The activists are prepared. They have stored supplies of non-perishable food, dug trenches, built tree houses, set up tripping hazards, and there is even talk of tunnels. The small and deserted hamlet of Lützerath on the edge of the Garzweiler opencast mine has become a fortress. And the battle of climate activists is about to begin.
For days, the mighty excavators of the energy company RWE have been eating their way forward in the opencast mine in order to get to the millions of tons of lignite under Lützerath. The police are preparing a large-scale operation because the permit for the protest camp will expire in a few days. Much is reminiscent of the protests around the Hambach Forest, where climate protection activists managed to stop the clearing for lignite mining in court in 2018 after weeks of protest.
But especially for the Greens, a lot is different in Lützerath than in the Hambach Forest. Because this time they have to justify the decision as those responsible. Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck and North Rhine-Westphalia Economics Minister Mona Neubaur agreed on the deal together with RWE. Lützerath may be excavated, but the phase-out of coal in the Rhenish mining area will be brought forward eight years, to 2030. Habeck argued that 280 million tons of coal would remain underground.
In case of doubt, I will also let myself be carried away.
The spokesman for the Green Youth, Timon Dzienus, wants to take part in the protests in Lützerath.
But he doesn’t even convince everyone in his party. “The deal between RWE, the federal and state governments remains wrong,” says Timon Dzienus. The spokesman for the Green Youth doubts the figures that Habeck uses to argue. The influential youth organization has therefore called for a protest in Lützerath, and members of the Bundestag like Kathrin Henneberger have also come. Dzienus himself wants to demonstrate on site. “If in doubt, I’ll let myself be carried away,” he announces.
Lützerath splits the party. At the Green Party conference in Bonn in October, the Green Youth tabled a motion against the deal. Emotional discussions lasted for hours, the party leadership sent their best speakers to the podium and exerted pressure in the background. In the end, Dzienus and his fellow campaigners were only 19 votes short of more than 600 delegates.
The 26-year-old is not yet beaten. He continues to hope that there will be a moratorium until independent figures are available. “It’s about the credibility of the Greens, but also of politics as a whole. If we are honest, no one has a concrete plan yet on how to get on the 1.5 degree path.”
The protest gains strength
For the climate protection movement, Lützerath has long since become a symbol of a failed policy. Greta Thunberg was on the verge of demolition, the satirist Jan Böhmermann heavily criticized the plans via Twitter, in Lützerath itself pop stars want to give solidarity concerts. The protest goes deep into the green clientele and is gaining strength. Fridays for Future, the last generation and other organizations are mobilizing nationwide protests.
For the party leadership, the eviction is therefore a delicate balancing act. They will probably watch the eviction from afar, but express their sympathy.
The fate of Lützerath hurts her personally, said Green Party boss Ricarda Lang a few weeks ago in the Tagesspiegel. At the same time, she made it clear that the deal was the right one to phase out coal throughout Germany by 2030. “We don’t do climate protection for symbols,” said Lang.
2030
should the lignite phase-out take place in NRW.
The early phase-out of coal in the Rhenish mining area should become the template for the mining areas in Lusatia, where lignite-fired power generation is not supposed to end until 2038. The Greens hope that there should not be any pictures of battles between activists and the police or even deaths, as happened in the Hambach Forest.
But the Greens leave no doubt about the legality of the eviction. “RWE has the right to use the coal under Lützerath, and in a constitutional state we have to accept that,” says NRW state chairman Tim Achtermeyer. He emphasizes that the RWE figures were checked by the Ministry of Economic Affairs in Düsseldorf and by external auditors. “It’s a good agreement because we’re closing the last chapter of coal in NRW,” he says.
But Achtermeyer also looks to Lützerath with mixed feelings. The small village where part of his family lived also fell victim to the Garzweiler opencast mine. The place with which he associates childhood memories no longer exists. “It’s good that we’re ending this madness,” says Achtermeyer.
Greens and the climate protection movement agree on the goal, but not on the speed and radicalism. The battle for Lützerath drives a wedge between the two camps.
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