“Rhineland is the new Wendland”

Climate protection protests in Germany’s western region Rhineland have become the new beacon of non-parliamentary leftist political activity in the country, Martin Kaul writes in a commentary for leftist newspaper Tageszeitung (taz). The planned blockade of coal mining pits in the region has the potential to unify left-wing protesters as much as demonstrations against nuclear waste transports (Castor) and the nuclear waste repository Gorleben in the northern region of Wendland in the 1980s, Kaul argues. “The energy question has always been an appropriate blueprint for testing systematic and social thinking,” he says. If thousands of protesters meet in the Rhineland next week to advocate a German coal exit, “they have something to gain – and to shape policy”.

Read the commentary in German here.

See the CLEW factsheet The history behind Germany’s nuclear phase-out for more information.