#braunkohle

I thought about not writing this to save my nerves but in this corner of the internet we ramble on about THE REBELLION 24 hours a day and German police in full riot gear wear white helmets that makes them look scaringly like stormtroopers, so I feel like this belongs here.

The village of Lützerath in Germany close to the German/Dutch/Belgian border is supposed to make way for brown coal open cast mining.

It’s the company RWE (Rheinisch-Westfälisches-Elektrizitätswerk) who wants to do this. The legal basis for this is that you get the permit to resettle whole towns and villages if it’s necessary to reach natural resources and brown coal is considered to be that.

The RWE needs the brown coal to burn it in their power plants, however it’s a long standing decision that Germany wants to fade out the use of coal for electricity anyway since there are alternatives and using coal (especially brown coal) actually needs to be highly subsidised to be cost-effective. Aside from the obvious CO2-problem.

The RWE just wants to use the last years where they are even allowed to do this to make as much money as possible before they have to close down anyway.

The original inhabitants of Lützerath have already been resettled. The village is currently occupied by climate activists. Their eviction seems to be starting soon.

I grew up kind of in the region and was there during Christmas. I have actually thought about going there, but I have obligatory stuff at uni, missing that would basically lead to me losing a year… So well… Reality check of my finances… I went back to my university… (Yes, I do feel the need to justify why I’m not there…)

I don’t think there is a realistic chance that they actually will succeed against the massive police forces that will get there. It’s just a question of how long it takes, how violent it gets and how much PUBLICITY it will create…

There is a lot you can do even if you don’t want to freeze your ass off and get dragged away by the police in the end.

Take a look at https://www.alle-doerfer-bleiben.de/ and at Instagram https://www.instagram.com/luetzibleibt/

When I looked for English information about this, I discovered that there is hardly anything. Except for the English language sections on the links above.

The only thing in foreign press I found was the “Photos of the week” of CNN, which actually has one picture from Lützrath and a two sentence caption.

If you happen to have an uncle or something who’s working for a newspaper or news channel somewhere… Wouldn’t this be a cool story…?

If you happen to live in North-Rhine-Westphalia ask your friends and family which company they get their electricity from. Many people in the region actually do have contracts with RWE. Make them change their electricity provider.

And no, they are not cheaper than other companies! Coal is fucking ineffective these days! Even money isn’t a reason anymore to stick to that company!

And yes, I know, compared to the struggle in Iran and a lot of other stuff going on on this world, this might seem like a joke, but this just hits close to home for me.

And in the end it's part of the fight against climate change which will decide whether or not we will be able to still live on this planet on the long run, so maybe it's not a joke after all...

Lignite Coal Pit, 2022

Kegel-Quarzite

Fundstück an Kegel-Quarzit aus einem Rheinischen Braunkohlentagebau Indem.

weisweiler power station // rheinisches revier