The windmills are spinning golden subsidies in the central German ‘fairy tale’ forest of Reinhardswald, but the payment is the partial destruction of the 1,000 year-old ancient wood itself. Work has started on the clearing of up to 120,000 trees in the forest, the setting for many of the Brothers Grimm mythical stories, to provide access for an initial 18 giant wind turbines around the Sababurg ‘Sleeping Beauty’ castle. Who is opposing this massive destruction of the ancient forest teeming with wildlife with trees over 200 years old? Certainly not the Green party, now in power at national and local level. In fact the project is being led by local Hesse Green Minister Priska Hinz who is reported to have said: “Wind energy makes a decisive contribution to the energy transition and the preservation of nature. It is the only way to preserve forests and important ecosystems.”
There is some local press interest in Germany about the destruction of part of the forest that covers a 200 square kilometre area. Nevertheless, the mainstream media generally keep well away from covering environmental destruction when the Greens are doing it in the claimed cause of saving the planet. The BBC did cover the story under the headline ‘Battle over wind turbines in the land of Sleeping Beauty‘, but that was in 2013 when plans for the industrial development were first announced. It seems that the state-reliant broadcaster is less interested now that the Big Bad Wolf has finally made a meal of Little Red Riding Hood.
Pierre Gosselin, who runs the German-based science site No Tricks Zone, has been covering the outrage felt in a number of German quarters at the plans to destroy some of the Reinhardswald forest in the interest of inferior green technology. He feels the affair shows what an inefficient and costly scam green energy is. “It’s not cost-free, it’s full of corrupt and unresponsive politicians who no longer care about democracy, and it certainly doesn’t make the environment better. It’s a nasty juggernaut of waste, fraud, corruption and ecological degradation – with dead birds, turbine vibration sickness, strobe dizziness and landscape pollution,” he adds.
The Guardian has been curiously silent over the clearing of woodland to build wind turbines in Hesse. In 2020 it was less reticent about reporting on the construction of a 3 km highway in another Hessian forest at Dannenroder. Thousands of climate activists gathered on the site north of Frankfurt, it reported. Dannenroder tree-felling would be a catastrophe, environmental campaigners are reported to have said. “Some parts of this forest are 250 years old,” noted Nicola Uhde of the German Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation (Bund), “and there is simply not much of this kind of woodland around anymore.” At the time, the Guardian noted the fate of Dannenroder was a “litmus test for the Green party” which governed the state as part of a coalition. It seems to have been remiss in not suggesting such a test with the Reinhardswald deforestation. But then it seems none of the usual climate activists have been protesting about the loss of trees and wildlife habitat on this occasion.
The Daily Sceptic has reported on numerous recent examples where the lack of interest in ecological damage is a feature of green industrial development. Last month, we noted that one of India’s iconic large birds, the great Indian bustard, was on the verge of extinction due to the growth of electric power lines in its home area of the Thar desert. To reach global Net Zero, it has been estimated that new power lines equivalent to circling the globe 2,000 times will need to be built in the next few years.
Last October, we reported that wind farms in Tasmania had reduced the population of the endangered local wedge-tailed eagle to around 1,000 individuals. Across the world, millions of bats are being chewed by giant wind blades. Any animal that relies on wind currents for flight such as a large raptor is at risk of being sucked into the whirling machines. In California, the Democrat-controlled state Government recently relaxed controls on wildlife protections to allow permits to kill previously fully protected species for renewable infrastructure projects. Despite an increased risk to America’s national bird, the bald eagle, barely a peep of protest was recorded. Off America’s eastern coast, massive industrial parks are being constructed for wind turbines. It might be a coincidence that hundreds of whales have beached along the shore in recent years, but a more likely explanation is the deafening sonar noise, constant pile driving, extensive ocean building works and heavy shipping movements.
None of the above are likely to feature when the magic mirror is asked: “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the greenest one of all?”
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
Ecoterrorists go mainstream.
Great Josh cartoon. Says it all.
I’ve been told many times right here that this doesn’t happen – solar and wind installations are put on unusable land, nobody cuts down trees to make room for them.
I wonder if those same people will repeat that now?
Google search Rheinhardswald – pictures
just to have an idea, what these Greens believe to be good…
From Hansel and Gretal to Hansen and Greta! Where are the Euro Ecofreaks, and why aren’t they building tree houses, or taking advice from BLM secretary Stone-Manning and vandalizing them with forester-killing spikes? Where are Germany’s traditional forest-meisters – have they all been replaced by EU sycophants?
