In October 2022, a group of climate activists from a collective called Scientist Rebellion walked into the Porsche pavilion at Autostadt, a car attraction in Wolfsburg, Germany. Dressed in white lab coats, they were there to protest carbon emissions and demand the country move faster on cutting transport pollution.
To make their stand, they took out superglue and stuck their own hands firmly to the concrete floor. Several declared they would stay put, some on hunger strike, until their demands were met.
The staff had a simpler plan. They mostly left them to it.
And that is when the protest started to unravel. Within just a few hours, the activists took to social media to complain. The glue was hurting their hands. They were cold. They were hungry. They needed the bathroom, and said staff had refused to bring them bowls to relieve themselves. In one especially memorable moment, some complained that they couldn’t order their own food and had to eat what Volkswagen provided, an odd grievance from people who had announced they were on hunger strike.
Then the workday ended. Rather than negotiate, the staff simply switched off the heating, turned off the lights, and went home, leaving the activists glued to the floor in the cold and dark. The group then complained about that too, about the darkness, and about security guards doing their rounds with “bright torches.”
The whole demonstration collapsed in under 48 hours. The leader was the first to leave, after his glued hand swelled up and doctors warned of possible blood clots.
They glued themselves to the floor to protest climate change… then discovered the building had closing hours.
