> The objection is based on the claim that Tesla has not sufficiently clarified what precautions it will take to prevent highly poisonous gas from escaping from the factory, the objection document showed.

This seems like a pretty reasonable objection and not just "complaints are just for complaint's sake".

Sorry the word sufficiently implies they did provide details for how they are going to take precautions… as the other person said I believe this is the definition of “complaints just for complaints sake” at least IMO

Environmental activists and other groups opposed to major construction projects in Germany have a tendency to latch on to even the most minor potential issue and complain and sue. The strategy, as far as I can infer it, is to delay the project and drive costs in the hope that it will have to be abandoned. It rarely works, but in combination with long and arduous processes for building permits, major construction projects can be held up in the planning phase for 10 to 20 years these days.

The Tesla factory is a huge exception, mostly because Tesla went ahead using temporary permits and took the risk that the final permits may be denied. The project has a lot of political support, which also helped the process along.

What evidence is there that it is a serious problem?

Lol.

On one end of the spectrum we have environmental groups making objections against every tiny detail.

On the other end we have - “Highly poisonous gas escaping the factory into the environment? What evidence is there that it is a serious problem?”. A very Nestle approach

TBF we have a claim that highly poisonous gas might escape.

I have no idea if thats true, how big the risks are or if things already have been cleared in the normal procedures.

This isn't the first factory in Germany and one would hope they know how to build them safely but who really knows.

Well building a battery factory in EUs worst CO2 polluter kinda makes no sense from an environmental viewpoint. Better to build it in Sweden or France which have a heavy Nuclear/Hydro mix in their grid.

That is a bit of a strawman argument as then you should also argue for stopping all industry in Germany that has a heavy use of electricity (which battery manufacturing doesn't really compared to other things like aluminium smeltering).

Germany is moving to more renewable sources of energy and Tesla also plans to put solar panels on the rooves of its buildings.

Germany have not took any steps to increase their clean non-intermittent energy sources. Until they do they will be stuck with gas.

Just because you have a battery factory in one country doesn't mean you have to charge all the batteries with electricity from that country, does it?

(Also: "EUs worst CO2 polluter" according to what measure and which source?)

Is CO2 considered as pollution?

Since when is it not?

Ever, AFAIK.

Contributing to the greenhouse effect, yes, but that's never been considered exactly "pollution". (Unless the darn kids have fucked up language again. Geroffmyfuckinglawn.)

Environmental groups file objections against every single major project in democratic countries, where it's their right to do so. Occasionally, the objection is worthwhile.

And, every time, the objections drive up costs and delay results.

and many people are realizing that the environment should be considered over costs and deadlines

Until the frivolous complaints get them an image of obstructionism and people start to ignore them. Boy who cried wolf, after all.

sure it's possible both the public and the government officials making the decisions might get alarm fatigue but from what we are seeing, more and more people are caring about environmental impact (even when it comes to electric cars) and think that we aren't doing enough to prevent it. The scrutiny of all major construction projects will probably only continue to increase as public perception continues to shift.

> more and more people are caring about environmental impact

1) It's hard to avoid the suspicion that ever more of those people are only performatively "caring" about environmental impacts; and

2) I'm getting ever more certain that quite a lot of those people who "are caring" lack enough information to care about environmental impact in a sensible way. If you're ill-informed enough, you will naively advocate "solutions" that are worse for the environment than what you're protesting against.

Are we considering the environment when we delay the mass production of environmentally friendlier electric cars?

I don't think it's fair to compare the specific, fairly measurable consequences of not fully considering how to "prevent highly poisonous gas from escaping from the factory" vs. the more vague and complex environmental impact of a delay in car production.

But lets put that aside and let me ask you this:

What amount of delay would you be ok with in addressing environmental concerns?

As little delay as reasonably possible.

"reasonable" is pretty much meaningless. How do you determine what is "reasonable"? Who determines that?

So does not destroying the environment.

Sometimes, we do not want to keep costs and delays down.

"The boy who cried wolf." They need to be more selective if they want to be taken seriously. Maybe this one is serious, but how are we to know if they fight everything?

We are not the ones reading these petitions, so it’s arguably irrelevant what we think about them. I suspect many environmental groups do limit themselves to reasonable exceptions, but when any group can do something some will object to everything.

As such it’s not about environmental groups doing this but rather specific groups.

> As such it’s not about environmental groups doing this but rather specific groups.

After a while, you get to the point where it's up to the "environmental groups" to police themselves: If The Reasonably Lush Greens don't want all environmental concerns to be written off as Luddite obscurantism, then The Reasonably Lush Greens should regularly put out press releases like "One-in-a-trillion Risk Of Poison Gas Discharge, While Technically Existant, Is Negligible -- The Fanatical Neon Greens Are Spreading BS".

Really, honestly. Until they can do that, I'm not going to take either seriously. Why should anyone? Isn't that like accepting some rather-ultra-right movement because "But hey, they're not actually advocating gassing all the Jews... They just refuse to condemn the ones who DO advocate it." ?

Except these aren’t meaningless issues, any construction has negative environmental impacts they just not have negative impacts in everything.

Group A wants to protect wetlands, group B wants to protect deserts. Collectively their going to object to more projects than they do individually. It’s not group A’s job to police group B, and they are definitely not talking to you.

> Except these aren’t meaningless issues

Has anyone said they are, or are you just tilting at windmills?

