Climate activist Greta Thunberg has caused a stir with her latest statements about nuclear power. “I am against nuclear power, but I believe – although this does not correspond to the opinion of Fridays for Future – that it is currently worse to stop existing nuclear power plants if coal is the alternative,” she told the star. Also in the program “Maischberger” Thunberg explained that she thought it was wrong to switch off the still active nuclear power plants in Germany and instead rely more on coal power. “If they’re running, I think it would be a mistake to turn them off and go to coal.”
Thunberg has not changed her mind about nuclear power. For years she has referred to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which sees nuclear power as a small part of “a very big new carbon-free energy solution” in a 2014 report. She wrote on Facebook on March 17, 2019, which she now repeats in interviews: “Personally, I am against nuclear energy, but according to the IPCC, it can be a small part of a very large new carbon-free energy solution, especially in countries and territories where full-scale renewable energy supply is not possible — even if it is extremely dangerous, expensive and time-consuming.”
The only thing that has changed is who now agrees to her in Germany. FDP leader and Federal Minister of Finance Christian Lindner wrote on Twitter: “I welcome the encouragement of the FFF initiator Greta Thunberg for the FDP position to leave our nuclear power plants on the grid.” In September 2019, in the “FAZ” (paid content), he described the federal government’s climate package as “piecemeal to appease Greta Thunberg”.
The former CDU General Secretary Paul Ziemiak tweeted about the video excerpt with the supposedly new statement by the climate activist: “What @GretaThunberg says!
Bavaria’s Prime Minister Markus Söder (CSU) simply commented on the Thunberg video on Twitter: “Interesting…”
Other sources: DPA, “Tagesspiegel”, IPCC report “AR5 Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change”, Facebook post by Greta Thunberg.
