Well-known environmentalist against wind power in the forest: tearing up forest for it "is crazy"

Created: 01/09/2022, 6:23 PM

From: Jörg Domke

A recording from the Ebersberger Forest near the Antoni Weiher that was only a few days old.

© Stefan Rossmann

Wind power is not just climate and environmental protection.

This formula is represented by the biologist and nature conservationist Wolfgang Epple.

Various people and groups from the district had recently contacted the expert in their endeavor to be able to prevent wind turbines in the Ebersberger Forest after all.

Markt Schwaben / District - The citizens' vote on the use of wind energy, generated directly in the Ebersberger Forest, which was queried across the district this year, was scarce.

On May 16, 2021, the electorate voted for the construction of a maximum of five wind turbines.

But the close result showed one thing in particular: There is no clear positioning.

At the end of the day it was 52.74 percent to 47.26 percent.

With a turnout of 61.89 percent.

The question asked in the referendum was: "Are you in favor of the Ebersberg district using the real estate options available to it in order to achieve the goals of climate protection and to promote landscape maintenance in order to ensure that a maximum of five wind turbines are built in the Ebersberg Forest?" The question could be answered with “yes” or “no”.

Proponents of wind turbines celebrate the victory of reason

While supporters celebrated the referendum like a victory of reason, opponents criticized the rhetoric in the complex question before and afterwards and at the same time appealed to reason. In any case, peace has not returned in the matter even months later. On the contrary: Markt Schwaben's former mayor, Bernhard Winter, mentions an "Alliance for the Forest" that has now been established on his homepage. For years, several protective communities and citizens' initiatives have been resisting the further fragmentation of the forest. And also the voter group Zukunft Markt Schwaben (ZMS) raised the question of intergenerational equity several times this year in its postil “Wendeblatt”. On the website of the future market Swabia you can find a guest contribution by Dr. Read Wolfgang Epple.In the course of the year, the ZMS made contact with the biologist and nature conservation ethicist who used to be independent for the GREEN and who lives in the Bavarian Forest and asked for support in the fight to preserve the forest. Epple has been active in nature conservation for over 50 years. He studied biology and chemistry (dissertation on the ethoecology of the barn owl).

Voluntarily and in the 1980s he worked full-time as the state manager of NABU (at that time the German Association for Bird Protection) in Baden-Württemberg.

There was further activity in an upper special authority of the state of Baden-Württemberg and in the 1990s as an expert for the then Lower Saxony State Office for Ecology.

For 30 years Epple has dealt in depth with the protection of species in conflict of interest and with the ethics of nature conservation.

We met the 68-year-old for an interview in Markt Schwaben.

Dr.

Epple, what ended up in Markt Schwaben?

Epple:

It is the meeting with you as a representative of the local press who has clearly worked into the topic and has published several articles on the Ebersberg Forest.

I combined that with a reunion with some representatives of the ZMS voter group, to whom there has been contact at their initiative since the hot phase of the referendum on wind power in the Ebersberger Forst.

How did the connection to the voter group ZMS Markt Schwaben come about?

Epple:

The voter group ZMS made my meta-study published as a book on the wind power industry and nature conservation as an occasion for an inquiry to the publisher, the Naturschutzinitiative eV. In the conversations with Wolfgang Korda and in several rounds of questions from the ZMS to me, it turned out that there is a deeper interest in the far-reaching and complex context of the conflict. I then commented on the most important aspects and the classification of the conflict in interviews. The result was a series of videos that can be called up as a playlist on the Internet at ZMS. Thankfully, Wolfgang Korda brokered contact with the two very well-founded conservation initiatives “Landscape Protection Ebersberger Land eV” under Catrin Dietl and “Schutzgemeinschaft Ebersberger Forst eV” under Kerstin Mertens.Because of my statements on the ethics of nature conservation, the former mayor Bernhard Winter also contacted me. In September 2021 there was a joint meeting in the forest.

Wolfgang Epple, biologist and opponent of wind power.

