780 million tons of the dirtiest fossil fuel (brown coal) will be dug up by RWE. Germany, the land of hollow words without deeds
Posted Jan 12, 2023, 4:41 PM UTC
47250
as soon as the people decide todo something peaceful against companies polluting, the cops show up. this is fascistic
31
It's authoritarian. It has nothing at all to do with fascism except that authoritarianism is a factor in fascism.
13
It protects the interests of capital, of corporations. That's why it is fascist.
4
Exactly. Thank you for saying this 🙏
9
Germany, the country that claimed to be “green” and “renewable” by burning old-growth Appalachian forests for biofuel is now moving full speed ahead into burning Carboniferous forests. Big surprise.
20
They could dig up 780 million tons of coal, or they could have built next generation nuclear reactors.
Why build a reactor with no carbon emissions when you can burn coal instead?
19
no carbon emissions
You're right, it just has all those other emissions and the various emissions needed in the mining/enrichment process of the fuels. NP also poses a singlepoint of failure which rely upon other sources of power (e.g, diesel generators) if capacity is reached, like during a mechanical fault or extreme weathers.
Zealous proponents of NP consider opposition 'anti-science' but if NP wanted a better image, it shouldn't of been involved in so much contamination and destruction (largely due to incompetence, avarice and/or bureacracy). I'm against fossil fuels for the same reasons.
9
Those ‘other’ emissions apply to all forms of energy. Including mining for ore for windmills or silicon for solar panels. Especially coal plants that cost fossil fuels to mine THEN burn.
What disaster has nuclear power done to destroy almost all people lives on earth lives? Nothing. You breathe in fossil fuel exhaust everyday from these coal/gas plants. Nuclear power isn’t perfect. But you’re in the r/Collapse thread. This is what we got if we had any chance.
6
Apply to all other forms of energy
Yes, which is why is remains a valid criticism against Nuclear as well. Not to mention any material/emissions necessary in the management of nuclear waste.
...NP done to destroy almost all peoples lives on Earth
Uhhh when did I claim it has, and what other power has done that? If you're talking about climate change via greenhouse gasses, then NP would still cause that, it just has the privilege of not being the most prolific energy source.
NP isn't perfect
Then why paint it as some pancea to our problems?
Here's the news, as I see it
- Exhaust fumes etc. is a separate problem, we need to completely do away with private transportation. Electric cars powered by NP would just mean the same sort of gross industrial waste that combustion engines have caused.
- NP, when it has failed (again largely due to the same problems of human error/avarice/mismanagement/profit motive) tends to pollute much larger swaths of area than other terrestrial forms of power management. You're talking the fallout spreading in the winds, you're talking about increased cancer rates and livestock culling, you're talking about the gross crippling of those sent to do the cleanup efforts.
- Were NP to reach majority producer of electricity then you're looking at exacerbating the issues of nuclear leaks, storage of nuclear fuels and also the protection of this infrastructure against increasingly extreme weathers. You're also looking at fossil fuels still being needed if the capacity for NP is overwraught during cases of extreme weather (e.g. what has happened in France). There is also the question of expanding the mining efforts and also the question of what we do with another finite resource.
You would have us embrace NP as our only real hope to combat greenhouse gasses yet I would contend that you're just passing the buck onto the next generation. Higher efficiency leads to higher demand, if Jevon is to be believed so why are we proposing that and not advocating for an extreme reduction in the consumption of humans?
If your answer is 'well that will never happen' then all you're proposing is that we setup nuclear power plants all across the world to fail when our consumption inevitably bites our civilization in its ass.
NB: IF I'm not mistaken, the question of setting up nuclear infrastructure is also a giant question mark, being subject to scope creep or just plain mishandling by private corporations for a profit motive. The decomission of these plants historically has either been half-assed or remains a giant question mark of resources which nobody is willing to undertake. France has been working on Nuclear since the 70s, I don't see how anyone else has the 50 years to fully nuclearize their countries while also decomissioning all of that fossil fuel infrastructure.
