Climate activists continued actions on Wednesday evening with which they want to prevent the eviction of the brown coal town of Lützerath. Police officers with lifting platforms picked up a good ten activists from a height of around ten meters from the roof of a former agricultural hall, as a dpa reporter observed.
Other forces were in the process of untying an activist tied to a wrecked car. A police spokeswoman said the work was still being completed. In addition, nothing else was planned by the police on Thursday night. Activists set off fireworks on the site in the evening. At least two rockets flew horizontally in the direction of police cars.
Otherwise the protest remained peaceful. The police are of course still on site, said a spokeswoman. However, there are no plans at night to take action against activists who continue to stay in houses or self-built tree houses. Individual buildings were brightly lit with spotlights, and a construction machine cleared barricades in the evening.
Police officers take away a climate activist. The energy company RWE wants to excavate the coal lying under Lützerath – the hamlet is to be demolished for this.
(Photo: Thomas Banneyer/dpa)
Fridays-for-Future activist Luisa Neubauer called the police’s actions “absolutely incomprehensible” what are you so scared of?” she asked on Twitter. Neubauer, who is a member of the Greens herself, makes no secret of her dissatisfaction with the Greens, whose attitude towards the energy company RWE she feels is too soft.
Habeck defends course
In view of the loud criticism of the Greens, not only from Luisa Neubauer, Federal Minister of Economics Robert Habeck has now shown himself to be concerned. “It also touches me or drives me, like everyone in my party,” said Habeck on Wednesday evening in ZDF’s “heute-journal”. “But we still have to explain what is right. And it was right – unfortunately – to ward off the gas shortage, an energy emergency in Germany, also with additional electricity from lignite – and to bring forward the exit from coal.”
Lützerath is not “the continuation of the energy policy of the past: electricity generation from lignite,” stressed Habeck. “It’s not, as is claimed, the eternal continuation, it’s the bottom line.” Unfortunately, the village of Lützerath could no longer be saved – “but it is the end of lignite-fired power generation in NRW”https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/.”In this respect – with great respect for the climate movement – in my opinion the Place the wrong symbol.”
RWE wants to excavate the coal lying under Lützerath. For this, the hamlet in the area of the city of Erkelenz is to be demolished. In return, the economics ministries in the federal and state governments of North Rhine-Westphalia, led by the Greens, had agreed with RWE to phase out coal in the west from 2038 to 2030. In addition, five villages in the vicinity of the Garzweiler opencast mine, which are already largely empty, are to be retained.