Green Destruction: German Forest that Inspired Grimm’s Fairy Tale Being Felled for Wind Turbines
Interestingly, no eco-activists are blockading the roads into Reinhardswald (site of Sleeping Beauty Castle), or tying themselves to trees to protect the “old growth forests”
The energy suicide of Germany is rapidly becoming legendary.
Legal Insurrection readers will recall that the nation shuttered its last nuclear power plant in 2023. The German government decided to double down on net-zero dreams and renewable energy promises.
Germany is already big on wind: with nearly 30,000 onshore wind turbines, the country trails only the US and China.
But it’s not enough to meet the country’s climate goals. Today, only 0.8% of Germany’s land area is approved for onshore wind energy. By 2032, the government wants to have 2% of land area allocated for onshore wind power. This means installing between 1,000 and 1,500 new turbines a year, or four to five a day by 2030, as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently said.
Germany needs wind energy to meet its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2045, a target it’s currently in danger of missing, according to multiple studies. The country also missed its emissions reduction targets the last two years in a row, according to think tank Agora Energiewende.
And here we are. A famous forest that inspired Grimm’s fairy tales is being felled for wind turbines.
A large area of Reinhardswald, an ancient German forest featured in the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, is being partially cut down in favour of 241-metre tall wind turbines.
Following a months-long construction freeze, administrative courts have allowed heavy machinery to raze parts of the forest, including some trees that are more than 200 years old.
Around 120,000 trees in the 200km² mountainous woodland in the Weser Uplands in the district of Kassel, Hesse, are said to have been condemned to the axe.
The destruction comes at the request of the Green Party, citing the need for more “green” energy as a reason. Mayors in the vicinity are opposing the move.
Germany has begun felling up to 120,000 trees from the 'fairy tale' forest of Reinhardswald – setting of many Brothers Grimm tales – to make way for wind turbines. But not a peep in protest comes from the Greens. https://t.co/oFcv8oW1uK
— Toby Young (@toadmeister) March 8, 2024
The central European country is sacrificing part of its natural and cultural heritage on the altar of implausible (impossible?) “net-zero.”
However, those aren’t the only negative impacts from the energy-suicide Germany is committing.
Many factors contribute to the skyrocketing costs in Germany for electricity and natural gas: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resultant sanctions, as well as the destruction of Nord Stream pipelines, for example. But one of the biggest drivers has been Germany’s net-zero energy policy, Energiewende, and the country’s rapid move to variable renewables, wind and solar, for electric generation. They necessarily require backup generating capacity, since the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine all the time.
That’s usually provided by fossil fuel or nuclear power plants, but Germany passed legislation in 2019 to shut down all its coal plants by 2038, and last year the country shuttered the last three plants in its once-formidable nuclear fleet (in 1990 nuclear provided a quarter of Germany’s electricity).
As a result, the country has been forced to import electricity and natural gas at substantially higher prices. Germany has recently been delaying planned closures of coal plants and is now also planning new gas plants as well, but the damage has been done. Germany now has some of the highest prices for electricity in the world.
As a result, the entire German economy is in the doldrums. Growth forecasts for this year were recently slashed to just 0.2%, and as inflation is forecast to come in at about 2%, that implies actual economic contraction. Other indicators are also dire, with orders at German engineering firms and overall foreign investment dropping dramatically.
New cartoon! Grim tales from Germany as they begin destroying an ancient forest to build wind turbines. H/t @LD_Sceptics https://t.co/DkkXMRNOmG pic.twitter.com/Jdya30GZOk
— Cartoons by Josh (@Cartoonsbyjosh) March 9, 2024
I recall a time when protecting “old growth forests” was critical to protecting the planet.
Trees play an important role in the fight against climate change. They capture and store carbon in their biomass — their roots, stumps and branches.
According to new European research, when it comes to a tree’s climate benefit, as a tree get older it also stores more carbon.
The University of Hamburg study suggests that old trees know best. Researchers studied unmanaged tropical forests in Suriname, on the northeastern Atlantic coast of South America, and looked at three different species of trees that ranged in age from 84 to 255 years old. They aren’t the oldest trees on the planet, but they make up a complete wilderness of unmanaged forests.
The study found that the older a tree is, the better it absorbs carbon from the atmosphere. In fact, the research suggests that almost 70 per cent of all the carbon stored in trees is accumulated in the last half of their lives.
I find it fascinating that there are no eco-activists blockading the roads into Reinhardswald or tying themselves to trees. If they were truly interested in environmental protection, especially a sensitive forest ecosystem, they would take a break from their tire-slashing and defacing of masterpieces.
Of course, German farmers may pick up the slack. They are not enamored of the green energy dictates and seem willing to push back.