2
Fossil fuels are entering their final sunset period very soon, possibly already right now -- we will see. Consequently, electrical power capacity is poised to fall and alternatives will be in high demand, and I think nuclear is one of the better options to supply the demand, due to being pilotable and having small area footprint with massive production capacity in that area. It looks to me like it is the most 1:1 replacement.
Sure, it comes with problems, but what doesn't -- our greedy, planet-killing civilization is going to need a power cushion to not free fall straight into the mad max apocalypse over the next 10-20 years as fossil fuels will be in their irreversible decline, and we must deglobalize, learn to live with a lot less, and are likely to have trouble keeping the lights on in the winter.
1
Aren't the emissions from mining and enrichment far less than burning coal overall?
TBH I don't know myself.
1
No clue, I also don't know how we would factor in waste management against that figure.
My contention is that we should be using less energy, less material, less land, not trying to eat out cake and have it too by means of some nuclear fantasy which has a more than spotty track record.
1
Build new nuclear reactors? They just finished shutting down the ones they had right before this energy crisis.
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- Because fossil fuel power plants are more cost effective than nuclear. They cost way less to build and maintain, take far, far less time to build and start using, and provide more megawatts per dollar. Infinite growth demands cheaper and faster over slower and more expensive.
- Because nuclear power plants generate electricity. There is a difference between energy and electricity. Electricity powers city lights, home appliances, ect. Energy provides the heat and motion needed to for industry. Cement, steel, glass, bricks, ceramics, chemicals, and many other products and materials rely on the high heat of fossil fuels to be manufactured, they rely on fossil fuel burning mining vehicles to extract the base materials, and they rely on fossil fuel burning trucks and container ships to transport the materials all over the world. They have to keep using coal because its needed to mine, refine, build, manufacture, & transport things. It is needed to make the materials that a nuclear power plant is made out of.
- They care about infinite growth, not emissions. Biomass is considered "emission free" even though burning trees A. literally, physically releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere IE emissions, and B. literally, physically involves destroying forests, which are one of the things that actually sequesters carbon on this planet. So if a country considers an energy source that literally, physically creates more emissions to be "emission free" that should demonstrate how much they actually prioritize emissions when choosing what power sources to build.
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lol litteraly no one who matters cares. nothing will happen it will get mined and we will just carry on nothing to see here
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Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
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The following submission statement was provided by u/Sertalin:
submission statement
If Germany is concerned with its industry, then all climate promises are secondary. The umpteenth village around the lignite mine in western Germany is currently being demolished because there are still 780 million tons of dirty lignite under this village. In the past few decades, 120,000 people have been resettled and countless villages demolished for the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. Look to Lützerath, it will also be a symbol internationally. Activists from France, England, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany are there trying to make demolition at least expensive and difficult. Do not trust the German governments, even the Greens have agreed to this horror. This post is collapse relevant because we all know how bad it is already without the excavated 780 million tons of lignite.
Collapse through climate change
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/10a43ss/780_million_tons_of_the_dirtiest_fossil_fuel/j41y39u/
1
How much carbon does it make?
1
Burning a tonne of lignite releases about a tonne of carbon dioxide.
1
yeah make it more alarmistic and wrong. "Germany solely responsible for climate doom next year" maybe.. will get the people going.
For real, this deal ensures that germany will exit coal by 2030 instead of 2038, yes that's 8 years sooner.
Additionally, it's one small city getting removed while 5 others are saved, otherwise they would have been trashed too. It is actually a win for the climate, but facts don't bother none as long as you can send fancy provocative pics around the world and spread some doom slogans to farm karma...
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But they JUST had protests to prevent nuclear power from being developed. What else is the country supposed to do?
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The same as EVERY country has to do and will do in the near future: collapsing! De-industrialize!
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They went anti nuclear and because of it we have the war with Russia and a climate issue. They could have been carbon neutral already with what they wasted on solar and wind
-1
The consequences of not* using nuclear power......
