At the Garzweiler opencast mine, environmental initiatives have made it clear that there must be no going back to lignite, even in the face of the looming energy crisis
It didn’t take long before a number of voices from the lignite-producing federal states had their arguments together. In view of the looming energy crisis as a result of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine, North Rhine-Westphalia’s former Prime Minister Armin Laschet (CDU), for example, tweeted: “Weighing up independence from Russian natural gas, rejecting environmentally harmful fracking gas, affordability and security of supply enables objective and honest debates again .” And the North Rhine-Westphalian Economics Minister Andreas Pinkwart (FDP) also bluntly called for consideration to be given to phasing out the decision to phase out the use of this most climate-damaging energy source.
In view of these voices, several initiatives of the climate justice movement had invited to a press conference in Lützerath at the Garzweiler opencast mine – and could not have chosen a more impressive backdrop for this date on Wednesday.
From the last 170 meters, the bucket wheel excavator, which they only call “258” here, has now moved 120 meters to the end of the former L277 country road; It’s just under 200 meters to the property of the farmer Eckardt Heukamp, who is suing against his expropriation by the brown coal group RWE.
Right in front of the paddle wheel, which is digging its way into the Rhenish loess soil behind him, Heukamp makes no secret of his outrage at what increasingly seems like a legal vacuum: “The court has not yet made a decision, and yet facts are becoming facts here created. The current leading decision stipulates a minimum distance of 400 meters to the next settlement; these distance rules are not observed here. Where are the politicians now who otherwise invoke the rule of law? I find it strange that we have to face this pressure alone here.”
Eva Töller, the initiator of the forest walks in the Hambach Forest, which now also take place alternately in the Garzweiler villages, calls for a moratorium: “A moratorium for the upper two levels does not mean that the lignite is at a standstill. Enough coal is exposed on the lower soles. The collapse of the gravel pit in Erftstadt-Blessem in the summer showed how RWE interests are simply dismissed in our country. The Arnsberg district government, which the public prosecutor’s office is now investigating, issued the permits for the RWE mine that was destroyed by the flood – and which is actually the control authority here too!”
The “Lützerath is alive” initiative opposes the instrumentalization of the people of Ukraine in order to turn back the energy policy wheel of time: “Solidarity with the people of Ukraine cannot be practiced by replacing the plague in our energy mix with cholera. Solidarity with the people of Ukraine means a radical change of course in energy policy.”
Christopher Laumanns, who speaks for the residents’ alliance “All villages remain”, also demands this: “The exit from the exit is a pseudo-debate and is not discussed at all at federal level. Only Herr Pinkwart and the Prime Ministers in the East do that.”
Nobody here wants “the lights to go out in day-care centers and schools,” says Linda Birkenfeld from Lützerath. “But instead of demanding more efficiency, people are afraid that they will have to freeze in winter. The climate crisis and war are played off against each other. Yet it is this excavator, the manifested ecocide, that is frightening.”
Even police communications officers are now speaking of a “provocation” by RWE in the shadow of the paddle wheel – when activists walk into the opencast mine apron, the situation is resolved on that day in a de-escalating manner. But the closer the excavator gets, the more speechless the people on the edge grow.