© private

Forests fragmentation is bad for biodiversity

In, Wendeblatt 11, a print product of the ZMS, you even quote Pope Francis and his encyclical Laudato Si from 2015. What was it about the words of the Holy Father that inspired you so much?

Epple:

In his epoch-making environmental encyclical, Pope Francis emphatically strengthens the intrinsic value of natural forms of being: worthy of protection and the right to exist apart from anthropocentric usefulness. The encyclical is very mature and is therefore cited several times in depth in my book on the conflict between wind power and nature conservation. Much coincides with my holistic approach to nature conservation, which grants people their special position: Power over everything means responsibility for everything. Deficits in nature conservation exist especially in the ethical area - that is also the big topic of the encyclical. In the quotation of my contribution for ZMS, point 184 of the encyclical, the Pope vigorously advocates an open-ended weighing of interests, literally: “(...)

. He literally refers to

projects

All of this applies to many forms of energy, to coal, gas, nuclear energy, but also to the so-called renewables, which are wrongly and naively propagated as “clean energy”, and especially to the wind power industry. If the umpteen-fold widespread agitation for wind power presents this as having no alternative for world salvation even in the midst of a forest landscape protected by ordinance and a weighing of interests is undermined or is not open-ended, this not only contradicts the papal recommendations, but also collides with the rule of law principles the open-ended weighing of interests belongs centrally.

The Ebersberger Forest is anything but unknown to you.

If you google their name and the forest on the Internet, you quickly come across a multi-page article in which they speak of a “devaluation of the green lung of Munich”.

Why is wind power threatening the forest?

Epple:

On my homepage on holistic nature conservation I deal intensively with the protection of forests, which played a central role early in my professional activity for the former German Association for the Protection of Birds, now NABU. If you want to save the earth and keep an eye on the climate, you have to focus on the forests. For decades, all scientific findings have shown the harmfulness of tearing up or fragmenting closed forests, not only for biodiversity, but especially with regard to the climate protection function, protection function for the soil and water, and for the important cooling and balancing contribution of forests to Microclimate. A key feature among the well-studied signs of the global socio-ecological crisis,which affects the survival of mankind in the crossing of several planetary boundaries is the clearing and dismemberment, the conversion to intensive use and the destruction by clearing the forests. The most important parameter of the ecological crisis is not climate change, but the loss of biodiversity associated with this overexploitation. It is ludicrous to tear up and devalue one of the largest still-preserved contiguous forest areas in the Bavarian plains with the claim that it is helping to save the world. As in a magnifying glass, the Ebersberger Forest shows the entire nature conservation-damaging problem of the invasion of wind power into the valuable rest of nature: tearing up the forest, damage to the soil, negative changes in the water balance in the soil and in the air that cannot be ruled out,Impairment of the cooling indoor forest climate, destruction or devaluation of habitats of defenseless affected wild animals, direct acceptance of the killing of bats, birds, insects. In the middle of a densely populated area - a look at the map shows: The Ebersberger Forest is literally surrounded by the historical land grabbing of the people around it - it will be the special stroke of luck for this region of a retreat and recreation area for people that has so far been largely intact in itself and put nature at risk without imperative necessity. Overall, this is not only despising of nature, but also of people.Concreting colossal wind turbines in a forest protected for the purpose of preserving it as a landscape protection area is, contrary to the politically motivated newspeak, not in the public interest. It is also not in the public interest, but highly questionable, to improve the operating result of the state forests through leasing income from wind turbines.

The question about the citizens' vote was misleading

In some places you speak of the Ebersberg Forest, not of the forest.

Why this?

