Of course it is a conflict of interests: Forests that are important for climate protection per se must be cleared in order to build an ICE plant that serves climate protection at least as much. The railway has long since plausibly justified why it should be built at the railway junction in Nuremberg. How she has been presenting her plans transparently for many months, without downplaying the undoubtedly drastic interventions in nature.
Nevertheless, the population at the three locations up for final selection is up in arms, and sometimes the rhetoric of the opponents easily crosses the threshold of hysteria. It’s the same everywhere in Germany: Above all, the well-fed bourgeoisie take to the streets, people with pretty little houses or apartments in the country, for whom good, future-proof industrial jobs are not (anymore) an argument. They want one thing above all: peace and quiet.
The Union for Nature Conservation plays an inglorious role in Nuremberg. For decades, he was an indispensable political admonisher and social driving force in matters of ecology, mutated into the mouthpiece of the naysayers. The railway should look elsewhere in southern Germany, so the hypocritical advice. As if it weren’t difficult everywhere in this densely populated and densely forested southern Germany to find the necessary 45 hectares without interfering with nature. Especially since the plant has to be connected to the long-distance railway network for understandable reasons.
Instead of currying favor with the protest audience, the BN should show backbone. For a long time he has been warning that there will be no effective climate protection without painful cuts. In his daily work, the BN reflexively falls into his rejection mode. Otherwise he would say to the people in Nuremberg, Feucht, Wendelstein and Allersberg: If you want more people to travel by train instead of by car for the sake of climate protection, then the railways need a better offer and more trains. And they have to be maintained. Doing that in Nuremberg makes sense in every respect.