What’s Going On With The Protests At Tesla’s Giga Berlin Factory? Situation On The Ground

Join daily news updates from CleanTechnica on e mail. Or follow us on Google News!

Under is a Letter to the Editor from on the bottom close to Tesla Giga Berlin, by Madeindex Weblog, with minor modifying. In the event you’d prefer to submit a letter to the editor, please go to this link.

On this publish, I want to handle the scenario round Tesla’s Gigafactory in Berlin / Brandenburg — Grünheide. I’ve been following the development and protests there from the beginning and visited in common intervals all through the method. I went there once more final week to doc the scenario on the bottom for non-locals.

Tesla’s manufacturing unit & development space is surrounded by:

• North: Prepare tracks & a practice station
• South: An industrial zone (Buying and selling-Logistics-Middle Freienbrink) proper throughout the highway from Giga Berlin‘s predominant entrance. It consists of roads, practice tracks, quite a lot of corporations, and large logistics middle, with a mess of truck loading bays every and a whole bunch of diesel vehicles driving to & from them or parked all throughout the world. Among the greatest corporations there are Lidl2x Edeka, DGL, Knorr-Breaks, and GLX Logistics
• East: Prepare tracks, pine tree monoculture plantations, after which a highway
• West: The primary Berlin Ring A10 freeway in addition to freeway ramps and bridges

The Protests

The as much as 80 protesters are positioned northeast of the Tesla Gigafactory in Berlin Grünheide. They’ve arrange an info sales space subsequent to the practice station and a treehouse camp within the pine timber adjoining to the highway. I seen that they didn’t injury any timber with their treehouses, as they used solely ropes and comparable supplies to safe their buildings, which seems very elaborate and I discovered fairly spectacular as this isn’t at all times the case with treehouse protests. They’re prone to be evicted from the property subsequent week, though the protesters anticipated to be evicted by Monday the eleventhensuing within the protests lasting longer than initially anticipated by some.

There are completely different teams of protesters, some environmental and a few politically motivated (e.g Antifa is there).

They’re protesting numerous points, primarily:

• The enlargement of the Gigafactory and the required forest clearing
• Safety of water reserves
• Water air pollution
• Constructing inside a consuming water safety space
• Wildlife safety
• Tesla worker exploitation
• Privateness issues associated to Tesla’s digital camera knowledge
• Large firms — on this case Tesla
• Electrical vehicles
• Use of imported — vital minerals (lithium, cobalt and so forth.) for Teslas
• Particular person transportation as a substitute of public
• Luxurious/unaffordable vehicles
• Local weather change
• Elon Musk & his politics
• Starlink
• The federal government

With this text, I primarily confer with the next factors of criticism:

1. The “forest clearing” (which is especially the cut-down of pine tree monoculture plantations)
2. Wildlife safety
3. The matter of constructing inside a consuming water safety space
4. Water air pollution

Forest Clearing at Tesla Gigafactory Berlin Grünheide

The realm of Giga Berlin consisted and consists largely of pine plantations. Conifer plantations are harvested at common intervals. They’re dry, vulnerable to forest fires, and supply little worth to wildlife. For a few years the state of Brandenburghas been making an attempt to replace this kind of pine monocultures with deciduous foreststhat are extra resilient to a changing climate, bind more water & CO2. Spruce and pine additionally will not be pure in most areas in Germany and spruce ought to by nature really majorly be rising in swamps or larger vicinities. Naturally most of the country should instead be covered by beech trees. I’ve additionally by no means seen a transparent lower of deciduous forests however many instances of clear lower spruce and pine plantations throughout my hikes throughout Germany.

I might additionally like to notice that in Germany, there are legal guidelines (e.g. Federal Nature Conservation Act) concerning the clearing of land and forests for business development; a portion of the cleared space have to be replanted or compensated for ecologically elsewhere. In Tesla’s case, the compensatory plantings appear to be largely deciduous forests, that are typically rather more ecologically precious than pine tree monocultures. Tesla promised to replant 3 times as many trees as they removealthough it’s noteworthy that the progress of the brand new timber takes time and it will likely be a few years till they flip right into a “real forest.” However that forest will probably be both by no means or solely with restrictions commercially useable, which can even imply a larger environmental profitand the totally grown compensatory planting zones in different areas I’ve personally walked in appeared extra various and wholesome than any of the tree plantations.

Observations Concerning Mammal Wildlife

Your complete space is within the flight path of airplanes taking off and touchdown each jiffy at Airport Berlin Brandenburg (BER). All over the place on the property you possibly can hear substantial noise from the airplanes, the quite a few vehicles on the roads (coming to and from the logistical corporations neighbouring Tesla), and the vehicles on the highways in addition to the trains often driving by. Contemplating the quantity of truck & practice visitors on all 4 sides of Tesla’s space and the aircraft visitors above it, one may argue it’s safer for wildlife to keep away from this space.

The Consuming Water Safety Space

The economic zone to the south is positioned in the identical water safety space (Erkner — Neu Zittau and Hohenbinder Street Zone III) as Tesla, and the businesses constructing there extremely possible additionally required the clearance of pine timber and the herewith associated points.

Why did the protestors not equally struggle the development of the Buying and selling-Logistics-Middle Freienbrinkand will not be now additionally protesting the businesses positioned there?

There are practice tracks and a pine tree monocultures east of Tesla, and the A10 freeway subsequent to Tesla’s west facet:

Ideas on the Water Air pollution Problem

The groundwater within the space has been polluted for a very long time with industrial waste, wastewater, human waste (thrown from vehicles or left by pedestrians), exhaust fumes, oil, high-quality mud (diesel mud, tire and brake abrasion, and so forth.) brought on by human settlementsthe freewaythe roadsand the industrial zoneamongst different issues. Would the air pollution actually improve so considerably on account of an enlargement of the Tesla facilityand the way has it already elevated because the preliminary development?

Conclusion Concerning the Scenario and Protests

Aren’t there many significantly better targets to protest the issues raised by the protestors?

These and plenty of extra questions got here to me once I seemed on the space across the Tesla Gigafactory Berlin Grünheide and the protests towards the enlargement plans.

I hope I used to be in a position that will help you get a greater impression of the scenario on the bottom.

Video about Tesla Gigafactory Berlin Grünheide

If you wish to see extra footage of the world surrounding the Tesla manufacturing unit in Berlin, now we have made a video summarizing all of the findings from this text and recorded footage of all 4 instructions from the plant. So now it’s as much as you to determine for your self:

Is Tesla making an attempt to guard the setting or destroy it?

Is GigaBerlin Mordor or is it Gondor?

Madeindex.org Staff. All images courtesy of the writer.