from Scientist Rebellion stuck a hand Wednesday on the asphalt of a street in Munich.
“Writing reports, speaking reasonably and kindly, shows its limits. This model, which consists of providing information for reasoned decisions, works a little, but not enough,” concludes researcher Wolfgang Cramer in an interview given this month to France Info.
The UN climate agency warned on Wednesday that the countries that signed the Paris Agreement were still “very far” from limiting the rise in temperatures to 1.5°C or 2°C.