Epple:

With this choice of words, I want to remind you that the term forest is common in German and especially in Bavarian usage, but places too much emphasis on usage. In many places in Germany, the forest is a wood plantation, the forest stands more for the highly complex ecosystem that is in our hands - also in terms of use - for fiduciary management for future generations. The fact that, in the wake of the climate debate and the accompanying narrowing of the environmental crisis to greenhouse gases, there has recently been a tendency to reduce the forest to its function as a CO₂ sink, is a mistake. Holistic nature conservation does not limit forests to CO₂ savings. Incidentally, it is a legend that only forested forests can also function as a CO₂ sink.Rather, this function is also part of the dynamics of nature in the natural forest cycles. The protection of "old growth forests" is urgent worldwide because the value of unused protected forests and primeval forests for biodiversity is immeasurable. This urgency has also been recognized from a climate perspective. Plantations and monocultures, which are now collapsing in the course of several years of drought, point more to forest errors in silviculture than they are signs of a new "forest dieback" due to climate change. Like all forests on earth, the Ebersberg Forest only has a future as a forest community that is comprehensively protected and cared for according to criteria of ecological science. Adapted wood production and sustainable use are one possibility.The long-term establishment of a much more far-reaching process protection is, however, the better answer to the challenges of an earth that will soon be inhabited by 10 billion people, both in terms of climate and biodiversity - challenges that are seen in unison by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the World Biodiversity Council.

The vote in favor of wind energy on May 16 in the district was tight.

But you considered the question to be extremely questionable.

What bothered you about it?

Epple:

The question - why was it so fine-tuned? - is misleading and tendentious. I have heard repeatedly that many people believed that they would vote for more and better landscape protection if they ticked “Yes”. “Real estate law options”: Nobody understood that - and after years of dealing with the subject, I don't understand either. “Wind power to promote landscape conservation” - the reinterpretation of nature conservation in the technical conversion of the landscape into an energy landscape has hardly been formulated anywhere else in Germany. One should have asked: “Are you in favor of the fact that the previous protective purpose no longer applies to up to a third of the area of ​​the landscape protection area to enable wind turbines?” Then people would have understood what it was about.The fact that the tendency already apparent in the question is now openly strengthened to impose a new protective purpose "climate protection" on a landscape protection area that was clearly installed to protect a contiguous forest area, fits in with the overall development of a dismantling of the landscape protection in favor of the wind power industry - all of it Germany. Specifically in Ebersberg: The result of an additional report specially commissioned with this aim is to release a third of the protected area of ​​the Ebersberg Forest for wind power. This actually collides with the previous objective and the regulation of the LSG. The elaboration of the Munich professor Schöbel-Rutschmann is supposed to be an existing faunistic report of theThe elaboration of the Munich professor Schöbel-Rutschmann is supposed to be an existing faunistic report of the

from 2019 or at least invalidate the public perception.

This report came to the clear conclusion that the Ebersberg Forest cannot be sensibly zoned from the point of view of nature and species protection.

The handling of the Ebersberg Forest, which is protected by the LSG regulation, should become an outstanding negative example for all of Germany and Europe if this “concept” is implemented.

In your opinion, has the die been cast with a view to the wind turbines?

Epple:

The pending legal approval will not be replaced by a dubious referendum or by far-reaching proposals to soften the LSG regulation by a well-known professorial proponent of wind power. All relevant provisions of the higher-ranking Union law that apply in Germany are against the approval of wind turbines in this forest area, which is so outstanding and valuable in its closedness, regardless of the fact that it is used for forestry. As I show in my book: Zoning of protected areas has been part of the strategy of proponents of wind power for years. In the end, there will be no more large landscapes in Germany that are unaffected by wind power. And there I come to the further ideas that I believe are not justifiable,which pose a threat to nature and the landscape in the entire district: The wind power proponents in the Ebersberg district (Aktiv BüKE) presented a concept in February 2021 that was "favorably" received by the SPD, CSU, Greens and ÖDP in district council according to newspaper reports. In essence, they want to distribute 21 wind turbines to the communities. A map of this distribution can be viewed on the homepage of this “project consortium”. "Fair, efficient" compatible "means, among other things, a distance of 3H to 4H, i.e. three to four times the distance between the height of the wind turbines and the settlements. Apart from the fact that there would no longer be a free horizon in the local preferred landscape with the even distribution celebrated by the ÖDP district council, such distances simply mean contempt for human beings.Perhaps it is just a lack of knowledge of the decisive consequences of such distribution and such distances? It is then a little to smile about, if not far from the Ebersberger Forst in Ermating / Höhenkirchen-Siegertsbrunn, as the "Merkur" reported on December 10th, of all SPD representatives, that is, representatives of the party who together with the GREEN and the mentioned “Consortium” leads the noisy campaign against 10-H, already at a distance of 930 meters weepily go on the barricades against wind turbines. When things get serious, experience shows that the initially mainstream-compliant approval of wind power crumbles. That is why I believe that the die for wind power has not yet been cast for the Ebersberg district, despite the general political weather situation. Should the plans of the new traffic light government be implemented,who wants to “break” the resistance to wind power across the board, will also be howling and chattering teeth in many places in Upper Bavaria.

