Echt een geweldig bedrijf hè, dat RWE (Essent). Deze vernietiger van onze aarde, heeft toestemming gekregen om een groot deel van Hambacher Forst (of Bürgewald), een bos met eeuwenoude bomen in Noordrijn-Westfalen te slopen……
RWE ‘moet’ een groot deel van dit 12.000 jaar oude bos kappen, om bij de daaronder gelegen bruinkool te kunnen komen, dit wordt in dagbouw gewonnen……. (zie o.a. de laatste twee foto’s)
Eerder werd al een groot deel van dit bos gesloopt, om bruinkool te kunnen winnen, het is dan ook volkomen terecht dat milieuactivisten al decennialang strijden voor het behoud van dit bos……
Tot 2040 heeft RWE toestemming om naar eigen goeddunken dit bos te kappen…… Dus kan RWE tot die tijd doorgaan met het uitermate vervuilende bruinkool te verbranden……. Dit terwijl Duitsland zich heeft verplicht per 2050 een vermindering van broeikasgas uitstoot te hebben volbracht van 80 tot 95%…….. ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!
‘Voor de goede orde’: bruinkool is de smerigste fossiele brandstof op aarde…….
Zo worden niet alleen wij, maar ook de burgers in Duitsland van dag tot dag besodemieterd door de regering
Deutsche Welle meldde gisteren dat de strijd om het bos een nieuw stadium ingaat:
Clash
in German forest as red line is crossed
Logging
has begun in Hambach Forest, where activists have sought for years to
protect ancient trees – which grow over coal coveted by German power
company RWE. Under heavy police presence, the fight is about to get
real.
The
old and mighty Hambach Forest, an ancient woodlands in Germany that
lies between the cities of Cologne and Aachen, has been
an environmental
battlefield for
years. On one side, young activists living in trailers and tree
houses are fighting to save the forest. On the other, Germany’s
second-largest electricity producer RWE is trying to clear it.
And technically, they
are allowed to do so. RWE bought the forest in the 1970s so that coal
can be dug out of there at neighboring Hambach, Germany’s largest
open-pit lignite mine.
But the highly coveted
coal deposits lie beneath the 12,000-year-old forest, whose trees
have been chopped down for decades to make space for coal diggers.
Only a fourth of the original forest, which used to cover 5,500
hectares, is left. The open-pit lignite mine has even swallowed
entire villages.
The
controversial clearing work began at the Hambacher Forst with police
presence
Crossing
the red line
Now
the battle is getting real, since RWE’s diggers have crossed a
sensitive spot for the very first time: The old A4 autobahn, which
has been defined as a red line by anti-coal mine activists and
citizens’ initiatives.
North of this line,
there are no trees left anymore. But south of this line,
environmentalists have been trying to save what’s left of the ancient
forest.
For more than four
years, about 30 activists have occupied trees in this part of the
forest. They’ve built a permanent camp, and many even sleep in tree
houses every night to protect the trees – because those occupied
cannot be chopped down with the people in them.
In the eyes of the
activists, RWE crossing the “red line” is not just a
provocation and an intrusion into their habitat. It also means
passing over a symbolic border, one that stood for dialogue and peace
talks.
A month ago, more than
a thousand people from neighboring villages came together at this
very line to form a human chain that 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) long.
Their message was: up to here and not a step further, enough with the
logging already.
It was the largest
protest against the clearing of Hambach Forest in years, and it led
to negotiations with RWE. The energy supplier was asked to stop
clearing forest for coal mining south of the red line.
But now that the
diggers have crossed this line, activists say RWE has officially
pulled out of the peace talks. And so the battle that’s been going on
for years has reached a new dimension – with the largest police
presence that the ancient forest has ever seen.
The
energy company RWE has extended the clearing work to an area south of
the former A4 route
Large
scale police operation
“We
counted about 75 police cars and there is a helicopter flying over
our heads all the time,” says one of the activists, who wants to
be called Joe for his own protection.
The 24-year-old has
been living in the Hambach Forst for half a year now. “I’ve
never seen anything like this here,” Joe told DW. “There’s
even an armored truck.”
“There is a lot
of state authority protecting RWE right now – patrolling the forest,
searching people, handing out bans on returning to a particular
site,” he says while a police helicopter whirs overhead.
Previously, RWE
employed its own security personnel to protect the loggers. And this
security personnel is still present. But why are police now getting
involved as well, protecting the logging activities of a private
company?
“We’re here to
enable logging activities and to prevent RWE employees and machines
from getting attacked,” says Sandra Schmitz, spokesperson of the
police department in Aachen, which is responsible for the Hambach
Forest.
“We have a legal
order to avert danger and to prosecute criminals – and that applies
to all people and all institutions,” Schmitz told DW. “In
past years, the protests have escalated to the point that RWE cannot
do its work without police protection anymore,” she adds.
Asked how dangerous
these activists really are, Schmitz replies by saying she doesn’t
like using the term activists. “We regard people who throw
stones and Molotov cocktails as criminals. They are not afraid to use
violence. And we have to stop that.”
A few days ago, a RWE
employee was hit by a stone, causing a head wound and a road accident
that injured several other RWE employees, according to the police. As
of now, four people have been slightly injured since the red line was
crossed.
Activists
put their own bodies at risk – and thus violate the law
Civil
disobedience or violent attacks?
What do the activists have to say
about the violent criminals accusation? 25-year-old Tam (also a
pseudonym) rejects violence, and makes a passionate plea for peaceful
protest. Sit-ins and human chains are okay in his opinion, throwing
stones and Molotov cocktails not so much.
The activists that have been
interviewed by DW so far all seemed very peaceful. They walk around
the forest barefoot, love nature, and sit around the bonfire at night
playing the guitar.
