German energy giant RWE has begun dismantling a wind farm to make way for a further expansion of an open-pit lignite coal mine in the western region of North Rhine Westphalia.
I thought renewables were cheaper than coal. How is this possible?
I think this headline is misleading.
A better headline might read: “Coal found beneath wind farm. Turbines dismantled to make room for mining operation.”
i don’t think that’s any better
I originally read it as “Germany says ‘Fuck wind as an alternative energy source’ and begins reverting back to coal”, so I figured I’d clarify in case anyone end thought the same thing.
Doesn’t seem like this article indicates that Germans is giving up on alternative energy.
Edit: corrected dumb spelling mistake.
No but it does clearly show prioritization when the 2 conflict, which is the point of contention (as well as using coal at all, if you give a shit about our planetary environment)
*wind (whoops)
Yup, haha. Fixed it.
Ah well, we know what you meant 👍
Still, its lignite, they should cease all mining operations.
Lignite is the worst coal, most polluting and least energy dense afaik, why would you bother mining it
Because they get subsidies from the govt bc they employ a whole region and are a super big energy company. They need to be dismantled.
Because it’s there and you want a steady supply of cheap electricity, that’s why.
And thus, climate change.
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Shouldn’t they build a new wind farm though? Why aren’t the eco fanatics protesting against this infamy?
They are litteraly replacing a wind farm with a coal mine!
If the turbines are still good, they can just be moved, although it looks like they’re EOL anyway, so I’m guessing they’ll just be scrapped.
Won’t make a huge difference to the general trend in the German energy mix, which is towards more renewables + importing French nuclear energy.
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Delete this InfoWars-level bs misinformation meant to smear clean energy.
One small privately owned wind farm is being disassembled, this is not a general new policy or anything signalling a shift away from clean energy.
Oh gosh, thank you.
Oh so you mean most arguments against nuclear energy are that bad too? Thank you for realizing!
Ban straws! (even though disabled people need them and they create negligible pollution)
Replace your car with an electric one! (even though it still works fine and will end up in landfill, never mind the environmental cost of producing the new one, or the source of the electricity it uses)
Reduce your carbon footprint! (even though its a term we invented ourselves to shift responsibility to you, while we fly our private jets around creating more pollution than you ever could in 10 lifetimes)
Recycle! (even though 90% of it ends up in landfill anyway because we don’t want to pay to actually recycle it)
All equates to
Look the other way while we continue to rape the planet and blame it on you!!!
Never forget - capitalists (and the governments they’re co-dependent on) only want more money, they don’t car about you or me or the planet, only about themsleves and the numbers in their accounts, and they will never willingly stop doing whatever it takes to make more.
or the source of the electricity it uses
Oh, quit this noise. In the same countries where electric cars are becoming common, wind/water/sun-produced energy is also on the rise. Electric cars decouple the energy used from the means of production in ways that gasoline will never have, and the potential outweighs the temporary conditions of power generation in socially backward areas like Darfur and America.
You are literally commenting on an article where one of those countries has shut down a wind farm to go back to miming coal (never mind that my point still stand regardless because renewables are still just a fraction of electricity production, or that it is the wealthy people buying the electric cars who contribute more emissions than the poorest 50% of the population, but good to see the greenwashing has worked so well on you), so which of us is actually making noise, and which is addressing the problems we face?
The wind farm (singular) they’re tearing down have been abandoned for 4 years now because the company that owned them went bust; bad placement was apparently to blame for these specific windmills being useless, doesn’t mean they’re 100% switching back to coal.
Also, I think they’d move the windmills if it is at all possible to not scrap them.
Might be a good idea for you to read the article
While I partly agree with your argument at the end of your comment, I think your examples are really unfitting.
Only single-use plastic straws are banned. There is also an exemption for straws that are necessary for medical reasons. The needs of disabled people are included in the exemption. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2021-003536-ASW_EN.html
If people buy a new car, the old one (if still functional) typically enters the second-hand market, not the landfill. There is no reason why this would be different if the new car is an electric vehicle.
The carbon footprint is a perfectly fine concept on its own, the problem is just that some people shit on it with their private jets, which are a legitimate concern. Some people also argue that “most of the pollution is done by corporations, not individuals”, completely ignoring the fact that these corporations only do it while producing goods for the people. That does not mean that we can just blame the people for it, but everybody has the responsibility to vote for policies that keep the corporations in check.
