German court: Ancient forest can be cleared for coal mine

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Updated 10:24 am, Friday, November 24, 2017

BERLIN (AP) — A court in western Germany says an ancient forest near the Belgian border can be chopped down to make way for a coal strip mine.

Cologne's administrative court ruled Friday against a legal complaint brought by the environmental group BUND that wanted to halt the clearance of much of the Hambach forest.

The group said it would appeal the decision and seek an injunction to prevent energy company RWE from clearing the trees in the meantime.
 
Hambach forest has become a focus of environmental protests against the expansion of a vast mine that supplies much of the coal used in nearby power plants.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/German-court-Ancient-forest-can-be-cleared-for-12381256.php

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[montanacowboy]

1. A Strip Mine?

Have they lost their fucking minds?

Not all the fools live in the US

[Igel]

5. It's a lignite mine.

You start at the surface with peat and work your way down.

It's not anthracite or even bituminous.

(Yes, at least when I went to school these were words we learned in junior high science. 7th grade, to be precise. Thanks, Mr. Eibner. It was what the well-educated C-student entering 9th grade was expected to know in a working-class section of Baltimore County where pretty much nobody even considered going to college. Now, at least in Texas, seniors look at the content and say, "Huh? I'm not going to be a geology professor.&quot

[Nevernose]

8. They used to take us to the strip mine

Every single year for a field trip. Naturally the company paid for it. All I remember is that it was somewhere between Dallas and Texarkana, I think near Mt Pleasant.

Mostly I remember that the dump trucks were among the largest land vehicles on earth, like something out of a sci-fi movie.

[elleng]

9. Thanks. There's a fair amount of lignite in the U.S. west.

For ONE thing: Texas is the nation’s sixth largest producer of coal; is the nation’s leading producer of lignite coal; produces this lignite coal exclusively in strip mines.

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/strip-mining-coal-in-the-heart-of-texas/

'Two major deposits of lignites exist in North America. The Gulf Coast lignites occur in the southeastern United States, in deposits lying in a band roughly parallel to the coastline of the Gulf of Mexico, forming an arc stretching from southern Texas across Louisiana and Mississippi into Alabama. The second major deposit is the Fort Union lignite field, lying in the northern Great Plains in portions of North Dakota, Montana, and Saskatchewan. The Gulf Coast and Fort Union lignites represent the largest proportion of reserves and resources of lignites in North America, and are the most important commercial sources of lignites, and are those, which have been most extensively studied. Identified resources are classified by sulfur content and by ash.'

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167944906800029

[dixiegrrrrl]

11. " The Gulf Coast lignites"

Great....might as well drain and dig up the Gulf, BP pretty much killed it.

[Plucketeer]

2. Money is KING

Screw the future. Full steam ahead!

[burrowowl]

3. Are they CRAZY!

We need forest and not coal!

[emmadoggy]

4. OMG. Tragic.

[theophilus]

6. Eat the Rich. ETR n/t

[Duppers]

7. K & R....& Grrrr.

[madville]

10. Germany is shutting down nuclear power plants

All 17 of them by 2022. They probably take that into account since coal will likely have to make up for nuclear going away.

[DFW]

12. RWE is an evil, evil outfit, no other way to put it

They are spending unimaginable wads of money trying to influence the German government away from renewables, because no one has to buy wind or sunlight from them.

[Bayard]

13. I thought Germany was smarter than this