Luisa Neubauer

Luisa-Marie Neubauer (born 21 April 1996) is a German climate activist. She is one of the main organisers of the school strike for climate movement in Germany, where it is commonly referred to under its alternative name "Fridays for Future". She advocates a climate policy that complies with and surpasses the Paris Agreement and endorses de-growth. Neubauer is a member of Alliance 90/The Greens and the Green Youth.
Life.
Neubauer was born in Hamburg as the youngest of four siblings. Her mother is a nurse. Her grandmother was married for some years to Feiko Reemtsma. She got involved in the anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s, sensitized Luisa Neubauer to the climate problem and gave her her share of the taz cooperative. Two of her three older siblings live in London. Her cousin Carla Reemtsma is also a climate activist.
Neubauer grew up in Hamburg-Iserbrook district and completed her high school diploma at the in Hamburg-Blankenese in 2014. In the year after her graduation she worked for a development aid project in Tanzania and on a ecological farm in England. In 2015 she started studying geography at the University of Göttingen. She did a semester abroad at the University College London and received scholarships from the German government and the Alliance 90/The Greens-affiliated Heinrich Böll Foundation. In 2020 she completed her studies with a Bachelor of Science.
Early activism.
Neubauer has been a youth ambassador of the non-governmental organization ONE since 2016. She was also active for the Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations, 350.org, the Right Livelihood Award foundation, the "Fossil Free" campaign and The Hunger Project. With the campaign "Divest! Withdraw your money!" she forced the University of Göttingen to stop investing in industries that make money with coal, oil or gas.
Fridays For Future.
As of the beginning of 2019, Neubauer became known as one of the leading Fridays For Future activists. Many media outlets refer to her as the "German face of the movement." Neubauer rejects comparisons of herself and other strike organisers to Greta Thunberg, saying: "We're building a mass-movement and reaching out quite far in our methods of mobilising and gaining attention. What Greta does is incredibly inspiring but actually relatively far from that."
Neubauer does not see the strikes as a means of "directly" affecting politics. More important is the work behind the strikes: "What we're doing is incredibly sustainable. We're creating structures and turning the events into educational experiences. And we're leading debates on the principles of climate protection."
Following the protests of Fridays For Future Germany against Siemens for a specific infrastructure project in Australia, Neubauer met Joe Kaeser in January 2020. On 13 January 2020, it was announced that Neubauer had turned down an offer by Joe Kaeser to sit on the Siemens Energy board. In a statement Neubauer said that “If I were to take it up, I would be obliged to represent the company’s interests and could never be an independent critic of Siemens,” she explained. “That is not compatible with my role as [a] climate activist.”. Joe Kaeser stated that he did not offer Neubauer a seat in the companies' Board, but that he is open to have Neubauer on a Board on environmental questions 
On the day before Siemens announced that they will keep the contract with Adani to provide the rail infrastructure of the Carmichael coal mine in Australia. Neubauer told the news agency DPA: “We asked Kaeser to do everything possible to stop the Adani mine. Instead he will now profit from this disastrous project.“ She added that this decision was “so last century“ and that Kaeser was making an “unforgivable mistake”.
Criticism.
Neubauer received negative press coverage for her past flights to countries all around the world; she responded that any criticism of her personal consumption distracts from larger structural and political issues.
, a professor of political science at the University of Regensburg, accused her of using the term “old white men“ as a synonym for people with different opinions to discredit people with different opinions.