Recycling is really bad in some countries, but works pretty well in others. For example in Germany 56% of plastic waste is recycled, 44% burned. 90% of paper is recycled. https://www.quarks.de/umwelt/muell/das-solltest-du-ueber-recycling-wissen/#lösung4
We’ve made electric powered airplane jet turbines. If the rich want private jets, we should require those to be EVs. I don’t give a shit that the tech is untested, and neither do they judging by that “submarine.”
The problem is we are only talking about a small fraction of the trash. >90% of waste is industrial waste, of that a third is just from Construction/Demolition.
Consumers can recycle everything, but it won’t make more than a 10% impact. We need to start forcing industry to recycle and we can start with concrete. 8% of all global emissions are from concrete production, that’s not even accounting the energy to haul it around. We have the ability today to use concrete to make down cycled products on site (road base, filler, non structural blocks, etc) eliminating transportation and other impacts. But few even consider it, companies and customers don’t want to wait the extra day that it takes, and it’s not always profitable either.
Do you think cars are immortal, and are just passed on from owner to owner for all eternity?
All hail CarLord The Eternal
Only East German ones. Then the pigs eat some rotten parts off of them, and the remainder is reassembled into fewer cars. The circle of life. The last people on this planet will still be driving a Trabi.
No? Nobody thinks that?
My comment was just a response to the following:
Replace your car with an electric one! (even though it still works fine and will end up in landfill, never mind the environmental cost of producing the new one, or the source of the electricity it uses)
…which for some reason suggests that the introduction of electric cars leads to premature scrapping of existing cars - which is bullshit.
That’s a lot of words to say “I lick boot”.
But just to address my pet peeve (mostly because I can copy pasta my own comment, and no I’m not going to edit out the “ableist” because even if you don’t mean t, advocating and making excuses for the straw ban is ableist)
There are many reasons people can’t use different alternatives.
Never mind that to deny access to a literal lifeline for the sake of 0.003% of the plastics in the ocean (literally a drop in an ocean) because it makes you feel better and requires zero effort or sacrifice (from you), instead of actually acting to resolve the problem (like being anti-capitalist rather than just trying to apply band aids to its symptoms) is not only gross and ableist, but also a colossal counterproductive waste of time.
As for medical exemptions - disabled people shouldn’t need to ask for basic accessibility, nor should they have to disclose personal medical information to get it, but now that ableists like you have forced this situation to boost your own egos, they do, and are often denied, because wait staff are not medically trained, and are often abelists like you (or have bosses that would fire them for “handing out straws willy nilly” if they even have straws available which now many places don’t), so they get refused and called liars and accused of destroying the environment.
Never mind that expecting people to always have their own accessibility aids, rather than have them freely available creates an inaccessible society.Which is exactly what ableists like you are fighting for.
I was exclusively talking about the EU ban, not about some random US cities’ bans (This is a thread about Germany after all). None of your points really apply to the EU ban.
It does not ban the distribution (you can still legally buy leftover stock - my local cinema seems to have a century’s worth of supply), just the first-time sale of newly produced non-medical single-use plastic straws.
The “medical exemption” is not on an individual basis, but an exemption for a production line of straws. Everybody can buy the straws afterwards. The EU ban is not cutting a “lifeline” for disabled people.
The links you provided talk about bans by local city councils in the USA, which have their own (apparantly stupid) rules.
Replace your car with an electric one! (even though it still works fine and will end up in landfill, never mind the environmental cost of producing the new one, or the source of the electricity it uses)
A new EV breaks even with a used car in less than a decade. It does not matter if it is getting its energy from coal, it still will emit less carbon within a decade.
Recycle! (even though 90% of it ends up in landfill anyway because we don’t want to pay to actually recycle it)
90% of plastic recycling. That is thanks to the oil companies who saw backlash against the ridiculous amount of plastic in the 70s and decided to invent a resin code whose symbol mimicked the recycling symbol. Recycling centers were flooded with a ton of plastic which they did not have infrastructure to actually recycle. China took it for a couple decades and then it became unprofitable for them. Basically only resin codes 1 and 2 are recyclable. But most people think all of it is. Absolutely recycle metals. If your city has recycling pickup and you are not recycling stuff like aluminum, you kind of suck.
Basically only resin codes 1 and 2 are recyclable. But most people think all of it is
I read somewhere that this is false and all of them are recyclable. Don’t quote me on it though.
Luckily many people live in democracies where they can simply vote to enact climate policies.
Sadly most people living in those democracies choose to continue enabling climate change.
The reason nothing is being done against climate change isn’t corrupt politicians. It’s the millions of people voting for them.
Your first link is US only, your second link is about a completely seperate issue. You don’t need to dismantle capitalism to protect the climate.
In Germany, where I live, the voters could easily vote for the greens “Grüne” and the left “Linke”.
