Luisa Neubauer

Luisa-Marie Neubauer (1996-04-21, Hamburg) is a German climate activist. She is one of the main organisers of the School strike for climate movement in Germany. She advocates a climate policy that complies and surpases the Paris Agreement and endorses de-growth. Neubauer is a member of Alliance 90/The Greens and the Green Youth.

Neubauer grew up in Hamburg-Iserbrook district and completed her high school diploma at the affluent Marion-Dönhoff-Gymnasium in Hamburg-Blankenese. She studies Geography at the University of Göttingen since 2015. She has received a scholarship from the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and a scholarship Alliance 90/ The Greens-affiliated Heinrich Böll Foundation.

Early activism

Neubauer has been a youth ambassador of the Non-govermental Organization ONE since 2015. She has also been a member of the Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations, 350.org, the Right Livelihood Award foundation, the Fossil Free campaign and The Hunger Project.

Fridays For Future

As of the beginning of 2019, Neubauer became known as one of the leading Fridays For Future activists. Many media outlets refer to her as the "German face of the movement." Neubauer rejects comparisons of herself and other strike organisers to Greta Thunberg, saying: "We're building a mass-movement and reaching out quite far in our methods of mobilising and gaining attention. What Greta does is incredibly inspiring but actually relatively far from that."

Neubauer does not see the strikes as a means of directly affecting politics. More important is the work behind the strikes: "What we're doing is incredibly sustainable. We're creating structures and turning the events into educational experiences. And we're leading debates on the principles of climate protection."

On 10 January 2020, it was announced that Neubauer had turned down an offer by Siemens to sit on their energy board. In a statement Neubauer said that “If I were to take it up, I would be obliged to represent the company’s interests and could never be an independent critic of Siemens,” she explained. “That is not compatible with my role as [a] climate activist.”

It was later revealed that Siemens would – despite protests and lobbying – go ahead with their project with Adani – a contract to help operate a large mine in Australia. In response, Neubauer – who had previously referred to the project as an "inexcusable mistake" – told the news agency DPA: “We asked Kaeser to do everything possible to stop the Adani mine. Instead he will now profit from this disastrous project. Adding, This is so last century, and Joe Kaeser is making an unforgivable mistake,”

Urgency of climate action

As guest author on the official WWF blog, Luisa Neubauer described the urgency she perceived regarding climate change:

"It feels like we're sitting in a car about to drive into an abyss. But instead of hitting the brakes, it accelerates. We were put into this car without anyone asking us. This abyss really exists. Man-made climate change is real and by now we're experiencing the grave changes that it's bringing. [...] And by "we" I mean the generation that will have to deal with the consequences more than any other. [...] Our drivers are the politicians, decision makers and industry C.E.O.s that are stepping on the gas pedal.“

Controversies

Neubauer has received negative press coverage for her past flights to remote countries such as, among others, Namibia, United States of America, United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Canada as well as Morocco. As a response, she has stated that any criticism of her personal consumption distracts from larger structural and political issues.

Neubauer receives critisicm in that regard that she fails to acknowledge the huge increase of the global human population as cause of climate change.

While positioning herself against the comparison of the climate change and the Holocaust, she has written in her latest book that the climate change is the greatest disaster in human history.

She rejects ideas to deal with the climate consequences by geoengineering and doesn´t believe electric cars can really help to solve the general problem of the human lust for neverending economic growth.

She makes today's political class responsible, especially white men from the northern hemisphere, for being painfully slow while implementing needed climate measures. Therefore the northern atmosphere is obligated to decrease their standard of living to pay for the future change of the global south towards an environmental way of life.

Neubauer faced backlashes and is being accused of having a sexist world-view after claiming that men as a gender have failed in human history and women would do a much better job.

Personal life

Neubauer grew up in Hamburg, Germany. Luisa's mother Frauke Neubauer (née Reemtsma) is the cousin of the publicist and patron Jan Philipp Reemtsma and a cousin of the "Fridays for Future" activist Carla Reemtsma (* 3. April 1998 Berlin). She has three siblings, of which two live in England. Her older brother Lennard played semi-professional football in Oxford. He now lives and works in finance in London.