> It’s not group A’s job to police group B

At the moment, that is (obviously, judging from your comment) how most people see it. What I'm saying is it should be their job.

> and they are definitely not talking to you.

Oh? Funny, here I thought groups with a political agenda are actually talking to everybody, in an effort to get wide-spread support for their agenda (environmental or whatever it may be). And if they're not talking to me, then whom are they talking to? If not me, as one of the general electorate, then apparently not to anybody else in that general group either, but only to some rarefied few? The particular "stakeholders" in each particular issue, perhaps? Then WTF is the use of making their letter to those administrators an "open" letter, for everyone else to see?

But OK, great, if they're not talking to us, the great unwashed public, then we are of course free to ignore whatever they have to say. It's not us they're talking to, after all. (Are you quite sure you had thought that through all the way to its logical conclusion, and that you're speaking for them all in this?)

It’s not that they are ignoring you because they don’t care. Talking to the general public is expensive, only some groups have funding for meaningful outreach.

Filling out some paperwork is dramatically less expensive, thus individual groups allocate their funds based on their objectives. And of course anyone can call themselves an environmental group, many of them care more about NIMBY than the environment.

Honestly, I simply view this as a free speech issue. Anyone can object to anything for any reason and that’s OK. It’s only going to be obstructionist when they have a point.

> I simply view this as a free speech issue. Anyone can object to anything for any reason and that’s OK.

As long as they do so by just generally exercising their free speech, sure. I got the impression the problem with the German Greens is that they go beyond this.

> It’s only going to be obstructionist when they have a point.

No, it's far more obstructionist when they don't have a point, and still protest not only in a general participating-in-the-debate fashion but by lodging formal complaints in various municipal and regional environmental-protection processes, over shit they know (or should have known) is irrelevant / insignificant / impossible. "Gumming up the works" for no real reason. And that's the impression I got from comments up-threads of what (at least many of) the German Greens are doing.

In that case the objections seem reasonable.

Here in Belgium there is a growing controversy surrounding a chemical plant in Antwerp leaking PFOS [1] in the environment. Due to this, scientists from the University of Antwerp now advise local residents against eating eggs laid within 15km of the plant [2].

Of course there seem to be no plan to hold the responsible company accountable.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfluorooctanesulfonic_acid

[2] https://www.brusselstimes.com/news/belgium-all-news/173456/3...

Does Tesla use PFOS in any of it's processes?

Aside from that I can't find any sources that list any of the chemicals that the complaint is objecting about. Any links would be handy.

Not just against the major ones... it's part of the ambience, like background radiation or typos in commit messages. I probably like it better this way than how the alternative would turn out, but it sure comes at a price.

Meanwhile, in the name of enviroment, germany gets away of cleaner energy alternatives like Nuclear and increases its dependencies of outside sources of natural gas to keep the country going.

I feel that most environmental groups today are more like a religion with dogmas then people trying to do whats best for environment .

Hustlers gotta hustle.

If you were that spider... You'd be happy if someone was trying to take care of you.

Change your perspective.

Does your empathy extend to plants and bacteria too? Rats? Cockroaches?

Uhhhh, bats?

Sorry spider, too bad. Turns out thousands of jobs and advancing mankind is more important than you.

If the only metric you care about is job creation.... We let mega corps rule for the best part of the last century and we all know how it ended.

Companies aren't here to create jobs and help mankind, they're here to make money

Maybe this is controversial on HN, but I care more about my community than a spider

What community ?

You can also think about the larger scale. We could open coal mines and gas/oil pipelines to create jobs, it would help your "community" in the near future but if we all continue to do that there won't be any community to care about in the distant future.

Also, with 5% of unemployment Germany is hardly in need of God Emperor Musk and his humanitarian help

The factory was built in east Germany which is in need of more well paying jobs. Most existing German companies have set themselves up outside of east Germany and they aren't going to move for the sake of solidarity.

Did you ever stop and consider why it was built so close to the Polish border ?

They're in need of a good PR move ("oh wow Berlin so cool") and cheap labor.

A company is a company is a company, they're not here to create job and support communities, wake up, this is ridiculous

https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/en/building-delays-at-tesla-...

> Business Insider also reported on "undignified working conditions" at the construction site. Several Polish workers were quoted as saying they have to work 12 to 14 hours per day, Monday through Sunday. Despite corona contact restrictions, up to 350 workers are thought to be housed in a small hostel, with up to three people sleeping in small rooms. Furthermore, the research revealed that labourers at Tesla in Grünheide are allegedly being paid only €8.70 per hour, under Germany's €12.85 minimum wage for construction workers.

Well, then give spider enough time to pack his things and move on. Or even help him in doing so.

What would you say if somebody was to blow up earth because they wanted to build some kind of motorway or something like that...

I’m glad some countries still care about preservation, if people like Elon (and you) had their way Earth would be as habitable as Mars

Wouldn't surprise me at all if the competition (VW and the likes) were nudging these groups. They often end up being shills and proxies.

That would actually create an equal playing field, given how easy German companies get finned in the USA.

This just shows how big protectionisms is that domestic companies enjoys in every country. We all talk about free competition, but somehow Monsanto needs to pay huge fines in the USA as soon as it became a German company, while VW enjoys full protection in Germany and Europe, while being heavily punished in the USA.