If those two parties had a majority in government, we’d have a climate friendly system in no time.
But they don’t. We had a conservative government for 16 years. Now we have a center government, which sadly includes the small government / free market party “FDP”, blocking all significant progress.
No systemic oppression stops people from voting Left/Greens. But they never did, and never will.
There’s now an uprise of the far right party “AfD” in Germany, to the point it’s becoming one of the major parties.
In Germany people have the choice readily available to stop actively damaging the climate.
But every couple of years, they freely choose to not do that.
I feel like many left-wing people regularly forget about the billions of people who genuinely do not care to do anything about climate change.
Under capitalism, the capitalist class controls the media, and can use their wealth to control the political class.
A democracy can only make choices so far as it’s voters are informed, and when a group controls most sources of information, it can control the democracy as a whole.
You don’t need to dismantle capitalism to protect the climate.
You absolutely do. If it was profitable to destroy the envrionment capitalism would do it in a heartbeat. And guess what it IS profitable to destroy the environment, that is why it is happening! You cannot protect the environment under capitalism.
You can limit capitalism without abolishing it.
In Germany people are guaranteed 20/24 paid vacation days. That’s not profitable.
That’s a limit imposed on capitalism. It can be done and has been done without abolishing capitalism.
That’s just one of the thousands of policies that limit capitalism.
You can limit capitalism (as literally every capitalist nation does) without abolishing it.
Enforcing climate friendlyness would be just another limit.
When you try to limit capitalism you get nuclear plants being shut down and coal plants being opened and the environment still being destroyed.
Most people don’t have a ‘green’ option for which they can vote.
We won’t touch the Greenbelt.
-Doug Ford, 2018
Ford says he’s confident nothing criminal took place in Greenbelt land swap amid RCMP probe.
-CBC news, 2023
Not that he was a green leaning politician to begin with but this is just another example of blatant lies used by politicians to get elected and totally fuckover their country.
But the millions of people have been denied education, mislead, and propagandized by the corrupt politicians, it’s probably not productive to blame victims here.
I do not believe the majority of people don’t know about the effects of climate change. I believe that the majority of people voting against climate friendly policies simply choose to not think long term.
Someone who votes to continue the status quo is to be blamed for the status quo.
I get you, and I probably went a bit too far in my statement as I don’t think they’re completely blameless, just don’t think they’re the primary party deserving of blame, that goes to the powerful.
No they can’t? If it was as simple as voting for green policies we’d see more of them. The only thing people can do is vote for greenwashed policies that do not impact the bottom line of industry.
I live next to this coal mine and the wind farm is on my monthly Autobahn trip right next to me. Maybe to shed some light on the “why”:
The coal mine was scheduled to be mined until 2038. The plan was to extend the mine to the west, the wind farm is to the east of the coal mine. RWE of course has big investments into mining this lignite until the very last possible day. There are problems with extending to the west though: old towns still exist there and the residents would of course love to stay in their homes the family had for generations. To the east, where the wind farm is, there is nothing but fields and some wind turbines. There are about 150 turbines in the wind farm and ~15 of them are standing where the mine is extending to now. Those 15 also were the first to be built for the wind farm and they are nearly at the end of their lifespan, some of them are even deemed structurally unsafe.
Of course it would be better to stop mining the lignite but decades ago the contracts with RWE were made and just forcing a company out of a contract that is worth billions of Euros is extremely bad precedent and would hinder future investions. Buying out the contract to cease mining faster also was not possible, because RWE was unwilling to settle for a reasonable sum of money.
What a beautiful society where companies have more powers than an state…
Ofc theses companies have our futurs in mind, right ?
Capitalism.
They don’t have more power - the government was just stupid to give them contracts this longlasting
Thinking of that one us city that sold its parking rights for a century for just millions
Also the many private-partnered public infrastructure projects built in Turkey with billing rights given to the companies that will let Erdoğans friends leech off the public for decades even if he loses political power
It’s really bad for $$ to do the responsible thing, so we’re going to proceed with existential environmental degradation. Because $.
To be completely honest (and I am a huge anti-coal-mining dude), currently I’m happy that we still have the coalmines running. It would not have been possible to build solar and wind power fast enough to compensate for the coalmines, the only feasible alternative would have been gas and that comes from russia
Correct. You can add the vastly underestimated methane emissions of natural gas to that. (They are hard to measure but nobody seems toooo interested)
Or to have kept your nuclear running and not freaked out after the fukushima disaster…
Just saying
Maybe nuclear could’ve been better than coal?
