Last Friday, the German state of Brandenburg announced that the planned Tesla “Gigafactory” to the southeast of Berlin has received the final necessary permits. Tesla had received sixteen approvals of various kinds from politicians regarding the project’s likely environmental impact. The start of auto production there has thus moved another step closer — posing the question of what Elon Musk’s project does indeed mean for nature, and all of us.

Tesla has been granted permission to build various infiltration and firefighting basins according to the new “decentralized precipitation drainage concept” — a plan over which the Nature and Biodiversity Conservation Union and the Green League, among others, have raised significant concerns. The basins “protrude into the upper aquifer, and the factory is partly located in a drinking water protection area.” The Strausberg-Erkner Water Association, well-versed in this subject, also raised objections, though they were dismissed by governmental authorities. The extensive concessions to Musk’s firm are excused by citing ambitious state climate targets: a bit of groundwater and a piece of forest will have to be lost, in exchange.

With its smartphones on wheels, Tesla fits in so well with Germany’s climate program that the state government is happy to hand the tech giant a forest area covering several hundred hectares southeast of Berlin. The fact that a nearby water conservation area could be contaminated by industrial waste did not hold back the accelerated approval process, riding roughshod over objections. Instead, in the name of the dubious environmental merits of making electric cars, Tesla is being offered the immediate vicinity of a global metropolis, including infrastructure and access to cheap labor.