But there are always new people
joining their cause, some from abroad now, while others only stay for
a few days, for personal or professional reasons. There is no central
organization, and so no one really knows how exactly others are
protesting.
“So someone could picking up a
stone at some point with others not noticing it,” says Tam. “I
distance myself from violence, I don’t think that that’s a useful
strategy,” he says.
“We have massive discussions
about this issue at the camp all the time – but no one who throws
stones will admit it at that moment,” Joe continues.
Joe says the violence is usually
started by RWE’s security personnel, who he says has been hunting
activists in the forests with dogs.
Activists
live in the trees – in the literal sense of the word
Tam
and Joe both admit to have acted criminally insofar as that they’ve
brought logging operations to a halt by blocking access and damaging
RWE property.
“But we have to
do something. We can’t just watch while nature is being destroyed,”
says Joe. “The damage that is being caused here can never be
fixed again.
“Digging for coal
to a depth of 300 meters is an extremely harsh intervention in
nature. It causes layers of earth to fault. That is serious
business,” Joe says.
Cutting down forest
will almost always have negative environmental impact. Trees cool the
air and store carbon, in that way slowing down climate change.
And Hambach isn’t just
any forest. It is 12,000 years old, and boasts an especially large
amount of biodiversity. German environmental organization BUND says
the forest is home to 142 species important for conservation, which
would lose their habitat if the forest were clear-cut.
All of that wouldn’t
even be necessary, according to Joe. “We don’t have to mine coal
anymore, because we have enough energy resources from renewables
these days. But the coal mining lobbies behind hindering our complete
energy transition,” he says.
For
many, coal means jobs and electricity
Is
lignite as an energy source still viable?
So far, almost
one-fourth of Germany’s energy still comes from lignite. The Hambach
open-pit brown coal mine alone provides 5 percent of Germany’s
electricity, and generates 2,000 jobs in the Rhine region. Around 40
million tons of lignite are extracted here every year.
“If you take the
energy that is stored here, then you can compare it to the oil
resources in Iraq,” says Hermann Oppenberg, deputy director of
the Hambach coal mine.
Officially, RWE is
allowed to extract coal from Hambach Forest until 2040. But
electricity production through lignite isn’t really profitable any
more – there is hardly any money to be made with lignite these days.
Ever since the
renewable energy boom, RWE has been in crisis; its stock price have
been at rock
bottom for months.
Shareholders have lost 80 percent of their stock value over the past
decade.
In fact, renewable
energy could completely replace emissions-intense lignite – which is
also the German government’s plan. Only a few weeks ago, it finally
reached an agreement on a climate action plan. The plan stipulates
that by 2050, Germany will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 80
to 95 percent.
In order to reach this
goal, virtually all coal-fired power plants would have to be shut
down. After all, one of the biggest climate challenges in
Germany is power generation, which creates 40 percent of all
greenhouse gas emissions.
A new commission set
up by the government is supposed to plan out the reduction of
coal-fired power generation after Germany’s federal elections in
2017.
Germany
would reach its climate goals easier rejecting coal mines – many
believe it
Making
a global statement
Until that happens,
the activists at Hambach Forest are determined to continue their
fight for survival of their beloved forest, despite setbacks.
Tam has been living in
a tree house in the forest for over a year now. The first tree he
lived in has already been chopped down by RWE.
“It was one of
the worst feelings I’ve ever had in my life, especially because I
couldn’t be there when the tree fell,” he says, followed by a
long pause. Just like most of the activists here, he is aware that he
won’t be able to save the forest. Their protest can be stopped at any
time.
“Everything we
are doing here is symbolic – because we know that you cannot
completely stop a large company like RWE,” Joe says. “One
day this forest will be completely bulldozed to the ground and our
camp will be cleared, we are aware of that.”
“But for us, it’s
about making a statement and showing the public that we are here.”
Forest
or opencast mining, what will remain in the end?
For
Tam and Joe, this struggle is about more than just the Hambach
Forest. They want to draw attention to a global problem.
“The battle we
are fighting here has symbolic power for me,” Tam says. “We
want to set an example for the preservation of forests everywhere in
the world. It’s important to get active when logging is happening
right at your doorstep.”
And Joe won’t give up
that easily either. “The fight against large companies that are
destroying our environment will always go on, even if we will
eventually lose this battle at Hambach Forest one day.”
As long as these
protests remain peaceful, the police will tolerate the activists,
says Schmitz from the Aachen police department. “That’s part of
our democracy.”
“But it is
unacceptable when people get hurt.”
Hier de link naar het originele artikel, waar u onder de laatste foto nog meer foto’s kan zien, bovendien vindt u daaronder meer artikelen van Deutsche Welle over RWE.
Zie ook:
‘Ohrfeige für RWE und Landesregierung
‘Hambacher Forst voorlopig gespaard door de rechter‘
‘RWE (Essent) en Hambacher Forst: de eerste dode tijdens ontruiming bij val van hangbrug……..‘
‘Kamp is lobbyist voor RWE en eist opsplitsing energiemarkt….‘
‘Essent doet klanten een cadeau van € 200,–, bekostigt door de belastingbetaler……‘
‘Duitse belastingbetaler draait op voor atoomafval van o.a. RWE en E-on…….‘
‘RWE schildert zich valsgroen in duurzame energie……..‘
Bent u klant van Essent (een bedrijf van RWE), of van het valsgroene Innogy (een ‘duurzaam’ RWE Essent bedrijf… ha! ha! ha!) en heeft u kinderen/kleinkinderen, of bent u begaan met het milieu, zeg dan a.u.b. zo snel mogelijk het contract op!
Voor meer berichten n.a.v. het bovenstaande, klik op één van de labels die u onder dit bericht terug kan vinden.
