you want to later have to say that they would not have tried it when you were young and awake and angry. You want to shake up the people in the light of what is happening with the world. Where everyone who’s in change, whether he wants it or not, the climate and all. Therefore, they climbed trees and chained themselves to tree Branches, Tim and Indigo and Clumsy and the other. They have built tree houses, pickets and vigils at the same time, the police has cleared, and now they’re sitting on thick Branches in the hambach forest, this summer, become a Symbol for the struggle of the young against the sins of the Old.
Clumsy, 30, formerly a paramedic, has lived for six years under the crown of the Tree, Tim, 27, formerly coachbuilder, for five. And Indigo, wants to travel 22, after graduating high school, and a Latin-America Tour for almost two years, now, across the country and the people to explain what could anyone do to change a System that stand on the verge of collapse, as you say.
The three are representative of the thousands of young people in this drought summer, the topic of carbon and climate change on the agenda. Where giant excavators to feed in Depths of up to more than 400 meters under the floor, in one of the biggest holes on the planet, ten kilometers long and eight kilometers wide. And where is home for thousands of miners and their families.
hambach forest is to the political issue of the Current study, heat, drought, and water scarcity: These countries could until 2070 uninhabitable.
Between Aachen and Cologne, and Rur and Erft they dig up the landscape, so that from coal-fired electricity. And for 40 years the inhabitants of the villages are fighting back in vain against expropriation and demolition. Some were resigned, others have come to terms. Churches and pubs have disappeared, as well as fertile arable land.
But then came people from all over the world. The hambach forest was to be the new Hotspot of the environmental scene. In movement of Protest, as young people, old trees occupied houses on them built, and some of the resigniertem Old got-fighters showed how to get the ass back high, 16 meters above the earth. “We want to give them courage,” says Clumsy from Graz in Austria. He lives on a hornbeam, an oak, his current tree, which measures 25 meters, he calls him “Mona”.
After the fourth eviction four weeks ago, Clumsy moved to a new platform, on which he put a tent. Nearly 500 supporters assured him, for the cost of a fine to pay, because he does, once more, something forbidden.
citizens to support the tree tamper with money and food
to meet You have to walk almost two miles through the woods, past the barricades and other tree houses, to Clumsy here. For a conversation early in the Morning, he ropes in. A few meters away, Tim is working on a new home, something more, in a Pit, hidden, sleeping, other activists in addition to ropes, tool and pallet wood. It is the donation of a Dutch freight forwarder. Many citizens support the occupiers with food and money.
in order To Clumsys hips to hang carabiners and ropes. Every few days he goes in an adjacent tent camp on a meadow orchard, a shower of cold, somewhere in the forest, they have also built a compost toilet. His parents did not pay him the insurance money he needed for this life here, he says.
This place, maybe 500 meters away from the large excavator, which stands on the escarpment, and looks Clumsy as a ideal place to point to the contradictions of the system, he says. Him and the others, it is a question, in his eyes, and lethargic society to shake, as the Wind does with the Foliage.
RWE Germany’s largest electricity producer
And with RWE, set against a multi-billion dollar giant that celebrates itself as Germany’s largest power producer and, increasingly, as a provider of renewable energy. And its employees here in the last few years to dead tombs have been available for more than 4000 hectares of forest, of which only a good tenth. You should now continue, would not be Clumsy and the other, and especially the bats. Because a court has decided that the remaining forest should not be felled in the next two years, at least. Also, due to the “Occurrence of Bechstein’s bat and the Big Mausohrs, which are protected as a species of community interest (…) in a strictly,” as it is said, after a complaint from the nature conservation organization BUND, the decision of the higher administrative court in Münster.
The location for a public fight is so good, but enough Clumsy. “We need to be radical,” he says. To go “In the sense that the basis of Evil to the root.”
eviction of the hambach forest Fatal accident – man falls into the depths and dies> <p And is, as he sees it, the capitalist System, as it currently is organized. "Everything must be cheaper, and no one takes the responsibility. And all to choose, even for short distances on the plane, although kerosene heats up the atmosphere." Clumsy waived travel for eleven years on air and is still on the road a lot. In England, he participated in blockades of coal mining in Belgium and Sweden, he fought against the clearing of forests. For his civil disobedience "against the omnipresent destruction" in the brown coal in the Lausitz pits, he took two months in detention. In the hambach forest, he made the police officers some trouble to get him from the tree, they had to finally come up with the saw. Clumsy was mixed with cement and earth, a 300-pound concrete block with a pipe, he sank his right Arm. A now widespread, if also risky form of action, a clearance is complicated and expensive.
“we need to be able to convince the people to ask questions. What is useful and what is not. What makes you healthy and what is ill” says Clumsy. How do we want to live? Who we want to be? What Betgram must we do? These questions will be discussed in the forest again and again. Questioning we are progressing: a phrase of the Zapatistas, the Mexican rebels. And also, these rates often fall in the forest: First they ignore us. Then they laugh about us. Then they fight us. Gandhi, who is.
Call after exiting from the brown coal mining
The use of the activists, the squat now for six years in the trees, impressed many. In North Rhine-Westphalia, demand, current, according to surveys, three out of four people removal a quick exit from the brown coal. In the hambach forest, the weekly, at the beginning of 40, 50 citizens attended the “walks in the woods grew” over time to demonstrations of 15,000 and more people. Until a month ago, finally 50.000 with those in the trees showed solidarity – with these strange forest people, the abseil for the morning toilet and for hours water in Jerry cans to haul and food to draw upon, the other to throw away.
greenhouse effect & Co Why is it always warmer at the earth? The climate change in just three minutes, explains
they are Supported by citizens from Buir to the next village behind the forest. You sit down for years with legal finesse against the open-cast mines for the military, but are exhausted of ignorance and intimidation. The Initiative “citizens for Buir” hardly counts more than 40 members. Your spokeswoman Antje Grothus, 54, Catholic, mother of three children and trained as a Nutritionist, desperate, more than once, until it was finally launched in the so-called coal Commission, to make proposals for the “structural change”. Because out of all of them, also RWE and the Rulers want to now, just the question is when and at what price.
