German energy giant RWE has begun dismantling a wind farm to make way for a further expansion of an open-pit lignite coal mine in the Western region of North Rhine Westphalia.

German energy giant RWE has begun dismantling a wind farm to make way for a further expansion of an open-pit lignite coal mine in the western region of North Rhine Westphalia.

I thought renewables were cheaper than coal. How is this possible?

  • DessertStorms
    -12•10 months ago

    That’s a lot of words to say “I lick boot”.

    But just to address my pet peeve (mostly because I can copy pasta my own comment, and no I’m not going to edit out the “ableist” because even if you don’t mean t, advocating and making excuses for the straw ban is ableist)

    There are many reasons people can’t use different alternatives.

    Never mind that to deny access to a literal lifeline for the sake of 0.003% of the plastics in the ocean (literally a drop in an ocean) because it makes you feel better and requires zero effort or sacrifice (from you), instead of actually acting to resolve the problem (like being anti-capitalist rather than just trying to apply band aids to its symptoms) is not only gross and ableist, but also a colossal counterproductive waste of time.

    As for medical exemptions - disabled people shouldn’t need to ask for basic accessibility, nor should they have to disclose personal medical information to get it, but now that ableists like you have forced this situation to boost your own egos, they do, and are often denied, because wait staff are not medically trained, and are often abelists like you (or have bosses that would fire them for “handing out straws willy nilly” if they even have straws available which now many places don’t), so they get refused and called liars and accused of destroying the environment.
    Never mind that expecting people to always have their own accessibility aids, rather than have them freely available creates an inaccessible society.

    Which is exactly what ableists like you are fighting for.

    • @napoleonsdumbcousin@feddit.de
      6•10 months ago

      I was exclusively talking about the EU ban, not about some random US cities’ bans (This is a thread about Germany after all). None of your points really apply to the EU ban.

      It does not ban the distribution (you can still legally buy leftover stock - my local cinema seems to have a century’s worth of supply), just the first-time sale of newly produced non-medical single-use plastic straws.

      The “medical exemption” is not on an individual basis, but an exemption for a production line of straws. Everybody can buy the straws afterwards. The EU ban is not cutting a “lifeline” for disabled people.

      The links you provided talk about bans by local city councils in the USA, which have their own (apparantly stupid) rules.