lignite mining
Clearing of Lützerath: Trenches open up for the Greens
Activists in front of the town limit sign of Lützerath
© Ben Kriemann/ / Picture Alliance
The “Year of Climate Protection” begins for the Greens with a crucial test. The youngsters are loudly criticizing the eviction of Lützerath, while the party leadership is trying to do a balancing act.
Some call it so, others so. Robert Habeck says: “That touches me too”. That is the case with everyone in his party. “But still we have to explain what is right.”
What is meant is the evacuation of Lützerath, which was already in full swing when the green climate protection minister on Wednesday evening in the “today’s Journal” explains what he thinks is right. “And it was right – unfortunately – to ward off the gas shortage, an energy emergency in Germany, also with additional electricity generation from lignite – and to bring forward the phase-out of coal.”
Dilemma for Vice Chancellor Habeck
This “compromise” – Lützerath will be excavated, other villages will be spared, and the coal phase-out in North Rhine-Westphalia will be brought forward to 2030 – leaves deep rifts in the Greens too, but according to Habeck represents a foreseeable “line” under lignite-fired power generation in Germany “In this respect – with great respect for the climate movement – in my opinion the place is the wrong symbol.”
Climate protest against coal
Music, human chains, flying stones: This is how the activists are defending themselves against the eviction in Lützerath
For the Green Youth, Lützerath is more than that. That is what their federal spokesman Timon Dzienus, who is taking part in the protests against the eviction, says. Him annoy itthat the protest in Lützerath was dismissed as a symbol and thus delegitimized.
Still on Wednesday morning he shares a selfie from there, which shows him with a clenched fist. “We are defending Lützerath,” he writes. Later he criticizes one “ominous alliance against the climate”meaning the energy company RWE and the police, until he is also cleared according to its own statements. “But the protest will continue,” assures Dzienus.
Green offspring confronting the parent party
The offspring on a confrontational course with the parent party, protests from their own clientele: “It hurts too,” admits Habeck. He had that “compromise” with the energy company RWE negotiated in the fall, together with the Green Economics Minister Mona Neubar from North Rhine-Westphalia. Both defended the plans at the time as a necessity, on the one hand, “The best possible” was also achieved for the climateon the other hand.
The own base contradicts and protests against the eviction, also in front of the party headquarters in Berlin. Meanwhile, concerns are growing about alienating an important group of voters.
“We have to keep in touch with the climate movement, even in critical situations,” says Sven-Christian Kindler, budget spokesman for the Greens in the Bundestag “Sueddeutsche Zeitung”. Accordingly, he is demanding that his party deal with the activists’ demands in a more self-critical manner. “In view of the drama of the climate catastrophe, I understand the peaceful protest in Lützerath. That’s legitimate,” he told the newspaper. And: “We have to become even more fundamental and tougher in climate policy.”
in one open letter, addressed to Habeck and Neubaur, several Greens criticize the negotiated deal with RWE, which threatens to “break with the principles of our party”. The evacuation of Lützerath can “neither be understood nor accepted” and must be stopped “immediately and permanently”. So far, more than 1000 base greens can gather behind it.
The party is also criticized by climate activists. “The Greens have embarked on a fatal deal with RWE,” says one Guest article by Luisa Neubauer and Pauline Brünger for the “taz”. The “Fridays for Future” activists accuse the party of “abusing” the energy crisis. It was hoped that the Greens would “draw and defend the ecological lines in the traffic lights”. Now they are the ones “who want to tear them down”.
Watch the video: Police continue to clear Lützerath against 150 activists.
“The Environment Minister sleeps badly”
The lignite debate had already drawn a visible rift through the party in October. at that time an application by the Green Youth failedwho called for a moratorium on Lützerath, and that narrowly: they were defeated by the supporters of the compromise with RWE by only 294 to 315 votes.
The party leadership defends the eviction of Lützerath, but tries to calm the green minds. Co-Chairman Ricarda Lang emphasized that the agreement in the Rhenish mining area in 2030 would put an end to coal. “Nevertheless, I understand the people who are demonstrating there now, the frustration and, above all, the pressure for more climate protection,” she said. Co-boss Omid Nouripour argued similarly.
2023 starts for the Greens – which was proclaimed the “Year of Climate Protection”. – with an ordeal. Oliver Krischer, Minister of the Environment in North Rhine-Westphalia, is also torn. On the one hand, the Green defends the agreement that “writes the final chapter in the exit from coal in North Rhine-Westphalia.” on the other hand he admits: “This is a difficult time, the environment minister sleeps badly because it hurts me.”
Sources: “Southgerman newspaper”, ZDF “Today Journal”, “taz”, Open letter to Mona Neubauer and Robert Habeck, “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”, Deutschlandfunk, WDRwith footage from the DPA news agency