Police Move to Clear Treehouse Protest Against Coal Mine in German Forest
Found on The New York Times on Friday, 14 September 2018
Pushing their way into the heart of a forest that has existed for 12,000 years, where some 60 treehouses have been built over the past six years, thousands of police officers began cutting trees to reach a central community called “Oaktown.”
In recent weeks, environmentalists have drawn attention to the mine, which is operated by the energy company RWE in the Hambach Forest, east of the city of Aachen, in an effort to highlight the disparity between Germany’s pledges to reduce its carbon emissions and uphold its commitments to the Paris climate accord and the country’s heavy use of its only significant natural resource, soft coal, or lignite.
Politicians love to talk about how important green energy is to stop the climate change. Yet when it comes to the point where action is needed, they forget all those talks and promises and side with the energy industry, letting them destroy more and more nature to increase the CO2 levels and thus the global warming; and at the same time those politicans are wondering why people have lost faith and trust in them.