Returning: Foreign Correspondent

Foreign Correspondent returns to ABC next week with reporter Eric Campbell visiting the coal region of Lusatia, Germany, in the heartland of a national debate to close coal mines.

While Australia ponders opening new coal fields, Germany has declared the industry must end.

The country’s last black coal mines were closed in 2018 and now the government has decided to phase out all brown coal mines and coal-fired power plants.

Under what’s called ‘The Coal Compromise’, the government, mining and energy companies and unions have all agreed to phase out the coal industry by 2038 in return for a $60 billion injection of government funds.

But the Coal Compromise is fragile. Environmentalists are demanding its immediate end, which they say is necessary if Germany is to honour its commitments under the Paris Agreement.

‘We don’t have any time to waste. We can’t wait another 18 years’, says Daniel Hofinger, who is part of a newly formed anti-coal movement putting pressure on the government to act faster.

Reporter Eric Campbell visits the coal region of Lusatia in the former East Germany on the eve of a mass protest action which aims to bring coal production to a standstill.

Here, coal-dependent communities are fighting to keep the deal they’ve negotiated and are steeling themselves for the green invasion.

‘The [Coal] Compromise we’ve negotiated offers hope to Lusatia’, says the mayor of a coal town, addressing her community the night before the protests.

Campbell joins the thousands of activists as they travel en masse to the coal region, out-manoeuvring police batons and pepper spray to shut down brown coal mines.

8pm Tuesday February 18 on ABC.