Elon Musk's Tesla Gigafactory (Grünheide)
Once upon a time, there was a land stretching north of the Rhine all the way to a far-off northern sea and which, south of the mighty river, was covered by a vast impenetrable forest of dark fir and pine-trees, home to deer and elk and wild-boar, to grey shadowy wolves and growling brown bears.
"This Hercynian forest created the greatest impression on the Roman imagination. No one knew how far it stretched. [...] A great silence pervaded everywhere, not broken by the dense whisper of the wind above." [1]
And the blue-eyed people who lived in this ancient land worshipped the trees that were so strong in life and nailed the heads of their enemies to them. The sap-conscious trees provided them with shelter and strength and fed their souls. The enormous inhuman power of the forest was greater even than that of the Roman army.
"The true German", writes D. H. Lawrence, "has something of the sap of trees in his veins even now: and a sort of pristine savageness [...] He is a tree-soul, and his gods are not human." [2]
If that's the case, however, then how do we explain the fact that the German government has allowed construction of a Tesla gigafactory - i.e., a factory producing large numbers of batteries for electric vehicles - resulting in the destruction of over 500,000 trees? [3]
In the name of Net Zero and the so-called green economy, hat das deutsche Volk seine Seele geopfert?
Notes
[1] D. H. Lawrence, Movements in European History, ed. Philip Crumpton (Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 45.
[2] D. H. Lawrence, Fantasia of the Unconscious, ed. Bruce Steele (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 87.
[3] Satellite images of the site in the Berlin-Brandenberg area show that over 800 acres of forest were cut down between March 2020 and May 2023: that's almost three times the size of
Kew Gardens.