Don’t think it can’t happen here. They’ll be after the forests Adirondaks and Catskills quite soon now, and they’ll be looking to omit the sylvania suffix from Penn.
Are they shipping the forest to Drax for burning ??
How many acres is 120,000 trees, a thousand?
Horrifying
Very nice Chris.
Yet another example of CAGW monsters controlling the language in their pursuit of power. Green doesn’t mean anything therefore it can mean anything. You know, what ever these monsters want.
Most of us think green means environmentally friendly. You know to protect plants and animals, the oceans, lakes and streams, the air and yes even people. That is what most of us think but not the CAGW mob.
They use the word green as a vehicle to gain power and control over the rest of us saps. They are not out to protect anyone or anything except their power and control.
The greens can go to hell.
Where are the usual AGW-cultist trolls to defend this environmentally destructive lunacy. !!
The fact they don’t speak out LOUDLY against it, means they must condone it.
They paved paradise and put up a (windmill) parking lot.
http://youtu.be/2595abcvh2M
That makes sense.
Destroy some of natures ability to extract CO2 from the air in order to (hypothetically) prevent more CO2 from going into the air?
How much CO2 is released to produce just one windmill? Would one tree remove more CO2 over it’s lifetime than the lifetime of the windmill (or all the windmills needed to replace it as it wore out)?
OT I hate “Daylight Savings Time”.
Twice a year they screw up things and to gain what? Nothing.
(I do wonder if the accident rates increase for those who have to drive at a certain time east or west into a sunrise or sunset when they have to it twice a year instead of just once?)
Just pick one “Time” and stick with it.
I thought deforestation was killing the planet.
Im beginning to think something else is going on contrary to their stated agenda.
They’re destroying Germany a third time.
Don’t forget to feed Drax and maybe get double or triple credit for it.
“The Daily Sceptic has reported on numerous recent examples where the lack of interest in ecological damage is a feature of green industrial development.”
I won’t list all of the collateral eco-damage here, but none of this should surprise you. For the Left, the outcome and furthering of their destructive agenda is all that matters. Do you think they care about whales or bald eagles? Look at how they treat their own people. If you’re a leftist female, you have to understand that you are expected to take one for the team. If that means suffering at the hands of cartels and Coyotes who are engaged in human trafficking and the sex trade, too bad. Are radical Islamists having their way with you, and treating you like a second-class citizen? Take one for the team! They sure aren’t going to help bats being grinded by a windmill, now will they?
7900 miles seems like a decent approximation for the average diameter of the planet. Using 3.14 for Pi I get 24,806 as the average circumference. 2,000 times that is 49,610,000 miles. Are there really estimates of a need for more than 49 million more miles of new power lines? By whom?
Disgusting hypocrites.
Where are the environmental protesters now? Why aren’t they gluing themselves to the tree cutting equipment as they would do if this was a road or an airport? Where are the environmentalists objecting about the loss of habitat for a particular animal, or plant?
I can only conclude that environmentalism is not actually about the environment at all?
somewhat untrue. the area of forest in question has been largely denuded of viable trees by drought, wind and bark beetle attack. I.e. the area is not pristine forest as suggested.
Radical environmentalists are the environment’s greatest threat.
Carbon footprint for Reinhardswald wind project = tons CO2 consumed per year by photosynthesis per tree * 120,000 trees. Divide that by the actual power output (not the nameplate capacity) of the wind turbines in MWh per year.
If somebody can get a good estimate of the CO2 consumption per tree per year, it would be interesting to compare the ratio above to the CO2 emission per MWh for a gas-fired power plant.
What would the green geniuses think if a gas-fired power plant with the same power output produced less CO2 than the trees consumed until they were cut down?
Green activists used to bemoan the deforestation of the Amazon valley in Brazil, but now they applaud deforestation in Germany. Tree huggers cutting down trees. Sleeping Beauty wakes up to a chainsaw massacre.
And all this only a few weeks after the EU, the UK and several other countries have finally grasped that Net Zero is scientifically faulted. Then, worse, that the whole world is still subsidising India and China to help them thrive whilst the rest of the world economy is being blighted by Paris agreement subsidies. Faulted science has a lot to answer for.
https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/2023-02-23-Challenging-Net-Zero-with-Science.pdf