As industry boosters and their supporters in Washington call for increased production of coal to convert into liquid fuel mountain communities in Eastern Kentucky rally to protect their rights. More than 100 years of extracting coal from the earth has hardly been a boon for the residents of Pike County, Kentucky. The land is scarred, the ground water contaminated, and mining accidents all too common. The true cost of coal, as this documentary from Appalshop and the Appalachian Media Institute and part of the Human Rights Watch International Film Festival shows, is the price people pay everyday in their lives.

Yet as energy prices soar, a process that releases almost double the global warming emissions per gallon as regular gasoline is being sold as a way to reduce our energy dependence. Find out here why it won’t work and why the true cost of coal is one that we cannot afford.

The Human Rights Watch International Film Festival runs in NYC through June 26. The Human Rights Watch film series Youth Producing Change plays in New York June 20-21 and then heads to Boston, London, and San Francisco, and schools across North America.