Luisa Neubauer in the Siemens Supervisory Board? Good that you are not involved. For Fridays For the Future, that would have meant a disaster.

The Friday For Future movement is not from Siemens to buy photo: Reuters

It is an old, cheap strategy for those Who can't manage to convince his critics with arguments, trying to buy you. The tried Siemens chief Joe Kaeser on Friday in vain with Fridays-for-Future-spokeswoman Luisa Neubauer. After her unsuccessful conversation about a possible exit of the company from the controversial Carmichael coal mine in Australia Kaeser Neubauer offered a Post in the Supervisory Board of Siemens Energy AG. Neubauer declined the offer on Sunday.

For Siemens, it would have been a brilliant move. The group would have bought the perfect Fig-leaf to draw cheerful in Australia Profit, while the continent burns. And drive at the same time in the Chinese province of Xinjiang on Business, while the Uighurs are to be quartered in Camps.

The Siemens offer is pretty bold. For Fridays for the Future, it would have been a disaster, would have been their most prominent front woman for it. Although Neubauer is in the movement is not without controversy, but it is whether it pleases the base groups or not, the face of the German Fridays. What determines the public perception of the movement.

The Supervisory Board, it would have been their role to control the Siemens managing Board. You would have been able to attach a criticism to the top and try to prevent projects or even to overthrow the Board. Theoretically. Practically, you could have as one of twenty members there, certainly not the riot, and certainly not as a single young woman.

Neubauer would also be the secrecy and the company's goals committed to. As a climate activist, you would have lost, at a stroke, of any credibility, and influence. Well, the Fridays spokeswoman has not agreed to it. It has proposed instead to Siemens, the Post of a member of the Scientists for the Future to offer. A clever Move.