In the wake of the Fukushima disaster, and under pressure from public opinion, the German government decided in the spring of 2011 to maintain its plan to phase out nuclear power by 2022. In order to maintain its energy production levels and reduce the cost of such a transition, the country must be able to rely on the rapid development of renewable energies, as well as its own fossil fuel resources, including lignite, which is abundant in the country. Lignite, of which Germany is the world’s leading producer, is used as fuel in thermal power plants, usually located close to the extraction sites. The RWE Group, one of Germany’s energy giants, extracts around 100 million tonnes of lignite a year from three open-cast mines in North Rhine-Westphalia to provide fuel for its six power plants in the region. The use of a low-efficiency fossil fuel such as brown coal on such a large scale causes enormous emissions of carbon dioxide and fine particles into the atmosphere. What’s more, its extraction causes considerable disruption to the environment and landscape. Entire villages are expropriated, huge areas of farmland and forest are destroyed, and freeways are rerouted as excavators dig hundreds of meters into the ground to reach the lignite layers. In Hambach, in the immediate vicinity of Europe’s largest open-cast mine, a forest that had remained intact for several thousand years stretched over more than 4,000 hectares until the 1970s. Over the last few decades, most of this forest has been swallowed up by mining operations. In May 2012, a group of activists set up a camp in the Hambach forest to protest against the RWE Group’s expansionist policy and to prevent the last hectares of forest from being destroyed. A first camp, made up of wooden, straw and clay constructions, huts and footbridges built in the trees, was finally evicted in November 2012. After four days of altercations between activists and police, the last activist was extracted from a tunnel in which he had barricaded himself, and the camp was destroyed. A few hours later, a new camp was set up a little further on, in a field adjoining the Hambach forest. Since then, activists from all over Germany and other European countries have been arriving at the camp, which is under daily threat of eviction.