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LÜTZERATH, Germany — The Greens were responsible for the pepper spray, the bulldozers and a coal deal with one of Germany’s largest energy companies. And every protester here on Saturday knew it.
It was a sobering day for a party that entered the coalition government in Berlin just over a year ago on a wave of environmental optimism. From across the country, a broad swath of the Greens’ base turned out in the wind, rain and mud to support a small collection of abandoned farms and houses called Lutzerath. The hamlet in North Rhine-Westphalia is to be erased from the map for an expansion of the Garzweiler opencast mine, which the Greens have supported as part of a compromise.
“I voted for the Greens and never will [so again]”Said David Dresen from the neighboring village of Kuckum. “We have to stop this mine because it is destroying my life. For 30 years it has ruined the life of my entire family. It destroys our fields, our rivers; it destroys our groundwater.”
On Saturday morning, police cleared the last handful of climate activists who had occupied the village for more than two years. The last of the protesters slipped between tree houses and used elaborate rope systems to delay their capture. Two activists calling themselves Pinky and the Brain were broadcasting on YouTube from a tunnel somewhere beneath the village.
But the scene had a sense of inevitability. Excavators were already demolishing the farmhouses a stone’s throw away and a massive police operation was underway to ensure no more protesters could enter the village and hinder the work.
The Greens are growing increasingly uncomfortable that this is all in the service of a deal they struck.
Last year, Mona Neubaur, Deputy Prime Minister of the Greens in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and Robert Habeck, Germany’s Economics and Climate Minister, reached an agreement with RWE, the owner of the Garzweiler opencast mine. The deal brought the coal phase-out in the region eight years forward to 2030. In return, the company agreed to save five villages from demolition, but Lützerath would be razed as the final part of RWE’s expansion plans in the region. The coal in Garzweiler is brown coal, a particularly polluting source of the greenhouse gases that are heating the planet.
“Coal Deal in the Back Room”
“It is a slap in the face that Green Ministers are now trying to sell this backroom coal deal as a success. We will not accept that,” said Olaf Bandt, chairman of the Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz Deutschland, an NGO.
Swedish activist Greta Thunberg called the government’s deal with RWE “shameful” at a large rally in the fields near Lützerath on Saturday afternoon.
“How is that possible? In 2023?” Thunberg asked the protesters.
The crowd – which police said numbered between 8,000 and 10,000 people; Thunberg said 35,000 – clearly did not believe in the pragmatism the Greens, like Habeck, say they must demonstrate in order to govern. Every time one of the speakers slammed the party, there was a huge cheer.
After Thunberg spoke, thousands of the protesters marched to the outskirts of Lützerath to try to retake it. But they were confronted by a line of hundreds of armored police officers carrying batons and pepper spray. Violent clashes broke out. On several occasions, demonstrators stormed the police line and broke through, but never made it past a high double fence that had been erected around the village. Several protesters were injured and treated by rescue workers. One was bleeding from a head wound as colleagues led him away.
Riot police confront activists occupying house | Sean Gallup/Getty Images
It was a chaotic scene with no clear purpose. The village had already disappeared into the jaws of the RWE machine.
But it served to deepen fear among the Greens. Lützerath has driven a wedge between Habeck’s “Realo” group of pragmatists, who currently hold the party’s highest positions, and the party’s more activist and youth wings.
In Düsseldorf, activists from the “Lützerath unräumbar” alliance occupied the headquarters of the North Rhine-Westphalia Greens on Thursday. According to a statement, Habeck’s constituency office in Flensburg was also occupied by the local group of the “Ende Gelände” alliance and autonomous activists. In Leipzig and Aachen, the windows of offices of the Greens were smashed.
“Painful Compromise”
In recent days, senior Green Party politicians have tried to explain their position or shift the blame onto RWE or the party’s partners in the coalition.
Habeck argues that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forced Germany to restart coal-fired power plants and that the coal had to come from somewhere. It’s a “painful compromise that I found really difficult over the past year. But it had to be like this in order to guarantee energy security in Germany,” he said in a Video shared on social media.
Their position on coal is just one of the sacred cows the Greens had to sacrifice as they tried to steer Europe’s largest economy through the energy crisis. Habeck opened a handful of new terminals for importing liquefied natural gas and extended the life of Germany’s nuclear power plants. The latter extension, while only lasting a few months, has led to much soul searching within the party.
A shovel excavator stands next to the Neurath coal-fired power plant near the Lüetzerath settlement | Sascha Schuermann/Getty Images
Economics Ministry officials point out that RWE has won an extensive legal battle to secure its right to destroy Lützerath. That means the only way to save the village would have been to pay the company expensive compensation.
They also note that European regulations cap overall emissions from coal, so mine expansion will not result in increased overall emissions, as some activists have claimed. This position is confirmed by one of the leading German climate economists, Ottmar Edenhofer, Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research: “The bottom line is that no additional climate-damaging gases are released into the atmosphere. Even if Lützerath is dredged, coal has no future.”
Despite the anger visible on Saturday, there is little sign of voters turning against the Greens more broadly. Their poll numbers are stable and higher than the last election.
The Germans are also divided about the fate of the village of Lützerath. In a representative poll commissioned by the Berliner Morgenpost, a total of 39 percent supported the compromise with RWE, while 39 percent thought the agreement was wrong.
For Habeck, the village is the “wrong symbol”.
The police clear environmental activists who left the Lüetzerath settlement | cast Sean Gallup/Getty Images
But for Luisa Neubauer, a Greens MP who is a leading figure in Thunberg’s Fridays For Future climate movement, the message to her party was clear: many of her constituents are fed up with compromise. She questioned how the Greens’ “Realpolitik” could survive if it meant using police against environmentalists to defend a coal company.
On Saturday evening, some demonstrators held a vigil around the doomed village. “They chose exactly the party they are fighting against,” said Neubauer.