Around 100 kilometres south-east of Berlin, in what was formerly East Germany, lies the region of Lausitz. Once a coal heartland, it has changed substantially in the three decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Its mines and power plants have shut; its young people have moved away; the population has shrunk; and the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party has gained ground. (“Coal gone, steel gone, culture gone” was the AfD’s 2021 election campaign slogan in the Ruhr region, another mining area.) The new German coalition government led by Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) is expected to commit to quitting coal by 2030: it is not hard to see why locals are disaffected.
The climate crisis became a central issue in this year’s German election after flooding devastated areas near the Dutch and Belgian borders in July. The “flood of the century” killed almost 200 people and destroyed villages. Research published weeks later by the World Weather Attribution initiative concluded that the climate crisis had made such events up to nine times more likely in the region. The subject of how best to tackle global heating – and, crucially, who pays for the transition to a greener economy – has risked becoming a clash of cultures, characterised in the German media as a conflict between communitarian miners and cosmopolitan young activists.
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