Hubert Aiwanger promises regarding wind turbines can hardly be kept

What other possibilities do you see to prevent the mentioned wind turbines politically or even legally?

At the moment we seem to be dealing with a certain hardening of both camps.

Epple:

Hardening and storage is what accompanies the attack by the wind power industry in densely populated Central Europe on the last near-natural areas. In this respect, Ebersberg is not an isolated case. Every community has a wind turbine across the board: Perhaps if this were to happen, the spook would soon be over. Because it would be logical to combine this with switching off the base load supply from the power plants. When Hubert Aiwanger (Free Voters), as Minister of Economic Affairs, celebrates the close result of the referendum and announces on May 16, 2021:

, then you should take him and Aktiv BüKE at their word. After a week of winter high-pressure weather conditions, the dark doldrums are documented, in the affected, “supplied” households without an emergency generator, not only the lights would literally be off. Aside from this naive to foolish notion of a safe and "decentralized" supply through the even distribution of wind turbines in low wind areas, the concentration of all negative accompanying circumstances in the wind power industry, especially around the Ebersberger Forest, is outstanding: delivery of the "nationally owned" state forest to the wind power industry, zoning or even abolition of a landscape protection area, recognizable attempts to anticipate an open-ended weighing of interests, a CSU district administrator acting for wind power and thus on the edge of bias,which, as a state organ, is very much obliged to all affected protected interests of Art. 20 a GG, and basically behaves completely unilaterally. The obvious legal deficiencies that have already occurred in the entire process will certainly be scrutinized in several legal circles. First of all, the implementation of EU law should be mentioned. Dealing with forests and the species protected therein and with areas protected by ordinance was a preoccupation for the European Court of Justice, which on March 4, 2021 clearly strengthened the clear regulations of the EU nature conservation directives, especially those on exemptions from protection, on the felling of a forest in Sweden . The fact that people in Germany take little or no notice of this judgment could hurt wind power planners. It's not a trivial offenseto bend or break European nature conservation law. The directives are part of the European unification process and the basis for protecting the common natural heritage. In a further ruling, the ECJ recently confirmed that even with regard to national constitutional law and judgments, the constitutional judge takes precedence over EU law. As far as species protection is concerned, the idea of ​​sparing the forest itself and distributing 21 wind turbines around it is also ignorant to adventurous. Because the affected species, which are sensitive to wind power, use the area around the forest far into the open land. Here, too, it will be interesting to see how those who are supposedly committed to the whole with wind power will deal with the facts. No wonder,that one of the first official acts after taking power from the green Habeck Ministry is an attack against the EU directives.

If no wind turbines in the forest; What should or should be made of the Ebersberger Forest in your opinion in the medium to long term?

Epple:

If you have experienced half a century of nature conservation history in Germany and Europe and have helped shape conservation efforts at the base and leadership of an association and for the authorities, you ask yourself how it is possible that despite the repeated big words about the protection of forests - most recently on the occasion the climate conference in Glasgow 2021 - and to protect biodiversity, technical climate protection will now tear down all the dams that have been painstakingly built over decades to preserve nature. How contradictory is the green zeitgeist, to which nature remains alien: In a recent survey by the German Institute for Urban Studies (Difu) from December 2021, the desire for “

