Six hours after she started from Freiburg, Carla is standing in the rain on a hill about 100 meters from the edge and is looking in the direction of Lützerath.

The police are asking them and thousands of other demonstrators to return to the designated routes: it is life-threatening to walk to the edge of the mine because the ground has softened due to constant rain and there is a risk of landslides.

"End of the announcement." Carla's friend Florian slides down the muddy hill anyway and keeps walking.

Carla hesitates but stands still.

After a few minutes Florian comes back.

"It's so crazy, you can't imagine it.

The depth.

Shocking."

Leonie Feuerbach

Editor in Politics.

  • Follow I follow

Carla and Florian came to the Rhenish lignite mining area on Saturday because they don't want the coal to be dug up under the village of Lützerath, which has long since been abandoned by its inhabitants.

They are 24 years old and climate activists or activists, as they call themselves gender-neutral.

Carla studies environmental politics and is involved in the youth organization of the nature conservation association. She was also a delegate at the climate conference in Egypt.

Carla keeps listing the reasons for her commitment and for today's protest in a gentle but resolute voice: the approaching climate catastrophe, the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees, the harmfulness of lignite, the well-stocked gas storage tanks.

At seven in the morning she and her boyfriend got on the train in Freiburg.

They are traveling with a good dozen other demonstrators from different cities and organizations who have come together via a telegram group.

"Peaceful demonstrations bring more"

Lützerath has to give way so that RWE can excavate the coal underneath.

Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck and NRW Economics Minister Mona Neubaur (both Green) negotiated this with the energy company.

Because other villages do not have to give way and the coal phase-out in the Rhineland is being brought forward from 2038 to 2030, they call the agreement a compromise.

The Green Youth, Fridays for Future and other activists call it a betrayal.

The call for the demonstration said: "On Saturday we will demonstrate peacefully between the village and the coal excavator and demand: 'Lützerath stays!'" No one is allowed into the village itself.

It has been cordoned off by the police for days and is surrounded by a double fence.

Getting into Lützerath, says the younger woman, is not a goal of the demo.

"Peaceful demonstrations bring more."

In the end, the demonstration will not remain peaceful at all.

While the evacuation of the occupied hamlet has been faster and less dangerous since Wednesday than the police feared, there are riots with injuries over the course of Saturday.

Around a thousand of the estimated 20,000 demonstrators are trying to break through police lines to get to Lützerath.

The police use batons, pepper spray, water cannon and horses to prevent this.

The situation only calms down when it gets dark.

This escalation cannot yet be guessed on the train.

The 20 or so people between the ages of 20 and 60 talk in quiet voices, some draw posters or photos of an older man who has mounted a globe on a stick with the Eiffel Tower and the words “1.5 degrees” on it.

In the four-seater next to Carla is an older woman knitting and a younger woman wearing peace sign earrings.

They all say that they want to demonstrate peacefully.

One says he is convinced that violence only harms the cause.

He also doesn't think much of sticking to roads.