Nearly a thousand German climate activists tried this week to prevent heavy machinery from reaching an abandoned village that is due to be cleared for the expansion of a coal mine. Lutzerath, a tiny west German village is ground zero for the climate battle of 2023, as police have removed hundreds of activists this week. Some have been in Lützerath for more than two years, occupying the homes abandoned by former residents after they were evicted.
Plans to expand the nearby massive open-cast mine go against Germany's international commitments to reduce emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases. The energy company RWE has been buying out residents from many villages to expand its lignite Garzweiler coal mine, with Lützerath the latest victim. RWE says it needs to extract more coal to fill its supply contracts, which run until 2030. So they only need to destroy, exploit, and extract for seven more years, then they promise to stop.
“It is now up to us to stop the wrecking balls and coal excavators. We will not make this eviction easy.”
Pauline Brünger from the climate group Fridays for Future
Germany is still heavily reliant on coal which amounts to ~30% of the country's energy production according to the European Network of Transmission System Operators (ENTSO-E), especially tricky right now as Russian gas supplies have dwindled.
Side Items
Santos Scam Watch: To summarize the Long Island congressman and his history of scams: Fraudulent academic degrees, fake jobs, involvement in a firm accused of a Ponzi scheme. May or may not have, but definitely did commit fraud in Brazil. Claimed to be a landlord despite multiple evictions and a suspended driver’s license. Openly gay, but previously married to a woman, possibly for immigration purposes. And yet he still refuses to step down or admit he’s a fraud
Fraudulent Trump: A Manhattan judge sentenced the Trump Organization to pay a $1.6 million penalty for tax fraud conviction. Trump’s defense attorneys claim Donald knew nothing of the malfeasance, but it was a 13-year criminal tax scheme. You’d think the man would’ve caught a whiff at some point. The fines imposed are the maximum penalty for each of the 17 counts the organization was found to have violated, but my guess is they profited more than a million and a half dollars, so really this is just the cost of doing (shady) business
Coal Mine Adventures: Really interesting dive into the Signal-Peak mine in Montana, which was apparently at the center of some unsavory activities. The remarkable story involves bribery, cocaine trafficking, firearms violations, worker safety and environmental infringements, a network of shell companies, a castle, an amputated finger, and past links to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin (his middle name is Very Dangerous)