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Comments
A new fairy tale replacing an older.
With no happy ending.
A blight on such a beautiful landscape.
In my version, Hansel and Gretel meet Angela Merkel, who locks them up to feed them to her soylent grinder.
Coming soon to parts of the USA, if the net zero advocates get their way. They envision huge commercial solar and wind farms in the interior and high voltage transmission lines (new ones, not the existing ones) to carry the electricity from point of generation directly to distant coastal cities. The lobbying firms of financiers and investors such as Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan are already pushing for an expanded use of eminent domain to accomplish this.
We better stock up on candles.
in the interior
IOW, where they do not live, or where it will spoil their view.
They can safely fly over it, and look out the window at all that otherwise non-productive wasteland put to good use for their Teslas.
Yep. Very hunger games ish vibes where resources are extracted from ‘flyover country/Jesus land’ for the benefit of the coastal areas where our self professed elite/betters reside.
ICYMI – forests in North Carolina are being chopped down, ground up and shipped across the ocean to Germany to burn as “Green Renewable Energy”.
To be fair that occurs all over the Southeast. Timber harvesting isn’t a bad thing so long as good forestry management practices are used. Here in South Alabama lots of pine goes to it. Usually they take the culls from the normal thinning at the 10, 20 and 30 year mark for pellets while the mature trees are used for lumber and poles. Most private forest tracts also lease for hunting and some gather the pine straw for sale.
And actually having someone own it who can benefit (“profit”) from those trees and the land usually makes it “greener” in the long run.
Exactly. Capitalism isn’t perfect but it does align the interests of the producer/owner to not only take care of their property but to work to maximize it’s value and earning potential by making improvements.
I just had a man in SC while I was in a paper mill delivering scrap cardboard that the cut cycle on pines down there for purposes of grinding to pulp was 12-14yrs. I was very surprised at how short it was having talked to people at mills in the NE and Midwest
But the climate extremists always say plant more trees to remove CO2 from the air?
First, it’s a good thing it isn’t the Schwarzwald (“Black Forest”). Because that would be RAAACIS!
Second, any calculations on how much CO2 the forest consumes, and how much will be saved by replacing nuclear plants with windmills?
(Don’t even worry about the birds. When you cut down the forest they will all leave or die, anyway.)
France has 56 nuclear power sites. All EU countries combined have over 160 active nuke power sites. Germany going to boycott them all?
Yes. Because the master race knows better. Why do things simply with existing technology when one can do it the German way: needless complexity for the sake of it, and then call it “precision engineering”.
You don’t have to tell me, I once owned an Audi.
“To save the forests, we had to destroy them.:”
I am the Lorax, now listen please
To go carbon neutral
we must kill the trees
To put up our windmills
And get panels sunlight
We must cut away
All this foresty blight.
Don’t worry, they’ll edit that book to show how occasionally chopping down forests is a good thing to make thneeds… sorry, I mean wind turbines.
Now… what rhymes with turbine?
urban? turban?
Dick Durbin.
Remember when leftists pitched a fit at the idea that any tree, anywhere on the planet would be cut down, and that it was ‘killing Mother Earth’?
Pepperidge farms remembers.
Greta says clear cut the forests, to install wind turbines that are giant bird blenders?
cLimAte sCieNce.
We want to save the environment by destroying centuries old forests to put up windmills… Sounds like a bunch of hypocritical BS to me…
They hate trees. That’s part of why they want to reduce CO2, which trees need. Already we don’t see new trees growing naturally in established forests, and that may be related to low CO2 levels. The way it’s supposed to work is the trees drop their seeds and some of them come up as new tree shoots, and some of them survive the first few years and become established. How many new shoots have you seen in forests?
They also hate worms. They hide it, but they want North America to go back like it was before Europeans brought worms over with them to improve the land. Used to be, things rotted a lot slower here, there was more wetland. That’s what they want again. In elementary school we learned how helpful worms are, and anyone with a garden knows it, but on the ag and environmental faculty of university, many actually hate them.
Here’s a question:
Why can’t you just build the windmills taller than the trees?
Since you have the tree huggers and the alternative energy loons involved. I guess this tells you who’s more important on the liberal intersectionality ladder.
That’s easy. Which of them are black, Muslim, disabled, gay, or trans? They’ll win.
Anymore I’m all in favor of this crap. If for no other reason than for the lunatic fringe to prove how totally incapable they are to their true believers who vote for this stupidity.
They all need to suffer, and suffer horribly to the maximum for believing all the bullshit they’re being fed by the greenie weenies.
And I will weep no tears.
The contortions will become more and more insane if Germany persists in trying to meet those damned stupid “goals”.