came first as the

". In my homepage contribution to the Ebersberg Forest, I deliberately create such a vision. It's about breaking the far too narrow framework of thought. The future could be a large conservation area in which nature can use its strength to come into play: a “Development National Park Ebersberg Forest”. Development because experience shows that it takes generations before a forest area of ​​this size that was previously used for forestry would be converted into a wilderness state “second hand”. Instead of resorting to fast-growing and alien species as an answer to climate change, instead of - as everywhere in Germany - primarily focusing on the use of wood, instead of generating profit maximization through wind power lease income,Such a large forest area can show great changes and provide insights, especially under the conditions of climate change, left to itself and its forces. In the forest administration there is a large pool of knowledge and skills to scientifically accompany such a process within the framework of a future national park administration, for example with the participation of universities. Especially in the well-studied and researched Ebersberger Forest, there is a unique opportunity to allow a real laboratory of nature on almost 100 square kilometers in the immediate vicinity of the large city of Munich, which continues to eat up space. That would mean: To give nature back its right to intrinsic value and its own development in a large area by German standards. The area is clear and easy to demarcate, and most of it is already state-owned.So perfect conditions. I have to consider: Without the power of visions and courageous rethinking, most of the world's national parks would not have come into being. In Bavaria in particular, we have a shining example in the Künischen Gebirge with the Bavarian Forest NP that a forest left to its own devices does not perish, but on the contrary, with the natural forest development processes, makes a decisive contribution to the declared common goal of preserving the diversity of life on earth.with the natural forest development processes contributes decisively to the declared common goal of preserving the diversity of life on earth.with the natural forest development processes contributes decisively to the declared common goal of preserving the diversity of life on earth.

In one chapter of your book you write about the emerging “energy landscapes” of the “Europe-wide newly launched conflict between the ruling city and the serving country”. What do you mean by that?

Epple:

Big city audiences are far from the action when it comes to wind power and its negative impacts on people. In a sense, it is thoughtless to make propaganda against the 10-H regulation if one obviously does not know from personal experience what it really means to have to live within a kilometer or less of today's wind turbines. Why are five of these 250 meter high wind turbines not planned in the Englischer Garten or other central areas in Munich? If the Greens, with their seizure of power at the traffic lights, want to enforce shorter distances from wind power to people's homes, as they announce, that is inhuman.This could also have a serious impact on their preferred electoral audience in the big cities. The - now glittering - metropolises have been supplied from the surrounding country since the establishment of the polis in antiquity. There is the term “urban parasitism”, which describes the extent to which how much land is occupied to meet the needs of the city and its population. Today it is no longer just about food, timber, materials or water, but with the shutdown of power plants it is increasingly about much larger areas for energy: Compared to power plants, the enormous use of areas especially by wind power, this in conflict convergence as targeted penetration in the last halfway intact near-natural landscapes, mean a new edition of the urban-rural conflict,To put it casually: The rural rural population, who up to now has looked after the provision of food as well as the recreational areas for the townspeople, gets in front of their noses with brute force when it comes to the plans of the proponents of wind power, to convert nature into energy landscapes, which not only makes the advertisements shine in the city. The resistance against this form of land grabbing is then defamed as backwoods and profound defense against ineffective wind power as a "climate pollution movement" ...which not only makes the advertisements shine in the city. The resistance against this form of land grabbing is then defamed as backwoods and profound defense against ineffective wind power as a "climate pollution movement" ...which not only makes the advertisements shine in the city. The resistance against this form of land grabbing is then defamed as backwoods and profound defense against ineffective wind power as a "climate pollution movement" ...

Expert Epple considers the construction of wind turbines in the state forest to be problematic

They also criticize the fact that an attempt is being made here in the district to subordinate the state forest to the climate issue

.

Epple:

I have deliberately dedicated a specially researched page on my homepage to delivering the state forests to wind power. Because this is not an attempt only in the district of Ebersberg, although the order report on the zoning of the LSG promptly based on the statements of MP Dr. Markus Söder is resorted to to want to put 500 wind turbines in the state forest. Baden-Württemberg, Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania - wherever you look, this development is in motion. Nowhere with the consent of the local population. This rededication and delivery of forest, which is owned by the public sector and thus by the "people", was not discussed in the citizens' survey on the Ebersberg Forest. Unfortunately, the media also hushed up the scandal.