There are a lot of things which in hindsight were better than coal. But when the decision was made to dig where the wind farm is, there wouldn’t have been any time to build a nuclear power plant anymore
Nuclear was already better than coal 50 years ago… the whole anti-nuclear movement was predicated on the Chernobyl disaster, making “natural gas” and renewables better than nuclear, with a supposed phase-out of natural gas. Coal was always the worst option, both in emissions, and in the impact of open pit mining, when it was already known that deep shaft black coals mines had been getting depleted for decades.
It was highly irresponsible to not renew the nuclear plants before there was at least enough renewables to replace them, and instead increase reliance on natural gas… from Russia from all places. Particularly after Crimea, there should have been a reassessment and a push to fast-track nuclear.
It takes only 5 years to build a nuclear power plant, Crimea was 9 years ago; Germany had plenty of time to prepare itself, instead of investing in increasing NordStream capacity.
It takes only 5 years to build a nuclear power plant, (…)
I agree with most of the comment, but this is just an oversimplification. I’m sure that you can build a nuclear power plant in 5 years, if you have the requisite infrastructure, engineers and knowledge. Germany did not have any of those in sufficient amount to build anywhere near enough nuclear reactors between the decision to switch to coal & gas in around 2011 and the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Even France wouldn’t be capable of that in such a short amount of time.
Had they made that decision 30 years ago, sure, but in such short time? No way.
infrastructure, engineers and knowledge. Germany did not have any of those in sufficient amount
Germany had 17 nuclear power plants in 2011, when they decided to close half of them after Fukushima. Russia invaded Crimea in 2014. Last nuclear power plant closed in April 2023. I find it hard to believe that there was not enough expertise to build some new ones in all this time.
the decision to switch to coal & gas
This is what really rubs me the wrong way: coal should have been phased out before nuclear, not used to replace nuclear.
It all seems like a grift and a knee jerk reaction under the guise of “look how green we are”, while actually doing all the opposite.
Do you really think it’s more responsible to force the families out of their homes and demolish several villages/towns over some old wind turbines? Or did you mean the responsible thing being investing in renewables? I really can’t tell, sorry 😅
Obviously the latter
Germany is still going to use the same amount of coal whether this runs or not, they’d just import it from another country or have another mine go faster if there’s one that still can
The way to reduce coal is to increase low carbon sources of energy and to reduce consumption
Nope. Dont import and scarsity will drive prices up and people use less. It’s pretty simple really.
We need to keep all fossil fuels in the ground. The way we do this is reduce energy usage.
Why was the plan to ever extent to the wist if there is a town?
A lot of towns have been dug away for the lignite. The town now not digged away is just one of the few surviving ones. Also a lot of towns have been drowned for water storage lakes and Hydropower. Europe is populated way too densely to do any large infrastructure project without destroying towns in some ways. The residents are compensated with huge amounts of money, but for some they would still rather stay in the homes they have lived in for 50-80 years.
In this case the original plan was to move westwards because that’s where the coal lies in the ground. The lignite in the west is enough to keep the power plants running until 2050, the lignite in the east only until 2030. Because the date is now pushed forwards, it’s feasible to dig to the east. Also advanced technology plays a role: the original plans destroying the westwards towns were made when there was no technology to efficiently burn the lignite on the east, which is way less dense.
Thanks for your insight.
So, if I’m reading this correctly, this is the Konigshovener Hohe wind farm which is built on the site of the Garzweiler open-pit lignite mine. According to this article, the site was inaugurated in 2015 with 21 Senvion turbines.
The problem is, Senvion went out of business in 2019, and customers have been struggling to support their turbines. Apparently the Senvion design is exceptionally dependent on software access. Siemens and others have stepped in to offer support contracts to Senvion turbines in good working order, but with the opportunity to mine more lignite at the site, maybe RWE felt that it was time to spin down the Senvion turbines.
It seems like there may be many factors in this decision.
Thanks for providing this context. From what you say it sounds like a bad initial decision from RWE - tieing themselves in to 'wind turbine as a service’doesn’t seem sensible.
We should be using open source solutions for things like energy security. It’s not like our civilization can run without energy generation. The control ought to be in the hands of people, not corporations.
Yeah the Senvion situation is an object lesson in the dangers of proprietary systems.
I’m not sure that’s the right wind farm. According to this guardian article, it’s actually the Keyenberg wind farm that’s being dismantled, a retired site from 2001.
Apparently the site is retired because the operator’s permit ends in 2023. Making way eventually for the mine expansion was part of the original deal allowing the land to be used for wind turbines, and so it’s not indicative of any change in climate policy from the German government. Additionally the turbines are somewhat outdated, having only a sixth of the power output of a modern one. They would have to tear down and modernise the turbines anyway even if not for the mine.
