From across the country a broad slice of the Greens’ base turned out in wind, rain and mud in support of a small cluster of abandoned farms and houses called Lützerath. The hamlet in North Rhine-Westphalia is to be wiped from the map to make way for an extension of the Garzweiler opencast coal pit, a move the Greens have supported as part of a compromise deal.

“I voted the Greens and I will never, ever do [so again],” said David Dresen, from the neighboring village of Kuckum. “We have to stop this mine because it's destroying my life. Since 30 years, it's been destroying all my family’s lives. It's destroying our fields, our rivers; it's destroying our groundwater.”

It’s become increasingly uncomfortable for the Greens that this is all in service of a deal they made.

Last year, Mona Neubaur, Green vice premier of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), and Robert Habeck, Germany’s economy and climate minister, reached an agreement with RWE, the company that owns the Garzweiler mine. The deal brought forward the phaseout of coal in the region by eight years to 2030. In return, the company agreed to save five villages slated for demolition, but Lützerath would be razed as the last part of RWE's expansion plans in the region. The coal at Garzweiler is brown coal, a particularly dirty source of the greenhouse gases that are heating up the planet.

“It’s a gut punch that Green ministers now try to sell this backroom coal deal as a success. We won’t accept that,” said Olaf Bandt, the chair of the German Federation for the Environment and Nature Conservation, an NGO.

The crowd — which police said totaled up to 15,000 people; Thunberg said 35,000 — was clearly not buying into the pragmatism Greens like Habeck say they need to demonstrate to govern. Each time one of the speakers slammed the party, it got a huge cheer.

Sellouts. Complete and utter sellouts. There is nothing "pragmatic" about meeting the coal industry half way in order to gain power.