You are now known throughout Germany as an expert who advocates the thesis that wind energy and environmental protection do not really go together. Why is this contradicting each other? After all, your current book is currently the most comprehensive collection of facts and arguments against the myth of saving the world through wind power.

Epple:

The simple formula "Wind power equals climate protection, equals nature conservation" - it is the central myth of saving the world through wind power - is simply wrong. The indissoluble lines of conflict are traced and explained in the eight chapters of my book. Nature cannot be saved through further industrialization if it can be proven that precisely the known side effects of this industrialization lead to massive impairment of all essential protected goods. The wind power industry is now demonstrably waging a bitter war against nature and landscape protection. Together with her political vicarious agents, she is responsible for the erosion that has already occurred in the high standards of nature conservation, which have been achieved with great difficulty over decades and which were not even enough anyway, the extinction of species,to stop surface sealing, overfertilization and the global leveling of entire communities. Instead of weakening nature conservation, given the current state of knowledge, a further strengthening would have to be initiated with the aim of reversing the burden of proof for every intervention. The EU directives point in exactly the right direction in their exemption provisions: Anyone who intervenes and wants exemptions from protection must examine alternatives and prove or establish that they are harmless. What the new government is planning, on the other hand, is nothing less than the abolition of the predicate “under nature protection” for plants and animals. How do you intend to explain to a schoolchild that they should not uproot a single protected plant?a protected wild animal that it encounters should not affect its place of residence or even kill it if, according to the green-dominated climate protection newspeak, only the populations should count? Rightly and professionally consistent, nature conservation starts right down to the level of the individual. Which is why the targeted attack by the Habeck Ministry applies precisely to these achievements cast in the form of European law. In the planned x-fold increase in the extension, wind turbines mean tens of thousands of disturbances and destruction of habitats and hundreds of thousands of kills of wild animals, be it birds, bats or insects, especially where there is still some closeness to nature. The constantly parroted comparison with other allegedly much worse causes of mortality, for example for birds on glass panes or in car traffic showshow little the protagonists understood of the very specific and final conflict that arose here. The example of Ebersberg in particular and the zoning of large LSG in general shows that the protection of entire landscapes threatens to get under the wind turbines. The facts: Only 0.04% of the area of ​​Germany is not yet influenced by humans, only 11.7% of our country are influenced by nature or weakly. The scarcest goods are our last natural or near-natural parts of the landscape. They are located in the forests, forest mountains and therefore often in areas with stronger winds. That is where the wind power industry is pushing. That is the conflict convergence. A study from 2019 (Leibniz Institute for Ecological Spatial Development eV) also showswhich is why the wind lobby is so doggedly against decent minimum distances to residential development. Quote from the accompanying press release:

  The constantly repeated figure that only 2% of the area of ​​Germany would be needed for wind power is ultimately a gross misleading. I provide the relevant scientific sources in my book and on my homepage. Holistic nature conservation that focuses on people is not compatible with further expansion of wind power. On the contrary: In many places, deconstruction would have to be considered. An open-ended weighing of interests in view of the security of supply that cannot be afforded by wind power would further strengthen this conclusion. Instead of “unleashing” wind power at the expense of man and nature, a responsible policy would have to bring about a moratorium. So steep is the contrast, so finally the threatened abolition of nature and landscape protection.

Of course, this is very popular in the country at the moment, and you can be against everything. In your opinion, what will the energy mix of the future look like if atomic energy and coal-fired power generation are to be dispensed with, and wind and photovoltaics, as you can read, are not a savior for the future, if I may say so?

