Greta Thunberg carried away by police at German mine protest:
(The photo of the town of Lützerath in 2019, was taken by Arne Müseler from Salzburg, Austria / www.arne-mueseler.de, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=106933639)
BERLIN (AP) —
Police in western Germany carried Swedish climate activist Greta
Thunberg and other protesters away Tuesday from the edge of an open coal
pit mine where they demonstrated against the ongoing destruction of a village to make way for the mine’s expansion, German news agency dpa reported.
Thunberg
was among hundreds of people who resumed anti-mining protests at
multiple locations in the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia
a day after the last two climate activists holed up in a tunnel beneath the village of Luetzerath left the site.
The
German government reached a deal with energy company RWE last year
allowing it to destroy the village in return for ending coal use by
2030, rather than 2038. Both argue the coal is needed to ensure
Germany’s energy security that’s squeezed by the cut in supply of
Russian gas due to the war in Ukraine.
But environmentalists say bulldozing Luetzerath will result in vast greenhouse gas emissions. Germany is expected to miss its ambitious climate targets for the second year in a row.
Amid the heated coal debate in Germany, the European Union pushed forward on Tuesday with a major clean tech industrial project designed to boost its plans for a greener future as the 27-nation bloc pursues the goal of being climate neutral by 2050.