At noon, local residents together with seven mayors from villages and towns facing destruction due to the mine's expansion, gathered at the CRS before marching on the entrance to the mine.

With the huge globe nearby, the mine’s officials were obviously ready for possible shenanigans, and had dug a sizable trench to cut off access, as well as blocked the remaining road with a bulldozer.

After seeing the blowback from the Rainbow Warrior’s blockade of a coal shipment in New Zealand (a small player on the world coal stage) during the Target Climate Change tour, I was quite interested to see what the reaction to the Climate Rescue Station and mass action against the pit mine would be.

In Poland, coal is used for 93% of electricity generation (more than double the world average), it constitutes a large portion of export revenues and is routinely used on the smaller scale for home heating, barbecuing and the like.

The mining companies are huge, and employ legions of workers from small towns, so the chance of confrontation between those pushing for an end to coal and those who make their living working with it is considerable, or so I thought.

Our activists carrying huge colourful flags quickly broached the trench to plant the flags on the mining company’s property, while a spirited but mostly friendly discussion raged between a group of townspeople and two KBW executives.

With the activists and their enormous flags dug in next to the trench, the mayors, townspeople and members of Greenpeace Poland voiced concerns about the mine, Poland’s reliance on coal and the need for an energy revolution to reduce Poland’s contribution to climate change and stop it from being one of the top 20 states for CO2 emissions.

"Climate change is the biggest economic, humanitarian and environmental threat mankind is facing," said Magdalena Zowsik, Greenpeace Poland climate and energy campaigner. "Coal is the dirtiest of all fuels and averting grave impacts of climate change, such as billions of people facing water shortages, will only be possible when we quit coal."

Our Energy [R]evolution shows that Poland can help solve the climate crisis by moving away from coal, using clean energy sources and implement energy efficiency. If it stopped expansion of the coal industry and focussed on renewables, by 2050 Poland could produce 80% of its electricity from clean energy sources.

As host of the UN talks, Poland must do everything it can to facilitate agreement on a vision for climate action that includes a goal of global emissions peaking by 2015, and which contains emissions cuts of 25-40% by 2020 for developed countries. If not, it won’t just be the residents of small towns that end up paying the true cost of coal.

Image @copy Greenpeace/ Greg McNevin