Environmental lawyer on the podium

Would you rather have a nuclear power plant than wind turbines in the Innviertel?

Opponents of wind power in the Innviertel consider wind turbines to be dispensable, but nuclear power plants to be necessary - although probably not in the Innviertel.

(Bild: Krone KREATIV/Land OÖ/Dedl, Daniel Scharinger)

The province's environmental advocate, Martin Donat, never misses an opportunity to express his aversion to wind turbines in Upper Austria. Any platform seems to suit him - even if, like yesterday, Wednesday, it consists of people who, in addition to serious arguments, also bring plenty of obscurities to light.

Johann Aschenberger picks up the "Quetschn" and performs the "Innviertler Roas" dance - a somewhat different start to a press conference. "Die Furzenden Troglodyten" were invited to the event in Linz on Wednesday. Ironically, this is what the Innviertel wind power opponents call themselves - based on a ten-year-old caricature that denigrated their peers as just such cavemen.

"Am I the fool?"
Hermann Brunnschmid, chairman of the Association for the Protection of the Hausruck and Kobernaußer Forests, is sitting next to Aschenberger. The retired heating engineer has traveled all the way from Tyrol to rail against renewable energy. He cites his own calculations, which he believes show that wind power and photovoltaics will lead to disaster as long as there is insufficient storage. "Am I the fool or the others?" He doesn't understand the world.

No other country is as hysterical about nuclear power as Austria.

Johann Aschenberger, Obmann des Vereins zum Schutz des Hausruck- und Kobernaußerwalds

There will be no getting around nuclear power
What the press conference is specifically about: the message that wind farms are undesirable, especially in the Kobernaußerwald, and are just the spawn of "green climate hysteria". Where is the ever-increasing amount of electricity needed supposed to come from? "Certainly not from the Innviertel region," says Aschenberger. His solution: from a global perspective, there will be no getting around nuclear power. So a nuclear power plant is better than wind turbines? His individual opinion is completely meaningless here, Aschenberger evades the question.

Donat calls for binding regional planning
In the midst of the "troglodytes": the state's environmental lawyer, Martin Donat. The self-confessed wind power opponent has already made headlines this year as the (ultimately unsuccessful) organizer of an anti-wind farm evening in Rainbach, for which he received a rebuke from his boss, State Office Director Thomas Schäffer.

Perhaps this is also the reason why Donat is not foaming at the mouth this time. He is simply calling for binding regional planning that designates acceleration areas for renewable energy and unsuitable no-go zones. Whether nuclear power is needed in Austria? "I don't share this assessment."