The local coal company has paid most of the residents of Pödelwitz, a village that is hundreds of years old, to relocate. Unless, that is, Pödelwitz’s 27 remaining residents have their say. “We don’t want their money. We just want to be able to live here,” said André Kremkow, a locksmith leading a campaign to spare the village and, more broadly, put an end to coal mining in Germany. Mibrag declined to comment on its plans and local resistance. Anti-mining activist Jens Hauser points to the location of his hometown, Pödelwitz, on a map that shows mining-related relocations in his region of Germany. This and similar disputes around the country have drawn attention to a curious split: Though Germany has championed the use of clean energy, several German brown-coal mines are expanding, which requires government permission. And though Germany’s greenhouse-gas emissions began trending downward in 1990, emissions have climbed […]