-1
submission statement
If Germany is concerned with its industry, then all climate promises are secondary. The umpteenth village around the lignite mine in western Germany is currently being demolished because there are still 780 million tons of dirty lignite under this village. In the past few decades, 120,000 people have been resettled and countless villages demolished for the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. Look to Lützerath, it will also be a symbol internationally. Activists from France, England, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany are there trying to make demolition at least expensive and difficult. Do not trust the German governments, even the Greens have agreed to this horror. This post is collapse relevant because we all know how bad it is already without the excavated 780 million tons of lignite.
Collapse through climate change
If (any nation) is concerned with its industry, then all climate promises are secondary.
This is why climate change will not be averted.
Yes, you're definitely right about that. My inner satisfaction is that the industrialists and deniers will eventually get their punishments too. Not everyone can get away with it
The biggest Green supporter I knew of in Germany voted in his home owner association equivalent (for the apartment building) to ban clothes drying from the balcony. He "didn't want to look at other peoples' underwear". It either went in the basement, which was too full from the entire building doing it or in the clothes dryer with ultra expensive electricity to boot.
If he had any guilt, he assuaged it by giving the Greens money.
That's how they are, the arrogant Germans, I know a few guys like that
What should Germany do?
Everybody should use much less energy. From the poor to the rich. And we have to de-industrialize. Period. Someone has to make the start.
(But of course nobody will do this, so Germany and the majority of Germans take offense at the fact that the earth is becoming uninhabitable for humans. I think that will also torment the Germans at some point)
We're in a massive catch-22. Just to go to an extreme, if we tried going back to hunter-gatherer we could not because each hunter gather uses X square miles to sustain themselves. The holding capacity of that world is several 10s of million at best and the reason people eventually settled into agriculture (running into other groups that started defending territory so it became musical chairs). It's also not the world we have know because we killed so many areas, animals, plants, and fish.
The same basic scenario actually plays out any step backwards we take. To 1800 farmsteading? Maybe 2 billion capacity? Assuming we had land and an earth like 1800, which we don't. Some land degraded, and definitely the water ways and such. (Oysters from Chesapeake was important food on the North East US during this time but all but gone now). That leaves 6 billion out at best. It's like that every step of the way backwards. Breakthrough, growth to fill the extra capacity allowed, degraded land, no way back.
We could try soft degrowth. Make appliances to one standard and fixable. Same with cars. A few colors. Plain jane and utilitarian. Maybe with 1/3 current power (who needs 0-60 in 3-10 seconds unless keeping up with these other maniacs?). And a similar moratorium on electronics. Cruise ships effectively scuttled. Plane travel 3-5x the price at the least. Get away from consumerist culture. Make housing less a commodity for the free market - standardize living spaces. Stuff like that. 2 kids per couple for a soft demographic landing.
But that's like... so far outside people's expectations and market-fed desires that it's not even reality at this point. Just fantasy land turned inward on how humans could be when they're not. The human ape as a collective would simply reject it.
It's not a catch 22, a bunch of people just have to die of starvation and stuff. You're doing a bunch of mental gymnastics trying to find a way out of that
Also, tipping the power balance / prisoner's dilemma will hinder degrowth. Who would shrink their industry if countries like Russia exist?
Yeah, that's not how it works in the technocapitalist dystopia. Lines can only go up, not down!
How do you make tanks if you de-industrialize?
Make love not tanks.
Or food, if you're hungry.
You just don't
[deleted]
Nuclear
You would think someone with half a brain would realize that a country that is not sunny or windy kind of only has nuclear as an option for green energy. I guess the people in charge of Germany are running on 1/3 of a brain or less.
They'll be running out of freshwater to cool nuclear plants soon, look at France this year. Nuclear is limited
If they have a drought I think they’ll find it hard to operate NPPs.
Seems obvious, but even in this thread I'm downvoted for one word
Nuclear pollution takes millions of years to safely store , what’s so green about that
There's nothing to do: humans are just going to drive this car straight off the cliff and then wonder why we're falling.
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