However from a publicity standpoint it’s not an ideal move. Could have given up on the lignite and put new wind turbines in instead, perhaps.
I’m not sure if that is the wind farm. Looking at the article photos, there are a lot of turbines in the area, so there is probably more than one wind farm adjacent to the coal mine. Even with Senvion out of business, it still feels far too early for them to be pulling down turbines - normally they have about 30 years’ life in them before they’re sold on to another country. However, the article also says they’re only pulling down 7 turbines, so even if it is the same wind farm they’re not fully dismantling it.
Edit: Actually I think you’re right about the site. It looks like it might be these turbines they’re pulling down, and I imagine the motorcross site could be included in the project also.
Yeah, but look up the story on the Senvion turbines. Basically, Senvion operators have had to pay big money for service contracts with 3rd parties since Senvion went out of business.
That’s an old wind farm that would be due being taken down. Wind turbines have a finite life span, they oscillate slightly and this loosens the ground around the base, so after around 30 years they’re taken down. Typically they end up being sold to poorer countries where they’re installed on a new base.
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It’s about density. Renewables Are great, but not on terms of value add per square foot. The coal under the wind mill is worth orders of magnitude more than the windmill.
And, it’s not as bad as it sounds. In general, the number of windmills keeps increasing.
Man, talk about bad optics, though!
I agree
If you care about emissions, this is probably one of the single worst things you can do.
If you care about energy density, nuclear is the best solution, not coal. I guess Germans don’t care though
Germans literally shut down all thier nuclear power in favour for coal power.
It was meant to be replaced by renewables but our minister of economics dumped the whole solar and wind turbine industry. Additionally his party made up bullshit rules about a minimum distance for turbines to households, which was apparently 10x of the reasonable distance and which made it very hard to find spots in densely populated Germany. And to this day, the federations with a renewable energy surplus have to pay more for electricity than those who give a shit about renewables. -it is discussed to be changed now but idk
It’ll be fine, they can just buy nuclear power from France and Sweden.
That’s true, although I think they decided on coal since it’s cheaper financially (not ecologically and healthwise of course).
It would make sense to just simply move them but the fact that they want to burn coal is just weird.
I didn’t say density is the paramount parameter. Also, once you optimize one drawback, it generally gets less important.
I just wanted to put the image into context, and show that it isn’t a big step backwards, just sideways perhaps. Or in other words, a sigle wind farm isn’t relevant, the sum is
Mining more coal is extremely relevant though.
Yeah, wind works fine in places like Texas (where I’m from) because there are thousands of square miles full of just turbines. The land is flat and expensive, essentially the opposite of Germany. Something kind of related that I found out while googling about this is that Texas is 1.9 times as large as Germany.
Isn’t cheap land good for anything that involves land use?
We have the north sea, quite windy and shallow enough to build tall wind Mills.
Currently the power rating is up to 10 MW and the blades are over 100m (300ft) long.
I thought renewables were cheaper than coal. How is this possible?
The value is simply more densely packed in the coal under the wind farm than in the surface area of the wind farm.
Expanding on this: OP seems to be conflating wind power being cheaper than coal power, with… What? A wind farm being more profitable per unit area than a coal mine?
The tile is dangerously misleading. OP, please…
It’s the title of the article.
There is no rule that forces you to copy the real article’s name. In this cases you want to make your own title to spark better debate.
This should be all that’s needed to invalidate the comment you’re replying to, but it seems people are dumb.
I thought renewables were cheaper than coal. How is this possible?
This is one of those in general vs in particular things.
In general, yes coal is way more expensive versus renewable energy. In this particular instance, they’re just expanding the site, all of the really expensive stuff like logistics and transportation are already paid.
This is the same reason just keeping old nuclear plants running is cheaper than building a new one. Each industry has expensive parts and cheap parts. If you’re doing something that only expands the cheap parts then you’ll be able to beat out competitors.
Additionally those turbines are at the end of their lifespan. They would need to be dismantled and rebuilt anyways, since they became structurally unsafe
The demolitions are part of a deal brokered last year between Robert Habeck, the Green party’s minister for economy and climate action and Mona Neubaur, who is the economy minister for North Rhine Westphalia, to allow the expansion of the mine.
In return, RWE had to agree to phase out coal in 2030, eight years before the previous deadline. “It’s a good day for climate protection,” Habeck said at the time.
