LÜTZERATH, Germany — The battle for Lützerath was long but the end, when it came, was swift.
In just a few days this past week, more than 1,000 police have dispersed hundreds of climate activists who have vowed to protect the small village, once home to 90 people but without a church. opencast coal mines in western Germany.
The relatively rapid collapse has added to the series of contradictions surrounding Lützerath and how a small, now uninhabited village occupies an outsized, unlikely place in life. German debate on how to get rid of coal.
For years, environmentalists have hoped to avert the fate of Lützerath – possibly the last of hundreds in Germany to fall into open-pit mining since World War II. For a while, it looked like activists would succeed.
But this year, the winds of politics and public sentiment turned against them. The energy crisis in Europe, which led to the war in Ukraine and the end of cheap Russian gas, makes coal too hard to give up at the moment. Even a government that includes the environmentally minded Green party has turned its back on them.
Still, activists braced themselves to protect half a dozen homes and farms with their corpses. They barricaded themselves in a complex of barns and other structures. They erected and occupied tall watchtowers. They create a network of tunnels. They nest on the branches of 100-year-old trees.
But the clearing, which begins Wednesday, proved less dramatic than some had feared. A few firecrackers went off, and some rocks and food were thrown out (turned out the activists had hoarded too much). But for the most part, the confrontation ends peacefully, almost like business. By Friday, most of the activists had gone, some voluntarily, some by the police, leaving only a few people lost in some hard-to-reach locations.
However, German media have covered the events directly, and thousands of climate activists, including Greta Thunberg, have said they will continue marching in the area on Saturday, although At that time the village was almost uninhabited and many trees were cut down. cut down. Ms. Thunberg also visited the village on Friday afternoon.
Considering that the last farmer had left the village months ago and the courts had reaffirmed the power of the regional electricity authority to expel activists, Lützerath’s role as a national symbol was as surprising as the speed of the village’s collapse.
Lützerath’s fate was decided last fall, when Robert Habeck, the country’s business, energy and climate minister, and Mona Neubaur, environment and energy minister, announced a continuation agreement. coal mining in the region until 2030.
What climate activists and others see as Lützerath’s betrayal has become a source of controversy for Mr Habeck, another prominent Green leader who critics accuse of violating environmental principles of the party when it was in power. However, he still defended the decision to extend the use of coal.
“I also believe that climate protection and protest need symbols,” Mr. Habeck told a news conference in Berlin last week. “But the empty settlement of Lützerath, where no one lives anymore, is, in my view, a false symbol.”
The regional electricity supplier, RWE, has bought land from farmers to expand mining of brown coal, which protesters point to as a particularly polluting fuel.
Moritz Lahaye, 37, would argue with Mr. Habeck’s assertion that Lützerath is uninhabited. Among the hundreds of activists who have made Lützerath their home, he is acting as its unofficial mayor. At first, he lived in a rented apartment from a farmer, and in his final days he squatted in the house next door, where he waited for the police to arrive.
“I’m happy to leave here with my head held high, knowing we were able to stay here for so long,” Mr Lahaye said about an hour before armored police officers surrounded the house he was staying in. are occupying. “We used to count our time here in weeks, and we ended up here two and a half years.”
Mr Lahaye once supported the Green Party but now says he does not believe conventional politics can solve the climate crisis.
Franziska Werthmann, 58, who first joined an environmental protest when she was 16, took a week off work to join the village protesters – and had to move the date back because of the eviction. out too fast.
Although she believes there are other avenues of legal protest, she says Lützerath is an important place to take a stand. “It’s that simple,” she said. “If they dig coal underneath this village, Germany will miss its emissions targets by 1.5 degrees,” she said, referring to the emissions targets set at the global climate conference in Paris last year. 2015.
Indeed, there is some conflicting research on Is the coal beneath Lützerath really necessary? and whether burning it will help push Germany past its emissions targets.
Even when he announced plans to mine coal below the village, Mr. Habeck insisted that the deal would keep most of the other coal in the ground and release emissions into the atmosphere.
If it weren’t for the renewed demand for coal as Germany turned away from cheap Russian gas this year, The pressure to stop coal mining could be even more significant.
“If there were no war, we would have found a solution,” said Kathrin Henneberger, a lawmaker in Congress and Green Party member who spent several days as a congressional observer at the site. political law to save the village.
Ms Henneberger was an activist before entering politics in Berlin, where she tried to persuade her party to vote for a ban on the expansion of the underground mine, even after Mr Habeck announced the settlement deal. the fate of Lützerath.
But she said, “The mining law doesn’t recognize the climate crisis — the mining law just says the market has to be supplied with raw materials.”
Once politics failed to save Lützerath, police action became inevitable. Earlier last week, security forces sealed off the village with a fence. An access ramp has been built into the underground mine, allowing additional parking for hundreds of police vehicles carrying more than 1,000 officers, as well as water cannons and armored bulldozers from states around the country.
Starting Tuesday, police cleared the way into the village of activists, some lying on the ground and others dangling from 9-foot tripods. Then, starting Wednesday, they entered the village, and by Thursday they had cleared two large farms and a warehouse complex that protesters had barricaded themselves in. By Friday, the stalemate and Lützrath were almost over.
“Even if the village is gone, it still lives in our hearts,” says Saskia Meyer, 36, a nutritionist who spent months commuting between Lützrath and Berlin.
