15-year-old Henning is deeply shaken by the death of Silke, his first love. He decides to visit his grandfather one more time in his village that soon must give way to brown coal mining. Henning is speechless when he sees excavators eating through the landscape, destroying all life. In the almost deserted area, he encounters various people: A scavenger; a villager, who saves animals; and a woman in a closed disco. Being in this seemingly haunted environment, questions arise for the boy about the responsibility of saving the earth. In the end, he plants little trees in an almost dead landscape.