Merkel, time to take stock: in the Rhineland, the contradictions of environmental policy
The Garzweiler mine in the Rhineland continues to threaten the surrounding villages.
© Photo: AFP / Editing: FMM Graphic Studio
Text by: Patricia Blettery Follow
8 mins
Angela Merkel, the “climate chancellor”?
At the time of the balance sheet, the action of the one who led Germany for 16 years is rather welcomed on the question of the environment, in particular with the exit of nuclear power.
But this policy is not free from contradictions.
A few kilometers from Cologne, the open-cast coal mines of Garzweiler and the Datteln4 power station are a source of misunderstanding among environmental organizations.
Reporting.
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From our special correspondent,
Along the roads, signs warn us that there is a real fight going on here. “
Defending life is not a crime”
, “Freedom
for all climate defenders”,
we can read. When you arrive around the
open-cast coal mines of Garzweiler in the Rhineland
, just a few kilometers from the motorway, the spectacle and the atmosphere that emerge are stunned. Stopping the use of coal, a highly polluting fuel and emitter of greenhouse gases, to produce electricity does not appear for tomorrow.
Entire villages have become ghosts.
The houses have been walled up, the bus shelters which have become obsolete indicate a new direction: "
Departure for utopia
".
Even the village cross is no longer on its base, replaced by a yellow cross, “
Alle Dörfer bleiben
”, (“All villages remain”).
Instead, there are treehouses, camps for environmental activists, a real ZAD.
The depth of the hole in the neighboring mine, around 250 meters and its extent, around fifty kilometers, operated by the energy company RWE are no less impressive.
Here, lignite, a highly polluting fuel, is still extracted to generate electricity in nearby coal-fired power stations.
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Fred, 60, environmental activist, shows us around the village of Lützerath or more exactly what remains of it: “
As long as we haven't seen what is happening here, we can't believe it. Here, last year, there were still two big farms. They were shaved
”. "
Our red line for us
,
it's that one,
he warns, pointing to the small signs positioned along a symbolic line around the mine.
To limit global warming to 1.5 ° and respect the Paris Agreement, the extension of the mine must not exceed this border. Burning coal (lignite) emits a lot of CO2
. ".
A little further on, the village of Keyenberg has the same future. The shutters of the houses are closed and there is little evidence of life left. A car parked in front of a red brick farmhouse testifies to the presence of a few pockets of resistance, families who refused RWE's compensation and did not wish to go and live further away, in new housing estates.
Legal recourse from residents, municipalities or environmental associations (the Bund for example) has yielded nothing and six villages are still threatened. In accordance with the applicable mining law, the electricity supplier RWE has, in effect, the right to expropriate the people in order to exploit the coal located under their houses if this is necessary. Yet in October 2018, the deforestation of the Hambach forest, not far from here, located near Aachen, still by RWE (3,900 out of 4,100 hectares cleared) to enlarge a huge mine had been suspended. A symbolic and encouraging victory.
What dismays the activists installed in treehouses to protect nature and villages is the double talk of a government which adopts
a law to exit coal
, gradually closes the most polluting power stations, but continues to expand mines.
Datteln4 or the paradox of German energy policy
A little further north, there is the Datteln power station, networked in May 2020. It works with hard coal, a better quality coal than lignite, which it imports from Colombia and Russia.
To compensate for its commissioning, additional shutdowns of coal-fired power stations were, however, scheduled for several years.
Franziska is 26 years old. She grew up in a family from Datteln which has been fighting since 2005 against the establishment of the power station in the town of Datteln.
“Beyond the fact that this establishment was put into a network at the time when Germany undertook to phase out coal, that the plant emits too many greenhouse gases (8.4 million tonnes of CO2 each year according to Fridays for future), the power plant is a real nuisance for the people here. It is really located in the center of the city, almost in their gardens. In addition, very close to here there is a children's hospital. This power station is a nuisance, because it gives off smoke filled with nanoparticles and which, moreover, permanently hide the sun from us
”.
Lena Wittekin and Franziska Pennekamp belong to the environmental youth movement Fridays for Future.
© Patricia Blettery / RFI
A climate strategy according to the wind
When we meet with the Datteln section of
Fridays for future
, a court ruling dated August 26 ruled that the plant had been built illegally, a blow to
Armin Laschet
, the Prime Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia. , one of the most ardent defenders of the project and candidate for chancellery for the CDU. In the same vein, last April a historic decision of the German Constitutional Court in Karlsruhe seized by complaints from families recognized that the current climate law infringed on the civil liberties of future generations. She demanded a strengthening of national climate legislation.
Three months before the elections, the government coalition therefore revised its copy. In June 2021, Parliament passed
a new climate protection law that provides for climate neutrality by 2045
, five years earlier than initially envisioned.
At the international level, the Chancellor strongly supported the negotiation of the Kyoto protocol, she believed in it for a long time, she really clung to it. So, we must recognize a desire to pull up international climate ambitions. At European level, especially last year, Angela Merkel facilitated a fairly important decision at European Council level on these famous new climate objectives. In December 2020, we went from minus 40% to at least 55% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2030. But recent years have been marked by a Germany which marked time, a Chancellor who restrained reins instead of having a leading role in terms of climate policy. Nationally, it is somewhat the same.Of course, Germany has embarked on a double energy transition with the exit from nuclear power decided 10 years ago and an exit from coal. Renewable energies account for more than 40% of the electricity mix, that's good, but we have to go further. And the decision to exit coal no later than 2038 is clearly outdated.
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