Watch the trailer for "Elemental."

Elemental tells the story of three individuals united by their deep connection with nature and driven to confront some of the most pressing ecological challenges of our time.

The film follows Rajendra Singh, an Indian government official gone rogue, on a 40-day pilgrimage down India’s once pristine Ganges river, now polluted and dying. Facing community opposition and personal doubts, Singh works to shut down factories, halt construction of dams, and rouse the Indian public to treat their sacred “Mother Ganga” with respect. Across the globe in northern Canada, Eriel Deranger mounts her own “David and Goliath” struggle against the world’s largest industrial development, the Tar Sands, an oil deposit larger than the state of Florida. A young mother and native Denè, Deranger struggles with family challenges while campaigning tirelessly against the Tar Sands and its proposed 2,000-mile Keystone XL Pipeline, which are destroying Indigenous communities and threatening an entire continent.

And in Australia, inventor and entrepreneur Jay Harman searches for investors willing to risk millions on his conviction that nature’s own systems hold the key to our world’s ecological problems. Harman finds his inspiration in the natural world’s profound architecture and creates a revolutionary device that he believes can slow down global warming, but will it work?

Separated by continents yet sharing an unwavering commitment to protecting nature, the characters in this story are complex, flawed, postmodern heroes for whom stemming the tide of environmental destruction fades in and out of view – part mirage, part miracle.

Available in Select Theaters and iTunes May 2013.

Six activists from the environmental group Greenpeace boarded a coal carrier bound for South Korea on the outskirts of Australia's Great Barrier Reef Wednesday calling for an end to exports of the fuel:

The Guardian reports:

The activists boarded the ship from inflatable boats at sunrise and had previously been on board the Rainbow Warrior, Greenpeace's own purpose-built ship. They presented a letter to the captain explaining the action and have set up camp at the bow of the ship.

A spokesman for Greenpeace on the Rainbow Warrior said: "We are calling on the rest of Australia to take whatever action is possible to ensure that we do not double our coal exports. We cannot deal with the climate change that will result from that."

According to research commissioned by Greenpeace, Australia's coal export expansion is the second-largest of 14 proposed fossil fuel enterprises. "We cannot pretend Australia is playing its part to avoid dangerous climate change if these shipments continue," said Greenpeace senior climate campaigner Dr. Georgina Woods.

"Australia's coal exports are the nation's greatest contribution to climate change and plans are under way to roughly double the volume of coal we export," Greenpeace said in a statement.

"Yet every tonne of coal that is exported will return to us as climate change: bushfires, heatwaves and drought."

Ports on the Barrier Reef coast currently export 156 million tons of coal each year, and there are plans to expand that to 953 tons within the next decade. By 2020 an estimated 7,000 ships will traverse the reef every year, up from 5,000 in 2010.

"We have no idea how it's going to play out at this stage," said protester Emma Giles from on board the Panama-flagged ship.

"Either the coastguard will come and get us, or we end up in Korea."

Video via Al Jazeera

Some of the world's largest energy giants are moving into eastern Australia and investing billions of dollars to exploit coal seam gas reserves so vast they could rewrite the world's energy map. Despite generating massive amounts of revenue and creating thousands of new jobs, they are being met by a groundswell of public protest and a rising chorus of concern about the long-term impacts of coal seam gas extraction on the nation's health, environment and land. Coal seam gas has the potential to make Australia an energy superpower, but at what price?

12 protesters were arrested this week during a demonstration of about 150 people at a coal seam gas drilling site. Activists had locked themselves to trees and trucks.

Greens MP Jeremy Buckingham criticized police for being forceful:

"It's a sad reflection on the coal seam gas industry that police have to arrest local residents and force their way through a community blockade so that they can drill for gas," he said in a statement.

"There is no future for coal seam gas in NSW if each drill rig needs to have a police guard to force its way into communities."

The protesters have been keeping a blockade of the drilling site going for nearly two months now, but police seem determined to break any protest that interferes with drilling.

After news that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange had been designated an "Enemy of the State" by the United States government and that communication with him is considered "communicating with the enemy," protesters in Melbourne decided to visit the United States consulate in order to get some questions answered regarding whether or not they too were considered enemies of the state for supporting WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.

They were refused an audience with the consular officials and decided to stage a sit in.

After 3 hours of occupying the foyer and blocking a main entrance to the upper levels, police came in and violently removed the protesters resulting in the arrest of 3, with one of the protesters suffering a dislocated shoulder as a result.

[Caution: Adult language and content, may not be suitable for work, and may be disturbing to some viewers.]

Update: From the Herald Sun:

THE Ethical Standards Department is investigating a physical assault complaint over an incident in which police stripped an Occupy Melbourne protester down to her underwear.
Victoria Police released a statement this evening revealing the Ethical Standards Department was investigating the incident after receiving a complaint.

''The Ethical Standards Department has subsequently received a physical assault complaint in relation to this incident and is investigating. As this investigation is ongoing we will not be commenting further.''

Tuesday morning, Dec. 6, in Melbourne, Australia several police officers approached a female "Occupy" demonstrator who was "wearing" a small tent. Video captured on a cell phone and posted to Youtube shows an officer demanding that the demonstrator remove the tent. She refused, saying that the tent was her clothing.

Upon this refusal, the police officers began cutting and tearing the tent away from the demonstrator, even though the young woman made the officers aware that she wore only her bra and panties underneath. This action involved the use of considerable force and continued despite the demonstrator’s refusal to consent to the forcible disrobing.

Once the tent was stripped away, the demonstrator was left in only her underwear, and in full public view.

A video of Occupy Melbourne protesters recently went viral when protesters decided to launch a protest that mocked a ruling forbidding camping in the parks. Spotting tents in the park, police moved in to break up the encampment only to find the protesters were "wearing" the tents and began to run and laugh at the surprised officers who seemed to find it all amusing as well.

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