With just over a week until Germans head to the ballot box, Pit Terjung is preparing to hit Berlin's streets.

As speaker for the country's branch of the youth climate movement Fridays for Future, he'll join protestors in the city center this Friday, urging the next government to take affordable, just and consistent climate action.

But the mood facing the nation's climate activists today is very different to the optimistic momentum Terjung witnessed at mass demonstrations back in 2019 — which brought an estimated 1.4 million people onto the streets.

"It is definitely hard times for climate activism right now," he says.

In stark contrast to Germany's 2021's federal election where it was high on the agenda, the climate has been overshadowed in current campaigns by heated debates on immigration, a flagging economy and ascendent far-right.

Terjung, who at 19 is preparing to vote for the first time, says the near absence of climate action in current election campaigns is a dramatic contrast to the physical realities of the planet. "We just came out of the hottest year in human history."

Although he says the last few years have seen huge wins for Germany's climate movement — such as the climate law which commits the country to reducing emissions 65% by 2035 — he believes Friedrich Merz, leader of the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and likely Germany's next chancellor, will "roll back very existential pillars of climate policy."

Climate policies — such as the

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