Action Days in the Rhineland Coalfield

Action Days in the Rhineland Coal­field

Lots of things were hap­pen­ing in the Rhineland Coal­field today: Ear­ly in the morn­ing, four activists locked them­selves to coal train tracks. Two more activists abseiled them­selves from a bridge. These two block­ades stopped the coal trans­porta­tion between the open-cast mine Ham­bach and the pow­er plants. Fur­ther north, at the edge of the Garzweil­er mine, a group of 80 peo­ple took a seat in front of the buck­ets of the dig­ging machine, some of them locked them­selves togeth­er. Anoth­er group ven­tured fur­ther down into the mine and climbed on the wheels the dig­ging machine, accom­pa­nied by a Sam­ba band and rebel clowns. And last but not least, about 20 activists were blockad­ing the gate to the mininig area for six hours. It seems that more and more peo­ple are will­ing to take direct action against the pol­lut­ing indus­try to stop cli­mate change!

The Rhineland Coal­fied is sit­u­at­ed in the West­ern part of Ger­many, close to the Dutch bor­dier. There are three huge open-cast lig­nite mines, and right next to it, some of Europe’s dirt­i­est coal-fired pow­er plants, which emit about 100 mil­lion tons of CO2 per year.

Lots of the activists had their base on the cli­mate action camp, that is tak­ing this week on a piece of land that is sched­uled to be digged away soon for the lig­nite mine.  

View images of the action days on www.klimacamp-im-rheinland.de