Lützerath.
In the village of Lützerath, climate activists and the police face each other. The situation is still calm. But the conflict is inevitable.
Some of the activists in front of the heaped-up earth wall wear white overalls, others wear black clothes, most of their faces are hidden behind scarves or corona masks. Warm tea makes the rounds. A cold wind is blowing on this January morning. Facing the crowd in front of the mound is a line of policemen, their helmets dangling from their hips.
A monstrous one is piling up behind the officials in the huge pit bucket wheel excavator on. Wind turbines turn on the horizon. The silhouette of the Neurath power plant can be seen even further away, steam rising from the chimneys into the cloudy sky. There is still a tense calm. The next few days will show whether it will hold up or whether it will turn violent.
Lützerath near Erkelenz south of Mönchengladbach is the crystallization point of what was probably the last dispute about coal. The small settlement is located in the Rhenish lignite mining area directly on the edge of the Garzweiler opencast mine, where the fuel for the nearby power plant is extracted.
Lützerath consists of just seven buildings, but it is a symbol of the fight against the combustion become fossil fuels. Lützerath is the last settlement to fall victim to the lignite that has been mined in the region for a hundred years. Clearing and demolition of the hamlet is scheduled to begin this week.
Lützerath: The residents are gone, but the demonstrators have settled in
In the past few decades, dozens of villages in the region have been in the pits open pits disappeared. There has been resistance to this for a long time. In some settlements, weather-worn protest signs can be seen against Rheinbraun, the name of the company that mines lignite here until twenty years ago. Today it is said that the protest against the demolition of the villages is initially a regional one. “Yes to home” is written on some yellowed signs.
Also read: Coal exit: The Greens and the Lützerath dilemma
When the protest against nuclear power died down because its end was in sight and climate change pushed its way onto the political agenda, the tone in the Rhineland changed lignite mining area. The fight against coal attracts activists who do not live in the region and for whom this fight is no less than one for the future of the world. The clashes intensify.
None of the originals live in Lützerath today resident more. All of them have sold their houses to the energy company RWE. The farmer Eckhardt Heukamp, a symbol of resistance to coal, was the last to give up last year. The Higher Administrative Court in Münster previously dismissed his lawsuit against his expropriation. Nevertheless, hundreds of mostly young people live in Lützerath today. The vacant houses are now occupied.
The demolition is perceived as political betrayal
Anti-coal activists set up. Adventurously constructed tree houses in the treetops, tents, paths covered with wood litter, posters and banners with political slogans. “Police everywhere, no justice” or: “The fight for liberation is anti-national”. They are concerned with far more than phasing out coal. They want a different society, revolutionary changes.
Above all, they now want to prevent what they see as political betrayal: the demolition of Lützerath, made possible by a Compromise, which RWE and the Green Economics Ministers Robert Habeck (Bund) and Mona Neubaur (NRW) announced at the beginning of October. The energy company is therefore already getting out of coal in 2030, but it can now get out what lies under Lützerath. It is the same Mona Neubaur who demonstrated a year ago in Lützerath together with climate activists for the preservation of the settlement.
Greta Thunberg: “A place full of sadness”
What is necessary for federal and state politics in terms of energy policy and legally secured is for the anti-coal activists a climate policy mistake. They argue that if the settlement is torn down and the coal underneath is burned, Germany will fall short of the goal of a maximum global warming of 1.5 degrees. “Lützerath has to stay because the coal has to stay in the ground,” says Mara, in her mid-twenties, a spokeswoman for the activists. And: “It cannot be that we are still destroying villages for coal in an escalating climate crisis.” The activists in Lützerath have prominent supporters in their struggle. Greta Thunberg visited the settlement in September 2021. “A place full of sadness” is Lützerath, said the Swedish climate icon at the time.
As clear as the lines of conflict are, the risk of violence is just as great. NRW politicians have almost begged for de-escalation in recent weeks, with the example of the clearing of the Hambach Forest four years ago in mind. The small piece of forest should fall victim to the Hambach opencast mine. There, too, climate activists had entrenched themselves and had bitter arguments with the police for weeks. Shortly after the eviction, the Higher Administrative Court prohibited the clearing.
Cavalry squadrons, water cannons and height rescuers are ready
The police have gathered hundreds of people from all over Germany to clear Lützerath, including special forces such as high-altitude rescuers and cavalry squadrons. water cannon are ready. A “difficult and challenging operation with considerable risks is expected,” said Aachen police chief Dirk Weinspach, who is responsible for the operation and has a green party membership himself, at a press conference on Monday.
The clashes will not be limited to Lützerath, she believes police. Disruptive actions and criminal offenses are expected in the entire lignite mining area, according to Operations Manager Wilhelm Sauter. Around 500 activists are said to be currently in the settlement. “Various tree and soil structures have been set up over the past few months. We don’t know what to expect in the occupied buildings, whether traps have been set up there.” There are indications that demonstrators wanted to use stone catapults and slingshots.
Barricades of branches, stones and earth
The police also expect the mine itself to be occupied, and activists may try to hijack the large bucket wheel excavators, as they have done in the past. The activists wanted to make the evacuation “as long as possible, as difficult as possible and as expensive as possible,” says operations manager Sauer. Police President Weinspach urgently asks that the situation does not escalate: “I ask for everything refrainwhich counteracts de-escalation”.
In the settlement, activists have spent the past few days barricades erected, mostly they seem provisional. Branches from trees that have already been cleared, stones, heaps of earth, so-called tripods, three-legged constructions that activists latch into and have to laboriously get out. In the past few days, the police have blocked the access roads to Lützerath, but activists are still getting into town on dirt roads.
Heavy driving on Monday morning excavator and trucks from RWE back and forth near the demolition edge, employees of the group erect fences to block access to the opencast mine. The closer the fences get, the more restless the activists become. More and more are sitting in front of the earth wall, behind which they have dug a ditch. A demonstrator sits at a dizzy height in the middle of a tripod. “No stones, please,” calls a young woman. The day before, some activists had attacked the police with stones. Despite all appeals.
More articles from this category can be found here: Politics
