We are heading unchecked toward a climate catastrophe – and the car companies continue to press on the gas pedal: more and more cars, ever larger and heavier, are clogging up the roads, taking away the air we breathe and heating up the climate. This has to stop now!
While in Munich from 05-10.09.2023 the car companies try to pull off their sales show, we stand up as part of the climate justice movement for a fair and social mobility turnaround and a stop of the destructive car production! We need immediately a fair, good mobility for all of us, which connects and does not trample all livelihoods. Also we need a production that does not produce cars, but the things that make a good life possible for us: tramways, suburban trains, bicycles, intercity buses, and everything that serves the needs of people instead of profits.
It’s about time to take on the car industry. Already 1.1°C hotter world is hell for many people. And the motto of the corporations is: Keep growing! They are cheerfully flooding the world with endless streams of cars. Last year alone, 72 million cars were produced worldwide. This means that the automotive industry is responsible for an incredible 9% of global emissions.
A different drive system alone does not change the extreme consumption of resources and space. Electric cars can never guarantee climate-friendly mobility for everyone and only shift and mask the problems of the car from one region of the world to another – precisely to the places and people who are already much more affected by the consequences of the climate crisis. So that cars can roll off the assembly lines in Munich, Wolfsburg, Stuttgart and Ingolstadt, groundwater and the livelihoods of the people living there are pumped out in the Chilean Atacama Desert and in Jujuy in Argentina, among other places, for the extraction of lithium.
It has been known for years that there has to be an end to car production, and with the climate crisis it has been given a definitive expiration date. While this was initially ignored by the car companies, they are now „transforming“ in panic. IG-Metall assumes that, if things turn out as the car companies imagine, there will be around 100,000 to 450,000 fewer people employed.
In this situation, it cannot be a matter of keeping an outdated, oversized and resource-guzzling industry alive a few years longer. Instead, we must now rethink the production and reproduction of our mobility, away from apparent individual transport and short-sighted profits, and toward collectivity and a focus on needs. We need a massive expansion of public transport and, at the same time, a socialization of the car companies that focuses on people’s needs, not on growth constraints and profit maximization.
In Munich at the IAA, we, together with many other actors, are ringing in the end of the car age, defending our fundamental right to climate protection and demanding the socially just restructuring of corporations and production chains.
Our publicly announced action will present an image of diversity, creativity and openness. Everyone, whether experienced in protest or not, can join in. Together we will throw sand in the gears of the car industry!
You can be a part of this action in very different ways: whether blocking, cooking, demonstrating, dancing, holding vigils, transporting people and things, providing emotional or legal support and much more – no matter what you can do, come along, because YOU are an important part of this resistance in every role!
BlockIAA is our contribution to climate justice and a fundamental system change. Come to the Mobility Transition Camp in Munich from September 5-10, 2023 and become part of the movement!