Anyone who has seen the film Anthropocene will have gasped at the sight of an entire town being destroyed to make way for a vast coal mine. To enable coal mining farms, forests and towns are devastated, and sometimes entire mountains removed, poisoning the headwaters of rivers and burdening nearby communities with noise, pollution and illness. Lives and connections to land are shattered, as the Wayuu of northern Colombia understand. The National Geographic and Undark articles are a glimpse into this pain.

In 2011 a huge block of India’s biodiverse Hasdeo Arand forest in Chhattisgarh was destroyed for coal mining, which continued despite court challenges. Now, against widespread community opposition, the Modi government is forcing an auction of 40 more blocks of the forest for new private sector mines. 6000 people and 5 villages will be displaced, and thousands of hectares of irreplaceable forest habitat destroyed.

The rehabilitation of mines is costly and challenging, and cannot reverse the toxification of rivers, air and ecosystems during the mine’s life, or replace the lost animals and ways of life.

Communities also face other risks.

In February 2014 the brown coal pit at the Hazelwood coal mine in Australia’s Latrobe valley caught fire during a bushfire. It burned for 45 days, blanketing the town of Morwell and nearby areas in toxic smoke and ash. The fire caused elevated levels of PM2.5 and benzene pollution, with long-term risk of respiratory conditions, heart attack, stroke and lung cancer, long-term cognitive decline and psychosocial effects. The operator was later found guilty of ten offences relating to pollution from the fire and neglect of the mine’s safety and fire fighting protocols, and the Victorian government commissioned an official Inquiry.