We interrupted our “Minister for Civil Protection”, #MartinPfister, during the #UBS Economic Forum at the Kongresshaus in #Zurich.

Martin Pfister and his Federal Council pose a threat to our country’s #security. His assessment of the threat, like himself, is stuck in the last millennium. He fears unrealistic #airstrikes from Russia or Iran more than he does #climatechange, which is infinitely more dangerous and already claims hundreds of #civilianlives in #Switzerland every year. Like the entire government, he notoriously and fundamentally underestimates the threat of #globalwarming and species loss to future generations. He would rather invest 3.4 billion Swiss francs in #fighter-bombers and air defence systems, thereby squandering funds that are so urgently needed elsewhere to protect our #future. Worse still, the focus on non-existent threats is a perfidious diversionary tactic. It distracts from the fact that Switzerland is spectacularly failing to meet its #climatetargets, that the world is spectacularly failing to meet its climate targets, that greenhouse gas emissions and temperatures are skyrocketing, that #tippingpoints are being reached – and all this despite the fact that it could all still be prevented if it were seriously put on the agenda.

The links between our fossil-fuel-dependent way of life and #globalwars are more than obvious. They are two sides of the same coin. In a world of growing resource scarcity, anyone who relies on fossil fuels and functioning transport routes for their own survival needs ever-expanding wars to secure essential supplies. This is the madness and the spiral logic of the military-industrial complex. Martin Pfister would have the power to abandon the path of rearmament, destruction and global warming in favour of a peaceful, non-imperial and non-fossil-based economic order. As long as he does not use this power, he is a threat to our security and a climate criminal.