Film: We don’t want the coal mine
“We don’t want the coal mine” is a film on the social movement against the establishment of an open pit coal mine in Northwest of Bangladesh. To establish the mine at least ten thousand hectares of arable land is intended to be destroyed and more than five hundred thousand people to be displaced. Four sub-districts of Dinajpur, namely Phulbari, Birampur, Nawabganj and Parbatipur are under the project. The movement has been mobilizing protesters since 2005 upon the leak of the project when Asia Energy (the project owner MOC) started household survey in the locality. However, the film is focused only on the protesters of Phulbari sub-district to demonstrate their motivation to join the movement. The film is based on a one year anthropological research work where it was found that the fear of displacement from their secure sociality, home, land and limited economic and political opportunity for the majority of the population motivated the Phulbarians to join the social movement. Moreover, previous experience of displacement and violence, history of betrayal of the ruling sector of the society and a belief that one has the duty to change the society played an important role in the decision making of the protesters.  [Asia Energy is a subsidiary of London-listed GCM Resources.]
See https://www.engagemedia.org/Members/nasrinsiraj/videos/we-dont-want-the-coal-mine/view.
Move Beyond Coal, Now! Victories on the Front Lines
Coal is caught in a perfect storm of changing market dynamics and fierce grassroots opposition from communities around the world seeking safer, healthier and cheaper clean energy sources to power the future. This has allowed growing opposition to stand up, push back, and defeat plant after plant around the world.  The industry knows if it doesn’t act now, the centuries long dominance it has enjoyed will come crashing down in front of its eyes.
See http://sierraclub.org/international/beyondcoalvictories/.
WRI’s global coal threat assessment report http://www.wri.org/publication/global-coal-risk-assessment
World Bank Climate Change Report Warns of Dramatically Warmer World This Century http://climatechange.worldbank.org/content/climate-change-report-warns-dramatically-warmer-world-century
Statement on the World Bank Report from President of Center for International Environmental Law
A new report released today by the World Bank, “Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C World Must be Avoided,” delivers a clear-eyed assessment that continued inaction by the world’s governments is putting us on a trajectory to a world that is 4 degrees warmer, as well as a stark warning that the consequences will be catastrophic.
See http://www.ciel.org/Climate_Change/TurnDownHeat_19Nov2012.html.
Is it too late to limit greenhouse gas emissions to 2 degrees? Business as usual not an option, says PwC
The world’s leading “financial services” firm has issued a stark warning of impending failure to limit global carbon emissions, in order to halt a 2 degrees-plus rise in pre-industrial temperatures, as agreed at the Climate Conference in 2009. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) the only way of averting “pessimistic scenarios” will be “radical transformations in the ways the global economy currently functions: rapid uptake of renewable energy, sharp falls in fossil fuel use or massive deployment of CCS, removal of industrial emissions and halting deforestation… This suggests a need for much more ambition and urgency on climate policy, at both the national and international level.”
See http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=12001.
Bankrolling Climate Disruption: The Impacts of the Banking Sector’s Financed Emissions
This Rainforest Action Network and BankTrack report on climate change (http://ran.org/bankrolling-climate-disruption) spells out the swift action that the banking sector must take to account for and reduce its biggest impact on the climate: the emissions it finances. You can also read the blog post on the report at http://understory.ran.org/2012/10/30/financed-emissions-a-big-problem-for-banks-and-a-bigger-problem-for-the-climate/.
Coal Blooded: Putting Profits Before People
Published by the Indigenous Environmental Network, The Little Village Environmental Justice Organization and the NAACP Coal Blooded ranks the 378 coal-fired power plants in the nation as well as 59 coal power companies according to how they impact low-income communities and communities of color. The report notes that these corporations are responsible for spending millions of dollars on anti-regulatory lobbying; the type of regulations that could protect communities from environmental injustice. It paints a grim picture of the health, economic, and environmental impacts of coal pollution on those who can least afford it and the impacts of climate change due to these coal-fired power plants.
See http://naacp.3cdn.net/22fd5e74c971eefa8c_76qm6t9dy.pdf.
Unburnable carbon: Budgeting carbon in South Africa
This new analysis from the Carbon Tracker Initiative finds that the current coal reserves earmarked for the South African market, equivalent to 19.2GtCO2e, exceeds the South African Government’s ‘required by science’ carbon budget (in line with 2°C global warming) of 16.4GtCO2e for all sectors from 2010 to 2050.
See http://www.carbontracker.org/southafrica.