JUST imagine that you were a farmer working the land that had been in your family for generations. You have a reputation for high quality crops and a contract with the producer of an American table sauce that sells well in the UK.

Then you received a letter stating your land was to be compulsorily purchased to allow the development of a new energy source. You already have some wind turbines tucked away amongst your crops but it wasn't more of those, though they would be welcome. The plan is for a huge open cast lignite mine, soft brown coal, and an associated coal fired power station, both of which will add quite unacceptable extra carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

You think it must be a hoax as this is the year, 2015, when at least 192 nations will meet in Paris, in December, to agree at last on how to slow down climate change. They hope to find a way of restricting the temperature rise to less than two degrees by the end of the century. Your own government will be attending, so the letter can't be real.

But it is. An energy company, in Poland, intends to begin the new development, close to the German border, next year. It will involve legally forcing 6,000 people from their land, wiping out 22 villages, and developing a 46 square mile open-cast pit to serve a new 1000MW coal fired power station. To rub it in, the soft brown coal, lignite, not only produces dust and contaminates a falling water table, but it also releases more CO2 than other coals.

It's difficult for the threatened farmers to understand the thinking behind these plans, particularly as they don't have to balance energy security, and independence from Russian gas, against the resulting CO2. However 90 percent of the national electricity supply is already coal fired, and Poland is the only European country that has increased CO2 emissions in the last decade. New, 40 year lasting, coal fired electricity isn't the answer.

The next couple of years will be challenging as there's wide ranging opposition to the proposal which will likely get final approval early next year. The farmers and villagers have the help of a large international corporation, Heinz, who take most of the large tomato crop and so have a vested interest in keeping the farmers farming.

Some times it needs more than letters to the papers and waving placards. Such threats should mean manning the barricades, and I like to think that if I lived there I would be on one of the tractors as I can support self-interest as long as it reduces CO2.