Eckardt Heukamp was the last from Lützerath (Germany).
He would have liked to show the family home, a building built in 1763 where he, a fourth generation of farmers, dedicated himself to agriculture as his father and his grandfather did before.
“But everything has already disappeared;
there is nothing left, ”he laments.
The entire town is history.
The excavators of the RWE mining company entered to tear down the buildings as soon as the Police managed to evict the hundreds of activists who had entrenched themselves there.
Heukamp, 58, watched his facade being demolished in the distance, through binoculars.
"It's a bitter pill," he admits, although he has had time to get used to the idea.
Heukamp has been the face of the resistance in Lützerath.
For a year and a half it was its only inhabitant.
When all of his neighbors sold his property to RWE, which intends to expand the nearby Garzweiler coal mine by digging under the town, he stood his ground, hired a lawyer and fought in court.
He dropped out after losing the last resort, last April.
"I could not avoid it.
I had to sell ”, he explains in front of the church in Keyenberg, another of the towns in this region of North Rhine-Westphalia, neighboring an open-cast mine that over the years has expanded to 48 square kilometers.
Lützerath, the epicenter of the climate movement in Germany, has become a symbol.
The relevance of the fight to save this 900-year-old village goes far beyond Heukamp's farm and livelihood.
It embodies the energy dilemma facing Germany and Europe after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the urgent need to get rid of dependence on Russian hydrocarbons.
The battle raging in this placid green corner of West Germany, close to the borders with Belgium and the Netherlands, has to do with the difficulty of combining security of energy supply with the green transition.
Activist Lakshmi Thevasagayam at the Keyenberg camp.
The church where Heukamp quotes EL PAÍS is closed.
"They took the bells away," says the farmer, when they desecrated it.
Keyenberg was going to suffer the same fate as Lützerath, so the town has been emptying little by little.
Today there is only one business open, a bakery.
“The town is not dead yet.
People can come again.
And the same could have happened in Lützerath, but the profit motive of a company has come first”.
Heukamp, who now rents while he looks for another farm that suits his needs, is one of those who believes that extracting coal from his village was not necessary to ensure the German energy supply and accuses the Greens of betraying the movement for the weather.
The German environmental party, which has been part of the government coalition since December 2021, has been the priority target of criticism and insults that have been chanted during the resistance to the eviction of Lützerath.
Hundreds of activists from all over Germany barricaded themselves in the village to prevent or at least delay the demolition.
Despite the fact that there were some clashes with the police, with the throwing of stones and firecrackers, the eviction was quick and left little or no personal damage.
The protest was supported by the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg, who was evicted last Tuesday along with other activists.
The images of the agents carrying away the most well-known face of the environmental movement gave the international echo protest.
Videos of riot police officers trapped in the quagmire while an activist dressed as a medieval monk made fun of them also went viral.
Detention of climate activist Greta Thunberg at the Garzweiler II mine, on January 17.
Federico Gambarini (AP/LAPRESSE) (AP)
The environmental movement was confident that the arrival of the Greens in the German government would prevent the destruction of the towns near the Garzweiler mine, but the invasion of Ukraine and the shutdown of the Russian gas tap have imposed a new reality.
A recent deal with RWE allows the company to mine lignite from Lützerath in exchange for closing the mine in 2030, eight years before the legal date to stop burning coal.
The Minister of the Economy, the green Robert Habeck, has stressed that the agreement has made it possible to save four other towns that were also going to be demolished.
In the end
only
Lützerath perishes.
But for activists the fight is not over.
The resistance is organized from a camp on the outskirts of Keyenberg, where the tents are lined up.
Dozens of activists organize to prepare three hot meals a day and keep latrines and showers reasonably clean.
Lakshmi Thevasagayam, 28, is one of them.
She is a doctor, but she has put her profession on hold to throw herself into the climate cause.
“I would like to be working in a hospital, but I refuse to accept this situation.
I felt very helpless.
If we want to save lives we need to fight, in any way”, she says in front of a vegan lentil stew that her colleagues are serving from a large metal pot.
His way of fighting the climate crisis was to drop everything and go to Lützerath, where he lived for a year with other activists.
“Coal has to stay underground if we are to achieve the 1.5 degree target [the safety threshold that the nations of the world set when they signed the Paris Agreement in 2015 to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels]”, he assures, and does not spare criticism of The Greens for having allowed RWE to destroy another town to continue extracting lignite, the most abundant coal in Germany.
“It is disheartening that a party that campaigned for 1.5 degrees cannot keep its promises when it comes to power,” he says.
“Who is going to vote for them now?”
Eckardt Heukamp resisted RWE's attempts to buy his property in Lützerath until he surrendered last April.
Hundreds of activists protest in the vicinity of Lützerath (Germany).
Agents of the security forces watch a group of protesters.
Reception and press point in the camp for activists and organizations in Keyenberg.
General view of the Lützerath mine.
Camp for activists and organizations in Keyenberg.
The protesters came to Lützerath by bus from different cities in Germany.
Barbara and Thomas Gigowski, retired and supportive of the Garzweiler II lignite mine.
One of the brown coal excavators at the Garzweiler II mine during heavy snowfall on January 20.
According to RWE's calculations, accepted by the authorities, the tons of lignite under Lützerath are necessary for German energy security.
But independent studies deny them.
“The Garzweiler and Hambach mines have more than enough coal to supply the existing coal-fired power plants, even with increased utilization due to the gas and energy crisis,” says Claudia Kemfert, energy specialist at the German Institute for Economic Research. (DIW).
The presence of the Greens in the new government seemed to indicate that Germany would speed up its exit from coal.
But the energy crisis has forced an increase in domestic lignite production and already closed coal-fired power plants have reopened.
In the absence of official data for 2022, some estimates indicate that the country has once again failed to meet its environmental targets.
"We do not expect significant emission reductions in 2022," confirms Dirk Messner, president of the German Environment Agency (UBA), which will publish its first calculations on March 15.
Some demonstrations, especially the one on January 14, in full eviction, have brought together thousands of people in Lützerath, but there are residents who are already tired of the continued presence of activists in the area.
Many are not even against the mine.
“Garzweiler and RWE have brought prosperity and development,” say Barbara and Thomas Gigowski, a retired couple who live 15 kilometers from Lützerath, almost in unison.
They have approached a viewpoint from where, despite the heavy snowfall, the immensity of the farm can be appreciated.
“Of course we are concerned about CO2 emissions, but you can't shut down coal and then wonder where the energy we need is going to come from,” he says.
Nor do they feel nostalgic for the destruction of towns.
“A lot of people have come out ahead with their new homes,” she says.
In the camp, the activists prepare new actions.
There will be more demonstrations, they will continue to protest at the headquarters of Los Verdes, and they will try to prevent the advance of the machines.
“We are determined to resist as long as it takes and in whatever way it takes,” vows activist Thevasagayam.
For Lützerath it is already too late.
“There is nothing to see there.
It is fenced, full of machines and it is dangerous to enter, ”answers a RWE spokesman to the request to visit the town.
The village where farmer Heukamp grew up no longer exists.
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