Mara is sick. The 24-year-old has lived since March in a mosquito-infested forest near Tesla’s German gigafactory, and despite the 78-degree Fahrenheit heat, a chill is spreading through the camp. Sitting on a makeshift bench, she tells me how she left Berlin to live among the pines, about an hour’s drive from the city, in an attempt to stop the company from expanding.
This week, she will be joined by the famous German climate group Here and No More (Ende Gelände), known for its theatrical blockades, often contrary to the law, for a five-day protest. Anticipating the arrival of hundreds of protesters, Tesla said he would close the factory for four days and order his employees to work from home, according to an internal email obtained by the German newspaper. Handelsblatt.
Despite the absence of Tesla workers, company employees and local authorities will be on high alert for troublemakers. The factory is separated from the forest only by a thin fence, and as I walk along the forest path that runs along the perimeter of the factory, a police car passes slowly, conducting patrols. During the two days I visit, a black Tesla stands guard at the end of the road that connects the factory fence and the forestry camp.
Mara, who declines to share her last name, vaguely estimates that there are between 50 and 100 people involved in this anti-Tesla movement. But on a Thursday afternoon, the camp is quiet. Above us is a city of tree houses. He shows me where he sleeps, a wide wooden platform, built about 10 meters from the ground and covered with a green tarp. The height provides respite for the mosquitoes, she says, as I catch three burrowing into my arm at once. A man with a partially shaved head lies on a salmon-colored sofa eating cake. Closer to the road, activists talk loudly about Israel. Several people are barefoot. The group expresses its policy on banners hanging from trees: electric cars are not “climate protection”; “Water is a human right”; “There is no anti-colonialism without a free Palestine.”
Germany is the heart of European car manufacturing, the birthplace of BMW, Volkswagen and Porsche. So why Tesla? The company’s presence threatens everything from the local water supply to democracy itself, he argues. “This is an existential question.”
Their reasons for being here are partly environmental and partly anti-capitalist, Mara explains, turning a piece of bark between her dirty fingernails. Tesla’s ambition to produce 1 million electric cars a year in Germany is not in the service of the climate, says Mara. Instead, she describes Tesla’s 300-hectare factory as a byproduct of “green capitalism,” a plot by companies to appear environmentally friendly in order to convince consumers to continue buying more things. “This has been completely thought out by these companies to have greater growth, even in times of environmental crisis,” she says, adding that the protesters have not had any contact with Tesla.
For people like Mara, Tesla is a symbol of how the green transition went wrong, and as a result, the company’s German gigafactory has become the target of increasingly radical protests. Activists moved into the forest in February, in an attempt to physically prevent Tesla from clearing another 100 hectares of forest for its expansion. A month after the forest camp appeared, unknown saboteurs blew up a nearby power line, forcing the factory to close. close for a week. (A left-wing protest group called Vulkan, whose members are anonymous responsibility for the action was claimed.)