Epple:

You touch on several different aspects in this question, which I have to separate in the necessarily more detailed answer: First: Criticism of the excesses of an economically and ecologically disastrous energy transition is the opposite of "being against everything". The equation and defamation, for example, with "deniers" of all kinds, however, has a method. The criticism of the industrialization of our last halfway intact landscapes and large areas, the forests and forest mountains and the formerly open, wide country in the north of the republic is deeply shaped by “being for it”: people are committed to the preservation of their identity-giving landscape and home . It is strange: “Climate fear” is now going to school and is creating completely new professions and profiteers. Solastalgia (the foreign word for the pain and feelings that ariseif you witness the change and destruction of your own homeland), it is now being redefined in the context of the “climate crisis” and brought out big with a view to the climate youth movement. Exactly this feeling is conveyed in letters and contacts that reach me from all over Germany due to my work, from East Friesland, via the Uckermark, the Münsterland, the Black Forest, Odenwald, the Alb to the extreme southeast of the Bavarian Forest. It is infamous to disqualify committed people who oppose the destruction of their home by wind power as NimBys (“Never in my Backyard”). Because here, too, it's Solastalgia. And the anti-nuclear movement was and is ultimately not motivated by anything other than defending itself against a threat in its homeland. The same goes for resistance to open-cast coal mining,to stay in the energy sector. To play off criticism from experienced scientists, necessarily people of the older generation, of undesirable developments or thinking errors of the energy transition against the young people of the climate movement, who are frightened by the climate catastrophe barrage and blinded by the promises of renewable energies, is another infamy and tears society apart - possibly targeted - even further apart. In my opinion, anyone who consciously conjures up a generation conflict and thus hatred and reckoning on questions of survival does nothing to solve the comprehensive and complex problems of this earth and its humanity. Second: It is noteworthy, in order not to evade your question about the energy mix,that recently something like twilight has set in and the words “blackout” and “network overload” are used by the sizes of the energy supply. For example, Eon boss Leonhard Birnbaum made remarkable and contradicting statements in a guest article on December 18, 2021 on the “Moderner Farmer” platform: “The grid has to cope with more and more solar roofs and wind turbines,” it says and is "At the limit". You don't even have to read between the lines when it says: “However, the risk increases that entire sub-networks will have to be temporarily shut down due to a lack of electricity. According to Birnbaum, this can affect both individual consumers and entire cities."Birnbaum sees in the same article" no alternative to gas-fired power plants "... The hunger for energy will increase massively in the course of the energy transition and the planned electrification of all areas of life. It is not foreseeable at which points a system will collapse that leads a country like ours into a greenhouse gas planned economy and wants to safely supply it with volatile energy generation alone. In any case, wind power will not be able to provide security of supply even in addition to photovoltaics, and this has long been scientifically proven, not even on a European scale. Against this background, anyone who rants about "decentralized energy supply" and wants to fall back on the "European electricity network" in the event of an emergency of electricity shortage,enters into an irresolvable contradiction and has to be sure to keep importing conventional base-load power plant energy from neighboring countries. Take the city of Munich, with roughly rounded numbers: 800,000 households. Let us assume that it is true that a modern wind turbine can supply 4,000 households with electricity. We therefore need 200 large wind turbines. The city has a district area of ​​310 square kilometers. Where do we set up these 200 wind turbines in the city of Munich for “decentralized supply”? What if the wind doesn't blow? Where does the electricity come from when the sun isn't shining? Why do the public utilities in large cities occupy wind turbines far away from the scene? Why is the expansion of flexible (gas) power plants for so-called "backup" being discussed andwhere reason and expertise still prevail, recognized as an urgent necessity? On a large and small scale: It is deliberate misleading to promote decentralized energy supply. This applies to the 21 wind turbines for the Ebersberg district as well as the 200 necessary ones for Munich. This applies if those responsible are already clear today and this is openly admitted by the government that even if the “hydrogen strategy” has been thought through to its end in theory, our dependence on imports in the energy sector will be tightened in the future. Should our neighboring countries follow the German “Energiewende” model, we will probably slide not only into a crisis of the power grids, but also into a supply crisis that was previously hardly imaginable on a European scale. Third:Even less conceivable is the final loss of