Andrew Firmin is the co-author of the State of Civil Society report and Editor-in-Chief at CIVICUS, where he leads research into climate activism around the world.
It was the kind of treatment once reserved for narco gangs. Last June, several young Germans woke up to police raiding their homes, seizing their laptops and freezing their bank accounts.
Their supposed crime? Blocking streets and disrupting events to call for urgent action on climate change in the hottest year on record.
The crackdown on Germany’s Last Generation movement is emblematic of a disturbing escalation of attacks on climate activists around the world of late. For many years, the fossil fuel industry and the governments that protect it promoted outright climate denial, seeking to undermine the science that made an irrefutable case to cut emissions.
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