New climate activism fad: Deflating SUV tyres in Berlin

What’s confusing though is that even electric vehicles have been targeted

SUV owners living in the wealthier districts of Berlin have a new thing to worry about after earlier this week the police departments in the city received about 50 complaints for finding the tyres on such vehicles flattened in the morning.

Apparently, that vandalism is a political act committed by a previously unknown activist organization calling itself Reifen platt for Future (Flat tyres for Future). The group claimed responsibility by leaving a typed manifesto on each of the vehicles explaining their opposition to SUVs as responsible for worsening the climate situation.

An excerpt from one of these notes reads: “While you are allowed to exhaust as much CO2 into the air as you like, increasingly extreme weather threatens to dispossess millions of people.”

Whether you support or oppose clandestine activist tactics of that kind, you will be surprised to find out that despite the proclamation many of the targeted SUVs were actually hybrid or electric, which makes the whole thing rather puzzling. And it sure puts

A dent in the overall message

The notes claiming responsibility for the deflated tyres were left on large vehicles in the neighbourhoods of Wansee, Schlachtensee and Nikolassee in the southwest of the German capital. The texts also blamed Chancellor Olaf Scholz for failing to initiate a traffic revolution, which would move the focus away from private cars.

What’s more, the media reports aren’t even clear on whether the tyres were deflated by letting the air out of them and thus providing an inconvenience to the SUV owners, or if they were actually slashed, which would constitute property damage. Either way, the police are investigating the filed complaints.

The whole thing may seem a bit convoluted as an idea, however, what’s already been proven is that SUVs are both much more harmful to the environment due to their higher emissions output (if powered by fossil fuels), but also because of their weight and size they create more dust particles when breaking, plus they take up more of the urban space on streets and parking lots.