“Lusatia rejects its approaching decline”

The coal mining industry in Germany’s eastern region Lusatia refuses to accept that it faces a similar destiny as the country’s nuclear industry, Daniel Wetzel writes on Welt Online. Those employed in the industry feel that “brown coal, which has formed the region’s landscape, culture and people for generations, is now subject to unparalleled attacks”, Wetzel explains in his lengthy article. “60 percent of CO₂-reductions came from eastern Germany,” he cites local coal manager Helmar Rendez, who also said Germany’s “esoteric energy policy”, embodied by the Climate Action Plan 2050, was aimed at “exiting every technology that actually works”. Since Lusatia, together with the western German coal mining areas, still accounts for about a quarter of the country’s energy supply, many of the young coal industry employees “do not regard it as a dying industry but rather a good start for their professional future”, Wetzel writes.

Read the article in German here.