What’s the timeline for getting this expansion built? And what’s the lifecycle of the plant? I understand there are energy scarcity concerns, but how is this the most economical option when it’s ~7 years until they’re supposed to phase out coal?
The wind turbines are already at the end of their lifespan and they knew RWE had the license to expand the mine there when the wind turbines where build.
Of course it’s economical for RWE, they are not building a new mine. Just continuing their mining operation there for another 7 years.
“We live our life one quarter
mileat a time” - RWE probablyI mean, that’s probably actually it. Short term profits are all shareholders care about. We’ve seen that time and time again where businesses will absolutely mutilate themselves just so shareholders can enjoy a short term price spike. This is just a pump and dump but for the energy industry.
Most likely they have no intention of stopping coal production and will just move the deadline again in 2030 and no one will do anything about it.
That’s possible, particularly if different parties are in power at that time. However the article also notes that lignite is becoming less economically viable and may need to be wound up anyway in 2030.
I’m guessing their bracing for winter without Russian oil. Which will hopefully be transitory, but also sort of delays the inevitable. If they can’t survive a winter without fossil fuels they need to figure it out quick.
This expansion is the last one although actually many more in the next decades were already approved and contracted, which got renegotiated with the energy companies. But of course this was already mispresented earlier this year when everyone reported on Germany destroying the village of Lützerath for their newly started coal digging when it was actually the last one (with half a dozen more similiar small villages originally scheduled for destruction more than a decade ago). But lobbyists pay to push lies and publications love the clicks for the popular outrage about evil Germans. Who cares for facts, anyway…
Those wind power plants were originally build with the knowledge that they have to be disassembeled in less than a decade again. Also those models proved to be very problematic and the company building them went out of business after only 4 years (since then there was only some auxiliary technical support from other companies).
Counter question: How economical is it to stop digging up coal today when the phase-out is 7 years away. They can either increase the pit or dig deeper. The latter is not only more expensive but also more damaging (pumping groundwater away from the hole etc.).
PS: A decade is also the usual life time of a wind power plant nowadays… After that time the gear boxes and blades need to be replaced and the foundation needs to be checked because of constant micro vibrations… In theory the installation itself could run up to 30 years but the technical development is still moving ahead so fast that replacing the whole thing with a newer and more efficient (also often bigger) model usually makes more sense than replacing parts to keep them running. So for now wind turbines are rather short-lived as their replacements see constant substantial improvements.
I suspect that they have no intention of phasing out coal, or there are certain unrealistic requirements that have to be met before the “agreement” to end coal is enforced. It’s just pageantry, Germany has no intention of ending coal dependence.
Germany’s green energy push was secretly propped up by outsourcing fossil fuel needs to Russian natural gas. The war in Ukraine and America subsequently blowing up the Nordstream 2 pipeline means Germany will need to find new alternatives to feeding their energy needs. One could hope this results in a speed up of green tech development as it becomes more of a pressing necessity than just, you know, the right thing to do. And hey speaking of knowing the right thing to do and then not doing it because of the perverse economic incentives for ignoring it, it’s funny to note that the global leader in green tech is China but due to this new cold war the US is brewing and due to Germany’s newly-humbled-into role as Jr Junior partner to the US there’s no way there will be the necessary cooperation there between national tech sectors
America subsequently blowing up the Nordstream 2 pipeline
?
Here’s a Washington post article including statements from the pentagon claiming that they’ve been aware for over a year that the Ukrainian military had plans to destroy Nord Stream 2 and then subsequently did: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/06/06/nord-stream-pipeline-explosion-ukraine-russia/
Three months before saboteurs bombed the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, the Biden administration learned from a close ally that the Ukrainian military had planned a covert attack on the undersea network, using a small team of divers who reported directly to the commander in chief of the Ukrainian armed forces.
Details about the plan, which have not been previously reported, were collected by a European intelligence service and shared with the CIA in June 2022. They provide some of the most specific evidence to date linking the government of Ukraine to the eventual attack in the Baltic Sea, which U.S. and Western officials have called a brazen and dangerous act of sabotage on Europe’s energy infrastructure.
…
The highly specific details, which include numbers of operatives and methods of attack, show that for nearly a year, Western allies have had a basis to suspect Kyiv in the sabotage. That assessment has only strengthened in recent months as German law enforcement investigators uncovered evidence about the bombing that bears striking similarities to what the European service said Ukraine was planning.
…
Ukrainian officials, who have previously denied the country was involved in the Nord Stream attack, did not respond to requests for comment.
The White House declined to comment on a detailed set of questions about the European report and the alleged Ukrainian military plot, including whether U.S. officials tried to stop the mission from proceeding.
