He has dedicated his life to the climate fight against fossil fuels and overconsumption. 41-year-old Lars Schäfer from Flensburg is a university-educated teacher of German and engineering. But he worked until the spring of 2023 as a teacher in a forest kindergarten. It was a job that he, in his own words, “loved”. Still, he ended up quitting his job to make the climate fight in Die Letzte Generation his full-time occupation, and thus he lives today on unemployment benefits.
When you ask Lars Schäfer why he has become one of the climate activists who glues himself to the roadways in Germany, the story begins in the rural village of Schinkel, located about 80 km south of Flensburg.
- I grew up in the village of Schinkel, which is one of the first organic villages in Germany. My father was a teacher and my mother a dietician, and I had a great upbringing. I remember once asking my parents when they had ever argued. They said it was before I was born, says Lars Schäfer.
He got his first part-time job when he was 12 years old, and he ended up getting an apprenticeship as a sales apprentice at an oil company that sold gasoline and diesel to gas stations, among other things.
- I saw how the prices on the world markets went up for oil, and we raised the prices, which is completely fair. But when the prices went down on the world market, we kept the high price to increase the profit. It was a shock to me, because I came from a small eco-community in Schinkel. It was unfair, explains Lars Schinkel.
While today he only gets into a car to get to his "work" as an activist, he had a car as a business student in an oil company.
- I had a car then, and since then I have never had one again, he says.
Started with bicycle activism
But Lars Schäfer did not start his activism directly by gluing himself to the roads to block the drivers.
- I started with bicycle activism, and I would say that the breakthrough came in connection with Alan Kurdi drowning on the escape route through the Mediterranean. That's where it started, because it was unfair, says Lars Schäfer, who himself has a six-year-old daughter.
This is about activism to promote the use of bicycles rather than cars, and Alan Kurdi is the two-year-old Syrian boy who died while fleeing across the Mediterranean in 2015. The image of the dead boy on the beach went around the world, becoming the symbol of the refugee crisis.
Lars Schäfer points to overconsumption and the use of fossil fuels as one of the reasons why refugees are flocking to Europe. When he is glued to the roads today, there is a clear reason.
- I am doing it to create more justice and make people aware of our overconsumption, says the activist.
He has no doubt that fossil fuels are to blame for the injustices in the world.
- I hope more people will see our message and understand that we have become accustomed to overconsumption of more than the planet Earth can provide, he says.
And he has no doubt at all about where the world will end up if we do not stop our use of fossil fuels.
- Everything is going to get worse with the climate, and we are going to see a migration across the Mediterranean on an unprecedented scale. This will again mean that Europe will close itself off completely, says Lars Schäfer, who has hope.
- The climate crisis and what we are seeing are man-made. I hope we can stop it.
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