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King coal under siege
Wendy Frew, Sydney Morning Herald
Australia’s biggest export industry, under pressure over climate change, also faces attack on other fronts.
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The executives of Centennial Coal thought they had found the perfect place for their annual meeting, in the bowels of the Menzies Hotel in Carrington Street in Sydney central business district, away from public view and protesters. Australia’s largest independent coal company had been attracting media attention because of its proposed giant mine at Anvil Hill, in the Upper Hunter Valley, and executives feared its meeting would be disrupted by environmental activists.
Police suggested the Menzies had the “most secure room in Sydney” and provided a handful of plainclothes officers in case there was any trouble. But it was to no avail.
The meeting hadn’t been going long when 11 environmental activists burst through a fire door. “We are here because Centennial Coal has plans to massively increase its coalmining in the Hunter Valley,” Greenpeace’s energy campaigner, Mark Wakeham, proclaimed to a room full of startled investors.
The protesters were quickly bundled back onto the street while Centennial’s executives recovered their composure.
The company is not the only coalminer under the spotlight.
In NSW there is a rising tide of public opposition to the industry because of the greenhouse gases generated when coal is burnt. There are also concerns about the threat to water supplies posed by open-cut and long-wall mining and the displacement of other industries, such as thoroughbred breeding, winemaking, farming and tourism, as mining encroaches into new territory.
In the past the industry has been able to brush off the complaints. Employing tens of thousands of workers, providing hundreds of millions of dollars in state royalties revenues, supplying cheap power to industry and making a huge export contribution, it received bi-partisan political support.
But times are changing. Coal is widely recognised as a major climate change culprit that is contributing to rising global temperatures and sea levels, and more frequent and more fierce storms and bushfires.
(2 Dec 2006)
UPDATE: just added this entry
Coal or happiness: you can’t have both
David Roberts, Gristmill
There’s a great op-ed in the NYT today making the argument that, however much Malthus and his heirs have fallen out of favor, they may have the last laugh. Limits are back, baby!
Here are two memes I’m happy to see getting out into the mainstream:
- In the words of a recent interviewee (watch for it tomorrow): Coal is the enemy of the human race.
- This, from the last paragraph:
… we really need to start thinking hard about how our societies — especially those that are already very rich — can maintain their social and political stability, and satisfy the aspirations of their citizens, when we can no longer count on endless economic growth.
(29 Nov 2006)
Gristmill has become adament about coal in recent posts: Coal is the enemy of the human race. -BA
Can we lock greenhouse gases away in rocks?
Sandi Doughton, Seattle Times
…The idea of burying heat-trapping air pollutants, such as carbon dioxide, may sound far-fetched, but it has emerged as a leading strategy to combat global warming. Commercial-scale operations are already under way in Canada, Norway and Algeria. The PNNL project is one of dozens of small-scale tests planned across the United States.
The technology isn’t new. For decades, the oil industry has been injecting carbon dioxide underground to force more petroleum out of fields where production has dropped.
An international review panel concluded last year that carbon dioxide from power plants can be locked up underground without leaking, contaminating groundwater or posing a risk to people, if projects are carefully designed.
“There’s no single, silver bullet for addressing climate change,” said Jim Dooley, senior staff scientist for PNNL’s Joint Global Climate Change Research Institute. “But this could be 30 to 40 percent of the solution.”
While some critics say carbon storage is only a stop-gap measure that could actually hinder the shift to cleaner energy sources, most environmental groups are backing the approach.
“While we would prefer to see more emphasis on energy efficiency and renewable-energy sources like wind, solar and biomass, there are a lot of coal plants being built and proposed, and they should be equipped with carbon capture and storage,” said David Hawkins, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Climate Center.
(24 Nov 2006)
Good background information from a mainstream newspaper. -BA
The Southern Appalachians
America’s Spare Batteries
Jennifer Oladipo, Pine Magazine
As the country scrambles for new ways to maintain our electrified lifestyles, black coal rocks are beginning to look like gold bricks, touted as the cheaper, cleaner option. But residents who live in the Appalachian regions of West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, where coal-mining methods have become particularly destructive and difficult to remedy, pay a high price.
With President Bush acknowledging America’s oil addiction in his state of the union address, and oil companies like BP turning their PR efforts to clean, green energy campaigns, the energy debate is basking in the mainstream spotlight.
But discussions focus on coming issues like peak oil, resurgent nuclear power and “alternative” energy, ignoring a current source that causes massive damage today. Coal is touted as a quick fix to our energy concerns, already providing half of the country’s electricity. But in some places, coal mining is the biggest problem.
Mountaintop removal mining, or MTR, is aptly named. During the process, trees are clear-cut from the land, which is then leveled with explosives to get at coal seams, or layers of coal deposits that sit like the frosting inside a cake. Mountains have multiple seams, so are blasted several times. What’s left of the blown-up mountains is useless to mining companies, which shovel what they call “overburden” into nearby valleys that house creeks, streams, and habitat for countless wildlife. The pollution and roads torn up by heavy machinery also wreak havoc on people who live nearby.
Perhaps because it occurs in the South, far from the business or tourism sectors, mountaintop removal coal mining is a non-issue. At most, it is a local issue, isolated in “backward” communities.
(27 Nov 2006)
