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Coal Mining

A Coal Mine Turned Garden Feeds 2,000 Texans Every Month

Five homeschoolers pick fist-size garlic cloves, green jalapeños, strawberries, squash and kale on a breezy Thursday morning in late June. They’re volunteering at a local food garden where bright orange marigolds attract bees from a local keeper’s hive. The 1-acre garden has yielded about 10,000 pounds of produce for six food pantries since it began harvesting in April 2022. Texan by Nature, which manages the garden and was founded by former First Lady Laura Bush, estimates it has served approximately 2,000 people per month in Limestone, Freestone and Leon counties. Located in Freestone County about 60 miles east of Waco, NRG Dewey Prairie Garden is a part of a massive effort to restore a 35,000-acre lignite coal mine.

A Just Transition To A New, Greener Life

My blood is as black as coal. We’re all miners in my family: niece, daughter, granddaughter, sister, cousin, wife, mother... It’s not like I was born with a piece of coal in my hand, but almost, like everybody else in these parts. When the coal mine shut down, it was a total disaster. There was no work. Young people started to leave, the villages became desolate, businesses closed. You carry those roots deep inside you. We are a different kind of people. We see things from a different perspective. You get used to living with fear. You make it your ally. When I was little I saw how nervous my  mother was for my father. Later I was the same when my husband and my son also went down the mines.

Lützerath Bleibt!

On the 14th of January 2023, a large-scale demonstration of around 35,000 people proved that the evicted village of Lützerath (Germany) has reignited the climate movement’s determination. Several organizations converged to express their resentment against lignite mining, including climate activist Greta Thunberg. Lignite is the energy source that has the largest climate impact, and the Rhenish lignite mining area is the largest cause of CO2 emissions in Europe. Russia’s war in Ukraine, however, has raised concerns regarding Germany’s energy security, and the country has turned back to coal for the short term.

Mass Protests Follow Eviction Of Occupied German Village

Thousands protested the planned expansion of an immense open-pit coal mine, one of the largest in Europe. The forceful eviction of climate activists who were occupying Lützerath for more than two years and the demolition of the village itself became a call to action, sparking the largest protest yet seen in the region. The sheer number of people, together with the presence of famed Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, attracted the attention of both local and international media, helping to broadcast climate activists’ searing criticism of the German government’s energy policy, which has used the war in Ukraine as an excuse to continue burning coal. The Garzweiler open-pit coal mine, operated by energy giant RWE, has expanded to consume around 15 villages since the 1960s.

Germany Plans To Destroy This Village For A Coal Mine

It’s a stark image in 2023: Police in riot gear flooding a village, pulling people out of houses and tearing down structures to make way for the arrival of excavating machines to access the rich seam of coal beneath the ground. Since Wednesday, as rain and winds lashed the tiny west German village of Lützerath, police have removed hundreds of activists. Some have been in Lützerath for more than two years, occupying the homes abandoned by former residents after they were evicted, most by 2017, to make way for the mine. More than 1,000 police officers are involved in the eviction operation. Most of the buildings have now been cleared, but some activists remained in treehouses or huddled in a hole dug into the ground as of Friday, according to Aachen city police. Protest organizers expect thousands more people to pour into the area on Saturday to demonstrate against its destruction, though they ultimately may not be able to access the village.

Court Rules Against Waratah Coal Mine In Landmark Ruling

The Queensland Land Court has ruled human rights would be unjustifiably limited by a proposal to dig the state's largest coal mine in the Galilee Basin in Central Queensland. First Nations-led activist group Youth Verdict challenged an application by mining company Waratah Coal, owned by billionaire Clive Palmer. The group of young Queensland activists challenged the mine on the basis it would impact the human rights of First Nations peoples by contributing to climate change. The coal mine would remove about 40 million tonnes of coal a year for export to South-East Asia, with a forecast life span of 30 years. It is the first time a group has successfully argued coal from a mine would impact human rights by contributing to climate change.

Judge Reinstates Obama-Era Coal Leasing Moratorium On Federal Lands

Great Falls, Montana - A federal judge in Montana District Court ruled today to reinstate a moratorium on new coal leasing on public lands, halting all coal leasing on federal lands until the Bureau of Land Management completes a more sufficient environmental analysis. The original moratorium set by the Obama administration in 2016 was overturned by Trump Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke in 2017. The Biden administration revoked the Zinke order last year, but did not reinstate the moratorium. “The Tribe has fought and sacrificed to protect our homelands for generations, and our lands and waters mean everything to us. We are thrilled that the court is requiring what we have always asked for: serious consideration of the impacts of the federal coal leasing program on the Tribe and our way of life,” said President Serena Wetherelt of the Northern Cheyenne Tribe.

