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The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest

bbc.co.uk

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Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest

#31

Post by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC »

bubblewrap wrote: post #16
lake99 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know what the German protesters are proposing as an alternative? Germany banned nuclear, brown lignite is bad, extensive mining destroys forests, wind power destroys forests and is bad for birds, Germany is not a good candidate for solar, and so on. So what's next?

They believe in a fairy tale of green energy without any side effects. I don't think they have a clear concept of a viable solution. The irony is that they blame their parents, whose generation protested against nuclear power. Presumably the only alternative that would have stood a chance to reduce climate change.

> I don't think they have a clear concept of a viable solution.

Do you have a clear concept of a viable solution? (Hint: Killing the ecosystem that sustains humans is not it.)

Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest

#32

Post by golergka »

> "It's heavy to see how your home just gets destroyed," says Omo. "The treehouse that you built and where you lived and where you spent so much time. And then you see hundreds and hundreds of cops running through your home. It's a heavy thing to see."

I'm astonished by this hypocrisy. Not only have they squatted on someone else's property, they did it not just to live in a forest, they did it as activists: with the exact purpose of creating the image of police brutality to create public backlash and affect the parties involved.

Even if their cause was completely just and good (which is a different conversation that I'm not prepared to have), they're getting at it by manipulating the media and purposefully creating the coverage they planned. This exact destruction was the main purpose of them building these houses, in this spot, to begin with.

Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest

#34

Post by perfunctory »

golergka wrote: post #32

> "It's heavy to see how your home just gets destroyed," says Omo. "The treehouse that you built and where you lived and where you spent so much time. And then you see hundreds and hundreds of cops running through your home. It's a heavy thing to see." I'm astonished by this hypocrisy. Not only have they squatted on someone else's property, they did it not just to live in a forest, they did it as activists: with the…

Just curious, what would be your preferred method to attract media attention or fight climate crisis in general?

Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest

#35

Post by wirrbel »

hannob wrote: post #20
VBprogrammer wrote: post #13

For someone who has been to Germany the scale and number of windturbines is amazing. It seems odd that they only account for 14% of their electricity production. By comparison I can't remember seeing any solar power infrastructure and yet that accounts for 7%.

Depends a lot on the area. Most of the solar installations are in the richer southern areas on private houses, whereas the large wind installation can be mostly seen in eastern and northern germany.

Lots of conservative backlash against wind energy in the south. "Asparagus landscapes" was a slogan used to get votes of people who don't want wind turbines around.

Also fear mongering for infrasound etc.

Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest

#36

Post by ganesh7 »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #13

For someone who has been to Germany the scale and number of windturbines is amazing. It seems odd that they only account for 14% of their electricity production. By comparison I can't remember seeing any solar power infrastructure and yet that accounts for 7%.

In this context the ecocide caused by the construction of windturbines is especially alarming

Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest

#37

Post by dmurray »

hannob wrote: post #20
VBprogrammer wrote: post #13

For someone who has been to Germany the scale and number of windturbines is amazing. It seems odd that they only account for 14% of their electricity production. By comparison I can't remember seeing any solar power infrastructure and yet that accounts for 7%.

Depends a lot on the area. Most of the solar installations are in the richer southern areas on private houses, whereas the large wind installation can be mostly seen in eastern and northern germany.

This might be true about sheer number of installations, but by wattage most of the power comes from massive solar fields, not rooftop PV. According to Wikipedia [0], the five biggest installations are all in the Brandenburg area (a poorer region in the northeast), though anecdotally I see medium size fields all the time along the railways in Bavaria.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany#Photovo...

Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest

#38

Post by freeflight »

hef19898 wrote: post #21
Kliment wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's correct (I live nearby). What you also don't see was what was in the way of the mine before it got there. It was populated space, all the towns got cleared out. Normally when someone blows up thousand-year-old cultural monuments we call it terrorism, but not when it's RWE (the mine operator) doing it. The compensation people get is nowhere near proportional to the damage - they get paid based on a fictional es…

I cannot agree more! The only ones profiting from coal subsidies are RWE and company while evryone else pays for it. It would be much more worthwhile, even for RWE themselves, to just use the coal subsidies and plaster all active and potential strip mines with solar farms. But then we are talking about old German politics and corporate culture, so that won't happen anytime soon.

You are forgetting the part where RWE is also paying the income of a whole lot of miners, who would suddenly be without a job if the mines where to be closed.

That is the biggest political hurdle here, it's not solely RWE being greedy, a lot of it has to do with nobody being able to offer these miners any job alternatives once their mines are closed.

Yet these miners make up a substantial part of the population in certain German states, thus the result that majority of Germans want to exit coal but in those places where coal actually matters there's vehement opposition to closing them down [0].

[0] https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/kohleausstieg-meh...

Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest

#39

Post by cipher_system »

Kliment wrote: post #10
roenxi wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impressive, aren't they? The industrial muscle keeping people warm and happy. I assume Germany has a modern program of mine rehabilitation, so you're only able to see the parts that are currently part of the active mine. The historic mine footprint of an old mine is probably twice or thrice what is visible; much larger but invisible from satellite because it has been rehabilitated. Eg, the area just north-west of Tag…

That's correct (I live nearby). What you also don't see was what was in the way of the mine before it got there. It was populated space, all the towns got cleared out. Normally when someone blows up thousand-year-old cultural monuments we call it terrorism, but not when it's RWE (the mine operator) doing it. The compensation people get is nowhere near proportional to the damage - they get paid based on a fictional es…

The jobs at risk are not only those in the coal industry but also the jobs powered by the coal. You can't run a business without electricity. So if coal makes up about a third of the power then about a third of the jobs in Germany could be lost.

Of course coal can and should be replaced by something better but thats gonna take a while and Germany has chosen to phase out nuclear before coal so this is a consequence of that decision.

Re: The coal mine that ate Hambacher forest

#40

Post by novalis78 »

titzer wrote: post #29
bubblewrap wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's people and exponential growth. Doesn't matter what -ism you put on the end of your shovels.

That’s quite the Malthusian viewpoint. Alternatively: “Malthus theory, which holds that since the world’s resources are more or less fixed, population growth must be restricted or all of us will descend into bottomless misery. Malthusianism is scientifically bankrupt — all predictions made upon it have been wrong, because human beings are not mere consumers of resources. Rather, we create resources by the development of new technologies that find use for them. The more people, the faster the rate of innovation. This is why (contrary to Malthus) as the world’s population has increased, the standard of living has increased, and at an accelerating rate.“

https://space.nss.org/the-significance-of-the-martian-fronti...

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