Coal mining

This year’s global climate conference is convening in the heart of Poland’s coal country. Poland’s leaders are vowing to continue their heavy reliance on coal, but the politics and economics of the highly-polluting fuel are starting to shift.

Katowice, home to one of Poland’s oldest coal mines, closed in March. Now the city will host a series of UN talks on climate change. Budding artists have embraced the cleaner air and inspiration as the coal mining industry changes, others miss the community spirit.

For decades, RWE has been slowly razing the forest and surrounding towns to expand its adjacent coal mine, among Europe’s largest producers of lignite coal and greatest sources of carbon dioxide pollution. And earlier this fall, the company moved to start cutting a new section that protesters have been occupying.

Lignite mining has already claimed nearly 50 villages in the region, and since the mid-1950s more than 40,000 people have been displaced by it.

Coal has driven Wyoming’s economy for decades. The state sits on hundreds of years of coal reserves. But the world is slowly moving away from coal, leaving some towns at a crossroads.