Ancient German Forest Being Razed for Coal Mines.

[NNadir]

As Germany hosts green summit, an energy firm is razing a nearby forest

From CNN:

This week, the German city of Bonn is the venue for hundreds of diplomats who are busy hammering out a road map to save the planet from climate change.

The country would seem an ideal host, with its sterling reputation for driving an ambitious green agenda centered around "energiewende," or transition to renewable energy.

Yet less than an hour's drive away from the COP23 summit lies an example of Germany's dirty environmental secret: A 12-thousand-year-old forest that has been almost completely consumed by the country's ravenous addiction to coal power.

Germany's biggest electricity provider, RWE, runs the vast open-pit mine that encroaches on Hambach Forest. Giant steel excavators grind away at the 33-square mile hole, leaving a scar on the green landscape but producing 40 million metric tons of coal annually.

Every year since 1978, the mine has been allowed to fell a section of forest to access the lignite, or "brown coal," beneath. As a result, the Hambach woodland has now shrunk to less than 10% of its original size, according to estimates by RWE and environmental activists...

...Almost 40% of Germany's electricity comes from coal-powered plants -- nearly a quarter from brown coal -- making it Europe's biggest polluter, spewing out more than 20% of the greenhouse gas emissions from the European Union, according to Eurostat.
"We need lignite. Lignite is not subsidized and we have a good supply in Germany. It makes us less dependent on imported natural gas, oil or other fossil fuels," Guido Steffen, a representative for RWE, told CNN.

Don't worry, be happy.

I'm sure that some of that coal will be used to make steel for wind turbines and redundant dangerous natural gas plants.

(If the wind industry were to become a significant forom of energy- it never has been, it isn't, and it won't be - it would require a huge scale up of the steel and aluminum industries.)

Have a nice day.

[gtar100]

1. Coal company takes 90% and leaves 10% for the environment.

But that 10%? They're going to need that too.