The CIA also declined to comment.
…
The European intelligence made clear that the would-be attackers were not rogue operatives. All those involved reported directly to Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine’s highest-ranking military officer, who was put in charge so that the nation’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, wouldn’t know about the operation, the intelligence report said.
imo this is just bullshit and the pentagon is just trying to throw the Ukrainian government under the bus to save face that the US committed an act of war against a fellow NATO member - the Hersh theory seems a lot more likely since it’s not just uncritically repeating the current public line of the Pentagon. Still the article illustrates how it was very definitely either the US or a close US ally who did the bombing
It may have been Ukraine with America’s assistance, fair
It seems that US intelligence would like the world to believe it was Ukraine. Possible, but more likely to be the US
Seymour Hersh broke the story on this. He’s famous for breaking the My Lai massacre. The article he wrote is behind a pay wall, but this is a very lengthy interview with from democracy now https://www.democracynow.org/2023/2/15/nord_stream_sy_hersh
I advise caution with Hersh’s reporting. It was weak to begin with, relying on a single source. It’s not improved at all since publication, with no one coming forward even anonymously to corroborate the claims. Seymour Hersh has published important stories, but he’s gotten sloppy with this one.
The US is the most obvious party to have carried this out and is the only one who would benefit.
It’s so obvious the US President might as well have come out and said if there’s a war, Nord Stream 2 will be destroyed
Haha, that would be too obvious, come on now.
Yes stranger on the internet, the most decorated investigative journalist alive has "gotten sloppy’ you say. So who’s more credible here, the guy who broke My Lai and Abu Ghraib, reported on Watergate and the secret bombing of Cambodia, won a Pulitzer and a record five Polk awards, or you, some anonymous commenter on the internet, laughably calling it “weak”, “cautioning” against it? You don’t think other bootlickers in the past have called his reports on My Lai, Cambodia or Abu Ghraib “weak”?
Didn’t you know? Abu Ghraib is actually Saddamist shill misinformation. The Washington Post says so!His reporting on My Lai was based on internal government documents. Abu Ghraib was already being reported by other sources like Amnesty International, so he was backing up by other reporting there.
Thing is, I’m not asking you to trust me. Not one bit. I’m asking you to apply an appropriate level of skepticism. Common practice for an accusation this serious is to get more people talking. But here, the whole accusation rests on one source. Why should we trust this source? Because Seymour Hersh said they know stuff? And since then, nothing. Now maybe Hersh is still digging and will publish something in the future. If so, I’m all ears. Until, I stay skeptical.
And it’s not just me pointing to how Hersh uses anonymous sources as being problematic. His Wikipedia article has a lengthy section covering both criticism and defense.
That seems like one anonymous source for a very wide range of allegations. I hope you do not accept that as absolute fact.
Do you know what the US does? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. However, the claim is the US blew up something that didn’t belong to them. That is the most ordinary claim. It is so ordinary that if something explodes and you don’t know why, it would take evidence to prove we didn’t do it somehow
Considering the only party on Earth that benefits from the sabotaging of that pipeline is the US i think it would be very hard for anyone reasonable to ignore. Hersh is also one of the few investigative journalists who has reported on things like this consistently and been correct in the past
Just shows how green capitalism is just a waste of time. You’d think a country as geographically small and vulnerable as Germany would take this into account but guess not.
Maybe they should support more
nazis, sanctions against other fuel resources and further terrorist attacks against peaceful infrastructure by their so called 
“allies”.Stop trivialising fascism.
the only people trivializing fascism are those who see fascism symbology like the swastika, Black Sun, various nordic runes, etc on the soldiers they’re egging on and go “doesn’t look like anything to me!” while advocating for the double genocide theory
Have you any pictures of Azov with swastika, black sun, or such after they got integrated into the national guard?
Or is that just a convenient propaganda line to make you support an imperial aggressor fielding tons of fascist militias, itself being a mafia state slowly but surely turning fascist?
Have you any pictures of Azov with swastika, black sun, or such since 2014?
The Black Sun and Wolfsangel have been right on their fucking shit rag of a flag until last year, you fascist turd.
JFC the entire first page of your comments is nothing but nazi apologia, fick dich du kranke Faschosau.
Hey rember when they just got those new leopard tanks and some rascal painted a bunch of iron crosses on them, which libs insisted was from obscure world War 1 battalion and not where literally everybody knows the iron cross from, to the point the German government said they weren’t gonna keep giving them weapons if that shit didn’t stop
Leopards come with iron crosses by default, it’s the fucking signet of the fucking Bundeswehr. This is a Bundeswehr tank. These are three Bundeswehr tanks.
