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Clean coal is still black at heart
SUSTAINABILITY, clean coal, geosequestration . . . all hype words the coal industry and governments like to banter around to convince us that climate change, while admitting its existence, is not a problem. They can resolve the problem of carbon dioxide gas emissions and still expand the coal industry.Yippee, but are we convinced?
Well not me! When it comes to your doorstep in the form of an open cut proposal, you start to investigate things and this is what I have found out the coal industry's myths and spin.
Sustainability is a word the coal industry decided to attach to itself around 1999/2000. Is it sustainable? No way and never will be. But by entering the word sustainable/sustainability into its language, the industry has achieved the ultimate con in that the media and government now also use sustainable to describe coal-mining developments.
The much-bandied term "sustainable" is derived from and is defined in the national strategy on Ecologically Sustainable Development as "development (ESD) using, conserving and enhancing the community's resources so that ecological processes, on which life depends, are maintained, and the total quality of life, now and in the future, can be increased". I do not see a process that enhances climate change and global warming as increasing the total quality of life, now and in to the future.
Clean coal is a term that actually refers to coal of lower sulphur content so it burns with less SOx and NOx (oxides of nitrogen and sulphur) emissions, reducing acid rain. But it always produces the same amount of carbon dioxide gas, no matter how much you wash it, clean it or call it clean. Burn it and you get carbon dioxide gas, the main fuel of climate change. There is no such thing as clean coal.
Geosequestration is the solution whereby the industry can continue to dig up coal and sell it to be burned, while acknowledging that it produces carbon dioxide gas. Geosequestration will allow the industry to bury the nasty by-product into the bowels of the earth. Guess what. It's only a theory. Big question is, will it stay there? But the coal industry has sold the idea to the Government, which is sinking millions of dollars into the research.
Meantime the coal industry keeps expanding on the promise that it has the solution to the carbon dioxide emissions problem in hand. Well it doesn't.
Enough is enough for those concerned about Anvil Hill. Communities, environmental groups and individuals have met to draw a line in the sand at the proposed coalmine. Anvil Hill mine will produce nine to 10.5 million tonnes of coal a year. The area over the deposit is the largest slice of remnant woodlands on the floor of the central Hunter Valley and is home to a high diversity of endangered species of flora and fauna. A mine at Anvil Hill would be a local and global environmental disaster.
What about current employment and existing mines? This is not about existing mining operations and their employees. This is about not expanding the industry any further and developing a transition to other truly sustainable developments for the future.
Any expansion of Newcastle Port will accelerate dangerous climate change.
The Federal Government and coal companies plan to spend more than $1 billion upgrading the coal infrastructure in the Hunter Valley. The NSW Government is ramming through coal mine proposals. This reveals the extent to which Australian governments are actively fuelling climate change, despite acknowledging the threat it poses. Coal mines such as Anvil Hill and the coal infrastructure expansions they drive lock the Hunter further into coal and jeopardise the development of any sustainable future for the valley.
By fuelling climate change they contribute to our nation's greatest threat.
Christine Phelps is president of the community group Anvil Hill Project Watch Association, http://www.anvilhill.org.au/, formed in 1999 in response to the granting of an exploration lease for coal. The area over the deposit is the largest slice of remnant woodlands on the floor of the central Hunter Valley.
This article first ran in the Newcastle Herald 02/02/2006
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Created: 24 Feb 2006 | Last updated: 24 Feb 2006
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