Omkoi People File Lawsuit To Revoke Environmental Impact Assessment

Chiang Mai, Thailand – Fifty representatives of the residents of Omkoi filed a lawsuit at the Chiang Mai Administrative Court against the Expert Committee on EIA Consideration in the mining and extracting industry as the first defendant, and the Office of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy and Planning as the second defendant. The lawsuit aims to ensure that the flawed environmental impact assessment (EIA) of the Omkoi coal mine project developed by the 99 Thuwanon Company is revoked. If implemented, the coal mine project will cause long-term health impacts and loss of livelihoods of the Omkoi residents. The lawsuit specifically challenges the coal mine’s EIA and aims to ensure that the flawed EIA is revoked, and a new assessment is conducted in a transparent manner and with meaningful participation from the affected communities.

In Appalachia, The Mine Cleanup System Has Collapsed

The growing movement for regeneration offers a much needed reframe of how to fully show up in our humanity at this critical moment in our planet’s history. We need to move beyond incremental change and a narrowed fixation on reducing our carbon footprint. We cannot treat social injustices and ecological crises as separate, unrelated phenomena. Nor can we surrender to despair and distraction, or waste time on projects that make us feel good but lack deeper impact. The task at hand—our great calling—is to simultaneously regenerate our ecosystems AND integrate the design of new social and economic systems that can truly center and support life. At a foundational level, this ambitious project of regeneration requires us to RESIST or stop destruction, repair harm, and reimagine our world, our communities, and the systems upon which we depend.

Striking Coal Miners Return To New York To Picket Investor

The miners who dig black rocks from beneath the soil of Alabama returned to New York July 28 to protest outside the steel-clad offices of BlackRock Fund Advisors on East 52nd Street. The investment firm owns 13% of the Warrior Met Coal company in Brookwood, Alabama, where 1,000 miners have been on strike since April 1. Hundreds of miners from throughout the Appalachian coal belt filled four police pens on both sides of the block, joined by supporters from a dozen-odd New York unions, cheering loudly when the drivers of Verizon vans, Uber taxis, and food-delivery and garbage trucks passing by honked their horns in support.

Striking Miners In Alabama

Miners at Warrior Met Coal in Alabama have been on strike for almost five months, struggling to reverse concessions in pay, health care, and safety. Strikers brought their picket lines from the piney woods of the South to the tony Manhattan offices of three hedge fund shareholders on June 22, and more than 1,000 mine workers and union allies return today to demonstrate outside the offices of the company’s largest shareholder, asset manager BlackRock. Miners have chanted, “No Contract, No Coal!” and “Warrior Met Has No Soul” on picket lines from the worksite in Brookwood, Alabama, to New York City. “We’re here to let the whole world know that we will take it from the bottom of the United States to the top. Where we have to take this fight, we’re going to take it,” Dedrick Gardner, a first-generation miner from a union household of teachers and postmasters, said on the New York picket line in June.

Water Activists Win Against Adani

Australia - In a victory for people power, the Federal Court found, on May 25, that the federal government had failed to apply the “water trigger” test when assessing — and approving — Adani’s North Galilee Water Scheme (NGWS) in April 2019. The NGWS refers to a pipeline that would extract 12.5 billion litres of water a year from the Suttor River to service Adani’s Carmichael Coal Mine in central Queensland. The “water trigger” refers to The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 2013 (EPBC Act) that stipulates that coal seam gas and coal mining developments need federal assessment and approval if they are likely to have a significant impact on water resources.

Court finds government has duty to protect young people from climate crisis

Eight teenagers and an octogenarian nun had sought an injunction to prevent Ley approving a proposal by Whitehaven Coal to expand the Vickery coalmine in northern New South Wales, arguing the minister had a common law duty of care to protect younger people against future harm from climate change.

1,100 Mine Workers In Alabama Are Going On Strike

Over 1,100 workers at two Alabama coal mines and related facilities will go on strike starting Thursday, April 1, at 10:30 pm. United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) issued the strike notice against Warrior Met Coal on behalf of the workers in the company’s two coal mines and related facilities after negotiations over the latest contract failed. The last contract was negotiated in 2016, as Warrior Met Coal was bringing the company out of the bankruptcy caused by its erstwhile owner, Walter Energy. As the union’s press release details, it was on the backs of the labor and sacrifice of their workers that the company turned itself around. Since then, the company has raked in millions in profits. Coal mined by Warrior Met is used for steel production in Asia, Europe, and South America.

On Contact: People’s History Of West Virginia

On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to filmmaker and journalist, Eleanor Goldfield about her documentary, "Hard Road of Hope". Goldfield’s documentary, "Hard Road of Hope", revisits West Virginia’s long tradition of radicalism and militant unionism, including the famed 1921 armed uprising, the largest since the Civil War, by some 10,000 coal miners at Blair Mountain who fought the repressive coal owners and their hired coal company gun thugs and militias. In 2018, the state’s 20,000 public school teachers and employees carried out a strike over low pay and high health-care costs, shutting down every public school in West Virginia until their demands were met.
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