The police in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia have been ordered to remove all climate activists in Lützerath, reports Reuters. They expect it could take several weeks. According to Al Jazeera, the activists are several thousand. They are fighting against the development of the Garzweiler II lignite mine. – We are here and we are loud because you are stealing our future, shout the linked activists. Greta Thunberg has also announced on Twitter that she will participate in the demonstration on Saturday. She visited Lützerath on Friday and sharply criticized the police operation to remove the protesters. Greta Thunberg is present in Lützerath and has strongly criticized the police. Photo: CHRISTIAN MANG / Reuters An excavator several tens of meters high extracts lignite in the Garzweiler open pit in Germany. Photo: WOLFGANG RATTAY / Reuters Climate bomb under the ground Because beneath these fields and tiny houses lies a climate bomb: approximately 280 million tonnes of lignite. Energy company RWE will expand the nearby open pit to bring energy to a starved German power market. In order to better defend themselves, the activists have occupied the abandoned houses in the village, built wooden huts and watchtowers. Climate activists sit in stilt structures on the road into the village. Photo: Michael Probst / AP On January 2, they barked together with the police. Fireworks, empty bottles and stones were thrown and shot in the direction of the police. A barricade of car tires was set on fire. An activist stuck to the main road. After a week or so of relative calm, police forces again moved into Lützerath on Wednesday, where they were met with similarly violent counter-attacks. On Friday, the news agency DPA reports that two climate activists have entrenched themselves in a tunnel under the village. The activists are determined to chain themselves if anyone tries to get them out, according to a spokesperson for the Lützerath live group. A policeman climbs out of a broken window in Lützerath. Photo: WOLFGANG RATTAY / Reuters A climate activist holds a drawn portrait of the farm owner Eckhardt Heukamp as he is arrested. Photo: WOLFGANG RATTAY / Reuters The farm owner who said no, Eckardt Heukamp and seven other lützerathers have since 2019 been the only remaining residents. The other 900 villagers were then moved to make way for an expansion of the Garzweiler open pit. Churches, houses and schools must give way to the extraction of 280 million tonnes of lignite. Eckardt Heukamp is the last farm owner. The village of Lützerath pictured in 2019. Photo: Arne Müseler / garzweiler.com / CC-BY-SA-3.0 Lützerath and the surrounding area were home to around 40,000 people until the 1980s. But the energy company RWE owns the land. RWE has the mining rights to the coal deposits, and can therefore legally demand to buy the land. Eckhardt Heukamp took the case to court, but ultimately lost last year. Activists had meanwhile taken Lützerath. That set the stage for today’s conflict. Demonstrators throw Molotov cocktails and fireworks at the police in Lützerath Photo: BENJAMIN WESTHOFF / Reuters The conflict is in many ways symbolic of Germany’s energy challenges. After phasing out nuclear power, Germany invested heavily in Russian gas. Now, after Putin invaded Ukraine, Germany has restarted several old coal power plants. Despite a red-green government with, among other things, a climate and economy minister from the Green Party.
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Climate activists fight to preserve the village of Lützerath against coal mining – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