It is just a struggle even to time. Time, not my Clumsy, Tim and Indigo. You have become the enemy for all those who because of their existence of fear. Over many years, the hole there were people with a wage, many unskilled workers were well paid, social advancement. A guide device to be the Highest, to move one of these huge excavators. Today, the other the heart and brains to move.
whistling With whistles and shouting, the workers gathered in front of the house, the coal critic Antje Grothus and held out her fists. “The guys need to let air out,” says RWE works Council Walter Butterweck. He is, by the way, similar to the young forest squatters, also of the opinion that you should be “more civil disobedience” . The labour leader is struggling with the buddies with the preservation of the pit and points out that elsewhere in the world even more coal-fired power plants to be built and, moreover, for example, the operation of aircraft and cruise ships also contributes to the mutilation of the world. His people, he says, would work hard to ensure that once these amenities afford to fly at any time in the vacation or big ships out to sea. It disgusts it that some of the tree-squatters pelted police officers with the last evacuation with the feces, and also with sling shots fired. These Vegans from the forest are you a single insult. With your “Hambi” .
A flight path for bats
So everything is also a great psychological Drama. The against us. We against the. It’s about Dignity, appreciation and respect. Also for the performance of RWE, at the beginning of the pit back to 1500 hectares of new forest planted. With an enormous effort of formic ester and the forest were laid in the ground, on that old ground, new life sprouting. Even a flight path you have built, so the bats for miles to find the way from the old to the new home.
Obviously inspired by the ability of nature to revitalize, the former Forester Günter rose land, 66, and his guests by the from him, created a new Paradise. Prospectus for Mature Green, quite impressive, but as a young man, is not to compare with the last part of the forest. Where ancient trees stand stoically, some probably since the time of the thirty years ‘ war.
Forester rose country offers Apples, from our own garden, own breeding, there is only him, and shows him to planted resistant North American Douglas-fir. Like Noah, he felt, was from the ark; this forest is also a laboratory, which species to withstand climate change. The spruce trees are not there, you dried up this summer, and are sawed at the edge, the heart, the blood, the forestry man says. Like him leidtue that in the rest of the hambach forest-old trees would have to fall: “of course it is a pity, but it is not going to change.” You need huge amounts of earth to model for reforestation and the steep slopes of the giant hole round flat and secure.
“These young people want a different society,” says rose country. Next to him is the works Council Butterweck. “Want to” , pure he says, “because with the crowbar to save the world. But not on our backs.”
Many long years, and of the brown coal
lived So all are fighting for their future, the young and the Old. The Region is in turmoil, we here against the outside. As if it arrived in a globalised world. So many have lived here so many long years, and of the brown coal.
At the expense of nature. And these costs are the activists now. 24 hours of the day will also be pumped out in these dry times 800 meters under the sea level ground water and diverted. Life here is so messed up, that in durable 20-degree warm rivers such as the Erft Amazon Piranhas to survive and the source of other rivers such as the river Niers only thanks to the artificial supply of water does not dry up. “A completely silly vicious circle,” said Clumsy. “It’s absurd, how we organize our existence.”
The activists have globalized the concept of Home: homeland is not only the war-torn country in the triangle between Aachen, Köln and Mönchengladbach. Home, this is a Planet. “We are fighting not only for ourselves, but for all,” says Indigo. “And what have we done so far, gives us a lot of hope.”
Indigo moved at the age of 20 in the woods, in search of a place to be “effective”. You don’t want to settle for sets of peers, that the world was beyond saving and we should still live as well as possible, until it was finally over. This dark sad image of the things: you don’t think. Your world is bright, and that the make up there but only what you want, this is especially true of you and your tree-house friends from the forest.
Because it is there, where the Wind lulls you and in the crown of the Tree Dormouse bounce, they learned that there’s more to life than career, and the struggle of the one against the other. Together with other activists from the forest, she has retired now in a house between Hannover and Göttingen in order to live here in a community. Indigo reads books about the consequences of industrial agriculture, and about solidarity, about the responsibility of the Individual and the willingness to Change a society. It deals with the fact that it is not enough to treat people with Prohibited, and to preach resignation. “Many in our country do not have even so much that you could do without,” says Indigo. You’ll be in a month with 150 euros, because they live on what others share with her.
hambach forest as an adventure Playground
The hambach forest was for these people, a place of longing. Dream Land, Survival Camp, Adventure Playground. Some in the trees joked that we could offer seminars for stressed managers or introductory courses in the Depend.
“people want a spectacle, and that’s what we offer them,” says Tim, meanwhile, is the Veteran of eviction, maybe 150 people in the forest. The skilled body Builder has quit his Job at a Volkswagen suppliers, the money he earned, sometimes with other wage work: as a lumberjack, of all things. Initially, he wanted to stay for two weeks, it is five years. After he had helped to build houses, entrenched in a more than six months, unnoticed, dug a Tunnel almost ten meters under the ground. There, he chained, as police officers, constructions prior to the addition of case doors secured hiding place. At least a day longer, the clearance took so.
That he may be risking his life in a two-by-two-Meter hole, where he barricaded himself for 30 hours, this Consideration is factored into his calculus. “We write straight history,” he says. “We have now gained a little time. And our Generation has to think about a mission: to lead this debate, finally being honest about a change in the system. Now it really starts.”
