![\"Hustle](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/635\/2018\/01\/Charles_Leickert_Gesch%C3%A4ftiges_Treiben_am_Flussufer_eines_holl%C3%A4ndischen_St%C3%A4dtchens.jpg\")
<\/a>A few summers ago (it\u2019s terrifying to me that it\u2019s been that long), I was living in Freiburg in southern Germany. A friend and I took a train out of the city and found ourselves going the wrong way. We got off, but, since no new train would be coming by for some time, we ended up disembarking near a rural village and walking around for a bit. It was the sort of experience I can only imagine being possible in America back when newly-minted trains cut across the American Great Plains (it\u2019s certainly not available in the Acela Corridor now). When we got off, there was a small bar before maybe a mile-long walk to the nearest village (which, I might add, had a beautiful Baroque-looking Catholic church). The landscape, filled with farmland, stretched before us as we trod our way through the summer heat.<\/p>\n
I couldn\u2019t help but think of this when I recently heard, and then read<\/a>, about the destruction of a German village (and, I should add, its church) in the name of brown coal production. Brown coal<\/a>, also sometimes known as lignite, is a less-energy-rich alternative to the (to us) more familiar black coal<\/a>.<\/p>\n Germany finds itself in an odd situation. On the one hand, it\u2019s a leader in alternative energy use<\/a>. But it still relies fairly heavily on brown coal, a major ingredient in its so-called \u201ceconomic miracle.\u201d<\/a> Only two regions in the country really mine the stuff, one in the East and one in the West, but the country keeps turning to the stuff to ease its transition to renewable energy sources. This may itself be a problem:<\/p>\n Lignite, that dark brown, brittle material which once fueled Germany\u2019s economic miracle, should really be obsolete in a world that claims it wants to end its reliance on fossil fuels. Nevertheless, 100,000 tons are dug out of the ground just beyond Zimmer\u2019s garden fence every day. And each year, 170 million tons of brown coal are mined in Germany and used to produce almost a quarter of the country\u2019s total electricity output.<\/p>\n Yet the once vital energy source has become something of a burden in the age of new technologies. Decarbonization is the term sometimes used to describe Germany\u2019s transition to renewable energy, according to which the country wants to rely on wind and solar energy rather than on fossil fuels. Yet brown coal is hindering this progress. The electricity it produces exerts downward pressure on prices and makes natural gas-fired power plants unprofitable. Natural gas, though, was supposed to bridge the gap until a functioning system for renewables, including distribution and storage, could be established.<\/p>\n The outgoing government didn\u2019t manage to put an end to lignite production. The open-cast mines continue expanding, consuming everything in their paths. One of the most recent victims is the A-61 Autobahn, which is to be moved by several kilometers to make way for mining operations \u2013 only to be rebuilt at its original site in 2035, once the Garzweiler II mine has eaten its way through the area. (Der Spiegel)<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n That last part is really what caught my eye. It\u2019s not uncommon for companies to relocate entire villages (and then move them back!) just so their machinery can cut through the countryside and extract lignite. This is a long-term economic problem (since it\u2019s very unclear if the companies will be able to pay for this; the piece from Der Spiegel <\/em>suggests that many investors are banking on a state buyout in the end, since firms simply won\u2019t have the money). But more than that it demonstrates something about global capital, something that we in America seem interested in ignoring.<\/p>\n We constantly debate the validity of terms like \u201cglobal warming,\u201d with even President Trump recently weighing<\/a> in about the cold weather outside. This has always seemed somewhat silly to me, at least among Christians. Clearly, we, as created beings, are supposed to steward the earth. This comes very early in the Biblical canon:<\/p>\n God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and God said to them: Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that crawl on the earth. God also said: See, I give you every seed-bearing plant on all the earth and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit on it to be your food; and to all the wild animals, all the birds of the air, and all the living creatures that crawl on the earth, I give all the green plants for food. And so it happened. God looked at everything he had made, and found it very good. Evening came, and morning followed\u2014the sixth day. (Genesis 1:27-31)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n <\/p>\n Even simply staying close to the text, we can see that we\u2019re tasked with caring for the world around us; using it yes, but these things are \u201cvery good.\u201d All of creation, in its totality, is given this epithet. This means preserving it in its beauty, that is, in its goodness. One needn\u2019t believe in global warming to think that this sort of stewarding is our duty. And that\u2019s what gets me about what Germany is up to here. The scarred remains of its countryside are clearly no testament to beauty, nor is the forced relocation of thousands of people.<\/p>\n There\u2019s only one way I can see a Christian supporting this, and that\u2019s through something like \u201ceconomic necessity.\u201d In the United States, we have ongoing debates about coal and jobs, with Germany experiencing something not too different:<\/p>\n It [Lausitz] is a region that has already dealt with enormous change in recent decades. Of the 80,000 jobs in brown coal mining when it was still part of the former East Germany, only 8,000 remain. The area has undergone a \u201cdemographically-linked depletion,\u201d that is \u201cdeeply ingrained in the collective memory of the region.\u201d People have been left with \u201ca strong feeling of how precarious their own living conditions can be,\u201d the study concludes.<\/p>\n And far-right parties know how to tap into these feelings. The group Pro Lausitzer Braunkohle (Pro Lausitz Brown Coal) recently sent a paper on the issue to parliamentarians in Berlin. In it, they warn of a \u201csocietal collapse\u201d in the region. The activists added up the votes cast the Lausitz electoral precincts in last September\u2019s general election. Their results show that the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany<\/a> ended up with 168,000 votes, making it the most popular party in the region ahead of the Christian Democrats\u2019 149,000 votes.<\/p>\n And it isn\u2019t an issue that politicians can expect to benefit from. The outgoing governor in Saxony, Stanislaw Tillich of the Christian Democrats, learned that the hard way. In view of a potential lignite phase out, he proposed the creation of a 6.2-billion-euro fund to deal with structural change. \u00a0(Der Spiegel)<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n But putting monetary upkeep before stewarding the earth (read: doing God\u2019s will) seems a strange answer. Are we Judas with the perfumed oil<\/a>? What of going forth without a money bag and sandals<\/a>? And that\u2019s where the real contradiction comes into play: the interests of global capital (i.e. constantly-increasing value extraction, or, in more mundane terms, profit) is not what we are supposed to want. Global temperatures and climatic change may very well be important (and, in fact, I think they are), but they aren\u2019t even the primary questions.<\/p>\n Of course, one can\u2019t blame people for not wanting to lose their jobs. But by the same token one can\u2019t blame people for being upset about being forced out of their hometowns and made to resettle elsewhere. One can\u2019t blame people for outrage at watching the green fields around their homes turn to short-term coal boom sites.<\/p>\n I suppose I see this as just another place in which a major contradiction must come to the surface. We as Christians have a duty, regardless of the ways of the world. That\u2019s, granted, not an easy thing, but it\u2019s what we\u2019re called to do. I don\u2019t pretend to be perfect in my stewardship habits (I mean I try not to litter and leave unnecessary lights on, but I\u2019m not composting old food or planting trees left and right). None of us is. David Bentley Hart\u2019s recent piece, \u201cChrist\u2019s Rabble,\u201d<\/a> makes it clear enough that all of us fail to live up to the radical message of the Gospel. But that doesn\u2019t mean we ought to stop trying. If anything, it means we ought to better recognize how it is that the interests of a system devoted to profit can structure our perspectives, subtly lead us away from the Good News. Old churches are being destroyed, whole towns moved. Is our job to justify it or witness to its wrongdoings?<\/p>\n I\u2019ll leave you with a vignette from the village of Immerath, whose residents face relocation:<\/p>\n