On Sunday, the Pfaffenthal district became the backdrop of the Oekofest. The Mouvement Écologique and the Oekozenter invited visitors to a day of music, workshops, information stands and dialogue, attended by Prime Minister Luc Frieden and other political representatives.
At the opening of the Oekofest, Blanche Weber, president of the Mouvement Écologique, delivered a sharp rebuke on the country’s current climate policy. She argued that the climate crisis can no longer be tackled with minor adjustments, but rather calls for more decisive political choices.
Her criticism was that the government is moving too slowly in a number of areas and is, in part, still clinging to outdated models. Among other topics, she took in transport policy, agriculture, and the planned Google data centre in Bissen.
When the Prime Minister subsequently explained that, in order to avoid pushback, he preferred to encourage rather than impose measures, the environmental campaigner could no longer hold back and cut the Prime Minister off.
No minced words
Environment Minister Serge Wilmes’s arguments on CO2 trends were also denounced openly. Merely justifying and singing the praises of one’s own policies, Weber said, was unbecoming of an environment ministry.
The Ministry of Agriculture also received a grilling. There was no way around the issue of pesticides, she said. Analyses had shown that apples grown conventionally in Luxembourg could contain residues of up to eight different pesticides.
Yet, no limit values existed for these pesticide cocktails. Since limits were only set for individual substances rather than for combinations, the Minister of Agriculture took the view that all was in order as long as no single pesticide crossed its own threshold.
As one of her colleagues had put it, she said, a drunk driver stopped for an alcohol check could just as well claim, “I’m not drunk, if you look at the beer, the wine, and the spirits individually.”
In France, she added, illnesses caused by exposure to pesticides, even in the children of those exposed, for instance during pregnancy, were recognised by the health insurance funds as occupational diseases.
On 14 October, at the Mouvement’s invitation, three people affected, who had demonstrably developed cancer or Parkinson’s disease as a result of pesticide exposure, would visit Luxembourg alongside the director of the country’s national health insurance funds for a public event.
The hope, she said, was that their testimonies and their suggestions for improvement would help make sure this issue was taken more seriously in Luxembourg, both by policymakers and within the sectors concerned.
None of the ministers had had time to attend an event with them, she called out.
Endless waiting on action and support
A large portion of Weber’s speech was dedicated to the devastating floods in Nepal. Colleagues in the country, she said, part of the Mouvement’s international alliance, had recalled that exactly eight years ago they had been promised international support to head off the kind of disaster that had struck this summer.
That support had been delayed in favour of other matters which had presumably been deemed more urgent, such as short-term crises at home, she decried.
People are left waiting time and time again, she denounced. During her speech, she praised young people from the Luxembourg climate activist collective KliKo and the youth organisation move, part of the Mouvement, who organised a protest in front of the Chamber.
The protest was in the form of street theatre, painting a scene where a moderator waits for politicians to say what they actually intended to do about the climate catastrophe. The moderator waits and continues to wait with the moderator’s parting line, she recalled, being that they would presumably have to keep waiting a little longer.
Instead of sugarcoating the situation or the government’s approach, as Luxembourg’s ministers do in fields such as the environment and agriculture, she said, the country needed to lay the facts on the table and address the sore points directly.
Obstacles and shortcomings on sustainability had to be identified, and ways of overcoming them need to be proposed. In doing so, policymakers would show real stature, proving that they were equal to the task and truly committed to a long-term vision.
At the same time, Weber notes that she did not view everything the government does through a negative lens. She acknowledged certain measures, but criticised the fact that, in her view, political promises are not being followed through consistently enough.
Her message was clear: action was needed now, rather than be left to waiting any longer.
Frieden welcomes the criticism
Prime Minister Luc Frieden, for his part, did not take the criticism amiss.
Constructive criticism, he said, belongs in a true democracy. That was why voices like Weber’s were extremely important, and why the government appreciated the reminders of what truly matters, so that everyone could work together to shape the future of the climate, biodiversity and the planet, without ruining everything in the short term.
For Weber, the question is no longer whether action is taken, but how quickly and how consistently it comes.
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