Hamburg, 11.8.2022

At a press conference today at the large System Change Camp, which will take place in Hamburg from August 09 to 15, Ende Gelände announced mass civil disobedience for the next few days. The protests of the action alliance are directed against the plans of the Federal Government to build twelve terminals for liquid gas at the North German coast and to operate them until 2043. With liquefied gas imports, the federal government wants to replace gas from Russia. It will be obtained largely by the fracking method, which has so far been banned in Germany because of its extreme environmental damage. A first action already took place this morning. About 50 climate activists from Ende Gelände blocked the main gate of the fertilizer producer Yara in Brunsbüttel, a major gas consumer at one of the planned terminal sites.

Charly Dietz, Ende Gelände spokesperson:
“Instead of appealing to private households to tighten their belts, as the German government is doing, the gas tap must now be turned off for the large corporations. We are not in an energy crisis, but a capitalist distribution crisis with dramatic consequences for the many and profits for the few! Our economic system must no longer aim at profit maximization, it must enable a good life for all. We need a renewable, decentralized and democratic energy supply instead of the same old false solutions like new liquid gas terminals. The only thing that prevents this is the power of the corporations! Crisis profiteers in the energy industry should be expropriated, their profits must be used to pay for the long overdue energy transition.”

At the press conference, international activists from the areas where fracking gas is extracted also expressed their outrage at the German government’s plans. Esteban Servat – climate justice activist from Vaca Muerta in Argentina, a major fracking gas extraction area, stated:
“All the big European countries that have noble-sounding climate goals written all over them are actually doing the exact opposite: their multinationals are leading the destruction of the planet, especially in the Global South. Most of the German public doesn’t even know the name of the country’s largest fossil fuel company, Wintershall Dea, which is one of the largest landowners for fracking in Vaca Muerta. This must change urgently if people still want to avert the climate catastrophe. It’s time for European climate movements to rise to the challenge and break out of the Eurocentric bubble to join with people on the front lines of extraction on the other side of the world and fight together, in true c0mraderie and internationalism.”

Juan Pablo Gutiérrez, climate justice and human rights activist from Colombia:
“Just as they imposed the globalization of death and violence on us, we are here to tell them that we are the globalization of resistance.”

Regional actors are also joining the protests against the construction of liquefied natural gas terminals.Norbert Pralow, representative of the Climate Alliance against LNG, a coalition of various initiatives in northern Germany that advocate for the phase-out of gas, explains:
“Gorleben stands for the nuclear phase-out, Lüzerath for the end of coal, the Dannenröder Forest for the transformation of mobility and Wilhelmshaven, Stade or Brunsbüttel stand for the gas exit! We must not only get out of Russian gas but out of all fossil energy sources. Renewable energies are the future.”

The action alliance Ende Gelände is known for mass actions of civil disobedience. Last year, the alliance had already blocked the ChemCoast Park in Brunsbüttel with several thousand people to protest against the liquefied gas terminal planned there. The fertilizer manufacturer Yara also has its production plant there. Yara consumes about one percent of Germany’s total gas consumption there. The Ende Gelände activists dissolved the action after three hours of successful blockade.

Contact details
Charly Dietz: +49 163 681 177 6
Luka Scott: +49 177 970 575 7

presse@ende-gelaende.org
www.ende-gelaende.org

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Photo and video footage:
Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/133937251@N05/albums