nature and landscape that the implementation of the German energy transition plans with the draft horse wind power with an additional factor X would mean for the “national hydrogen strategy” (at least fivefold, rather tenfold). Conclusion: Nobody can seriously represent the energy mix of the future with certainty. There is no general answer to your question. It amazes me that conversely, the media do not ask much more critically from those who claim that they have already solved mankind's energy problem with “100% renewable energies”. Even if it were so, the current narrowing of the discourse on electricity and greenhouse gases lacks a big picture.The enormous amount of space required due to the low energy density, both for photovoltaics and for wind power with an allegedly possible 100% supply, combined with extremely low efficiency in the conversion of power-to-gas, can be achieved with a view to the scarcest commodity, and these are the last near-natural ones Land, as the basis of biodiversity, simply cannot be ignored. As a declared opponent of nuclear power, I must therefore take note of the fact that and why countries such as France and other European neighbors or China are relying on completely new types of reactors, which even present the repository problem in the light of a problem that can be solved. Even magazines like “Stern” - previously subscribed to parroting the propaganda of the renewable-eco-industrial complex and one-sided reports - cannot avoidto take up this development. I consider it a good sign that on December 29th at “Stern.de” there was a pleasant, thoughtful article on the thorium reactor. The extremely small scalable new reactor types are dogmatically and categorically faded out in Germany. Anyone who speaks of “greenwashing” and “non-sustainability” of atomic energy as “sustainable” in response to the EU Commission's submission on the taxonomy of gas and atomic energy, but at the same time recognizing the impending failure of burning natural gas as a “bridging technology” “Approves, makes himself completely implausible. One should bear in mind that not only uranium mining outside of Europe, but also the mining for rare earths, lithium mining, which often takes place under conditions that violate human rights,the consumption of raw materials for wind turbines including the looting of balsa wood in the tropics for the rotor blades, and of course the concrete, enormously area-consuming wind power invasion in the most valuable natural environment worldwide as well as the unsolved waste problem from PV and wind power industry is also unsustainable, and the dressing up of this industrialization as world salvation means nothing more than systematic greenwashing. From the point of view of the weighing of interests, which I used with reference to the papal encyclical, from my point of view there must be no prohibition of criticism or thought, because in Germany the wind power industry has obviously taken over part of the political power. The peak of untrustworthiness is reached when state resources are used against nuclear energy,when at the same time tens of billions of euros annually are pumped into the pockets of subsidized wind power operators in Germany alone in order to enable wind power even in unprofitable locations with little wind. The question of the future of our Ebersberg Forest is therefore like looking into a magnifying glass and a glass ball at the same time: visions, thinking, learning, weighing up for the best possible development - by this I, as a nature conservationist, understand a way into the future, intergenerational justice with the rescue of the last remnants of nature takes it seriously, and precisely for this reason, with a view to a fair distribution of all goods on earth, keeps an eye on human prosperity worldwide. Equitable division of the earth with the extra-human life then means renouncing what is technically feasible in favor of what is ethically responsible.It is and remains irresponsible to industrialize the last valuable parts of the landscape in the context of the ecological crisis - in concrete terms: to devalue a forest for an alleged climate protection technology that obviously does not meet one's own requirements in the face of devastating collateral damage. The urgent protection of the earth's forests does not only apply anywhere in Brazil, Southeast Asia, Canadian and Russian forests or in the Carpathian Mountains. The taboo of further devaluation should also apply to a forest area that has been happily rescued in the present, such as the Ebersberg Forest.which obviously does not live up to its own claims in the face of devastating collateral damage. The urgent protection of the earth's forests does not only apply anywhere in Brazil, Southeast Asia, Canadian and Russian forests or in the Carpathian Mountains. The taboo of further devaluation should also apply to a forest area that has been happily rescued in the present, such as the Ebersberg Forest.which obviously does not live up to its own claims in the face of devastating collateral damage. The urgent protection of the earth's forests does not only apply anywhere in Brazil, Southeast Asia, Canadian and Russian forests or in the Carpathian Mountains. The taboo of further devaluation should also apply to a forest area that has been happily rescued in the present, such as the Ebersberg Forest.

The interview was conducted by Jörg Domke.

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