Cossack crosses are very similar.
It’s not just iron crosses, he’s thinking of the balkenkreuzes that are being painted on tanks. The symbol Germany stopped using after WWII.
The black sun got removed in 2015, this is the new one. But, go on, spin random bullshit.
JFC the entire first page of your comments is nothing but nazi apologia
Yeah I happen to be arguing with another fascism-trivialising hexbear idiot in another thread.
The black sun got removed in 2015, this is the new one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social-National_Party_of_Ukraine
Panzergrenadierbattalion 13 of the Bundeswehr (1980-1992, dissolved because cold war over). You’ll find it in more insignia not to mention coat of arms of towns but that one is closest to Azov in the sense that it’s simply a singular Wolfsangel. At least among the ones I could find within 10 seconds of googling.
The Wolfsangel is not a Nazi symbol as such. If you want to outlaw everything the Nazis ever used then nothing would be left, including the Antifa flags because they totally did try to appropriate those. They’re getting off on that shit and you seem to be willing to play right into their hands.
Bruh that’s basically a swastika
Why carry water for a fascist group just do the lib thing and call them bad apples and move on ffs
It’s really sus
Have you gone to an optometrist lately. It’s a Wolfsangel.
Here, another swastika. Notice the three hooks pointing counter-clockwise?
The black sun got removed in 2015, this is the new one. But, go on, spin random bullshit.
The Azov Brigade’s official magazine is titled “Black Sun newspaper” which it produces and distributes to several tens of thousands within the Ukrainian military still uses the black sun, because it’s literally the fucking name of the publication.
Some but not all of them are available here: https://archive.org/details/black_sun/
Given that this archived collection goes up to 2017, you are full of shit.
Yeah no that’s indefensible and the original editor in chief is nuts (google translate from the Ukrainian wikipedia page):
This is an old Ukrainian sign, which means a force aimed at destroying all the old and restoring the new. There is another version of its origin: the black sun is the period of the year when water acquires special life-giving qualities. This usually happened at night, when there was no sun, but since the nutritional properties were always associated only with it, our ancestors nicknamed this time the black sun. There is no hint of hostile ideology here, this is our Ukrainian symbol, which has a sacred meaning.
— Mark Melnyk (“Viry”), editor-in-chief of the publication
Couldn’t find out when it was discontinued, the azov.press domain certainly is dysfunctional. Azov’s official news feed seems to be here.
Could neither find out how official the whole thing was, either, and especially not in the crucial post-incorporation times. They might just have continued to operate independently.
Still, though: Is current-day Azov out there doing Nazi things? Ultimately that’s the only question that matters. Of course from the Russian perspective yes it is according to Russian propaganda everyone opposed to Russia (and that includes being opposed to being invaded) is a Nazi.
Oh and I can prove Azov are still distributing this free taster archive of the magazine via nackor.org, which is where the previous azov.press site migrated to later on. Here is a January 2022 archived page where you can see Azov are still giving away that selection of the magazine for free via their political spinoff the “National Corps”, this is one of several of their party websites: https://web.archive.org/web/20220409062917/https://nackor.org/ru/z-dnem-sobornosti-ukraini
Reference for National Corps being directly linked to Azov: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/13/ukraine-far-right-national-militia-takes-law-into-own-hands-neo-nazi-links
It is the regiment’s official political wing and has only suspended political activity during wartime.
nackor.org, which is where the previous azov.press site migrated to later on.
nackor.org is a gambling website now it seems. Certainly not a news outlet, certainly not from the outside.
Reference for National Corps being directly linked to Azov
Wikipedia. Yes they’re certainly linked the National Corps is the home of Azov’s Nazis.
…squinting at things and considering that National Corps ceased activity in 2022 (to go to the front) it doesn’t seem too unlikely that they gave up on nackor.org and the successor to the Black Sun. I guess (really, guess) that it was run by National Corps for the longest time after Azov got integrated.
Anyhow are you seeing those election results. I can’t blame Ukrainians for not being too worried about them getting into power.
RWE has no conscience left at all (doubt they ever had one). Coal is scheduled to be faded out by 2030 (recently rescheduled from 2038) and I do wonder if there really was no other option than to demolish those 8 windmills (and the nearby village).
That being said: This is a singular incident caused by long-time contracts of the fading industry. It’s not some paradigm shift in Germany. Coal will be gone soon and new windmills will be build.
Realistically speaking they need to get coal another 5 years. Which means either widening the pit or digging deeper. And the latter is massively more damaging, just for the management of ground water levels needed (also more expensive).
