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| Mon, 1st Jun 2020 13:34:00 |
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‘For climate protesters, we are like filth’: the German village where coal is still king |
The landscape makes you think of the surface of the moon. As far as the eye can see, deep gashes scar the earth. At the spot where the giant machines stand, ancient layers of bared coal are visible all the way to the base of the pit.
Georg Ortmann walks along a bridge 40 metres above the mine to check that sand and gravel taken from the earth’s top layers are not sticking to the conveyor belt removing them from the precious lignite beneath.
"My job is to make sure the dirt is moved from one side of the pit to the other," he jokes.
This is Reichwalde, one of two open-cast lignite mines that supply Boxberg coal-fired power plant. Boxberg was East Germany's biggest power station and climate campaigners now rank it high among the "dirty 30" of Europe's most polluting.
Reichwalde operates 365 days of the year, in all weathers. It is a physically demanding job and Ortmann has spent his entire working life in these craters.
The 62-year-old is one of about 6,000 coal miners left in eastern Germany's Lusatia region, once the German Democratic Republic's mining and industrial heartland. "In East Germany, people who went through the school system had a chance at the nicer indoor jobs. I quit school early," he says.
Before the collapse of East Germany and reunification, the brown coal industry in this region directly employed 100,000 people.
Coal was not just the main employer in Lusatia. Miners enjoyed a special status as proud contributors to energy independence in the socialist state. Ich bin Bergmann, wer ist mehr? (I'm a miner, who is more?) was a phrase commonly heard during the cold war.
Germany pledged last year to end all coal mining by 2038 in line with its EU and global climate obligations. This has deepened existing political tensions in its coal-dependent regions.
In Lusatia, it has placed climate activists on a collision course with local politicians, the coal companies and the communities whose incomes depend on coal.
"Coal is a very emotive topic here," says Adrian Rinnert from the local NGO Strukturwandel Jetzt, which has opposed the expansion of these mines for nearly a decade.
Read original full article
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