So Grüne Liga managed to stop Tesla's work at Brandenburg with a temporary injunction, which may be just long enough to delay work for the EV maker by a year, because Tesla cannot take down any trees after breeding season starts in this man-made forest. Which is in about 8 days from now.
https://www.dailyinterlake.com/article/20200216/AP/302169917A "green" organization protesting against a "green" automotive company ?
What's going on here ?
I dug around a bit an came across this interview with Heinz-Herwig Mascher, the chairman of the Brandenburg Grüne Liga :
https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/tesla-brandenburg-klage-1.4802652This is the core of his argument :
We fear that a precedent will be created here. If Tesla really does manage to put this factory down in a year and a half, others will see how it went. Then several environmental protection laws come under pressure because it is said: "In the Tesla case they were not applied."
Now, that's a fair point to make, but in this case Tesla takes all the risks :
If Tesla doed NOT get the permits they need to complete their plant, they would need to restore the site to it's original, or even better :
If Tesla is not allowed to build the Grünheide factory, the company must replace the felled pine monoculture with a mixed forest. Wouldn't that be an improvement?
to which Heinz-Herwig Mascher answers :
That would be an upgrade. But I don't know whether this is legally mandatory.
So he doesn't trust an agreement that Tesla already signed.
Yet his lawyers still managed to convince the courts to put this $ 4 billion, 12,000 job electric car project on hold and possibly for over a year.
Mr Heinz-Herwig Mascher and his Grüne Liga seem to prefer gasoline cars and slow moving projects.
And he doesn't seem to realize that to stop the climate crisis we need immediate and bold action to move our transportation systems away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy.
Maybe Tesla should look elsewhere, because with Grüne Liga in charge, we are just going to get Fossil Fuel BAU.
[edit] The "partners" of Grüne Liga Brandenburg are listed here :
https://grueneliga-brandenburg.de/index.php?cat=17&pageID=40They include "Die Linke" as the political party supporting them.