Coal Hard Facts

In death throes for decades now, accelerating fast, king coal has been dethroned, denied and denigrated by most of the world. Everywhere, including the United States notwithstanding inane political promises to restore a moribund coal generating industry, coal is being replaced by alternative energy. “China’s installed photovoltaic (PV) capacity more than doubled last year, turning the country into the world’s biggest producer of solar energy by capacity, the National Energy Administration (NEA) said...” Reuters, February 17^th. Although still a huge polluter, China dominates the world in the manufacture of solar panels and wind-power generators, made fast and cheap, just as the U.S. deprioritized these valuable job-creating manufactures and created new policies pushing for non-existent jobs in “Dead Coal.” The signs of government-promulated industrial resurrection, rare as they are, draw rather strong negative reactions… like this effort in Australia.

In the fourth leading extractor of coal in the world, where a lot of jobs depend on the export of coal (Australia is using less and less of the toxic substance every year – only 12% of Aussie coal is used domestically), “The Australian government is considering a proposal to build one of the world’s largest coal mines in this remote locale, known as the Galilee Basin [in Abbot Point], where acacia and eucalyptus trees grow wild between scattered creeks.

“An Indian conglomerate, the Adani Group, has asked for a taxpayer-financed loan of as much as $800 million to make the enormous project viable, promising to create thousands of jobs in return.” New York Times, October 14^th. This effort would double Aussie output. But there is something about such a hypocritical effort – especially in an era of the Paris climate change accord to which Australia is a signatory – that rubs Australians the wrong way. Though wavering, the current government was elected in part on the promise of “more jobs” (sound familiar) and stands behind this project. After all, this coal would be virtually entirely exported.

“But the plan has met intense opposition in Australia and abroad, focusing attention on a question with global resonance: Given the threat of climate change and the slowing global demand for coal, does the world really need another giant mine, especially at the public’s expense?

“Adani has proposed building six open-cut pits and five underground complexes capable of producing as much as 66 million tons of coal a year. New infrastructure to support the mine — a rail line to the coast and an expanded port — would also make it economically feasible to extract coal from at least eight additional sites in the Galilee Basin…

“‘How it can be constructed — at a time when the whole world is committed to move away from fossil fuels — is madness that most people just can’t understand,’ said Geoffrey Cousins, president of the Australian Conservation Foundation.

“The project, known as the Carmichael mine, has provoked strong resistance in part because of its proximity to the Great Barrier Reef, a natural wonder that is already dying because of overheated seawater blamed on climate change. Adani plans to deliver most of the coal to India on shipping routes that critics say would further damage the ecosystem of the world’s greatest system of reefs.

“The debate over the mine has dominated headlines in Australia for months and fueled one of the most fervent environmental campaigns in the nation’s history. Protests have grown in size and frequency, and polls show Australians who oppose the mine outnumber those who support it by more than two-to-one… A group of Indigenous Australians is also challenging Adani’s claim to the land… ‘This is a tipping point,’ said Maree Dibella, a coordinator of the North Queensland Conservation Council, referring to the mine’s role in the global campaign against coal.” NY Times. Because that coal would not be used locally, because India wants more coal, there would be less of an impact locally. It’s somewhat different here in the United States, and while we do export coal, we also tend to use most of what is produced locally… less and less every year

In West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky… coal-producing states… the story is pretty much the same. Coal mines and coal-driven industries are shutting down. In Homer City, Pennsylvania, “Locals look out their windows to see whether there are clouds drifting from the massive smokestacks, indicating the hulking plant is still running. If they don’t see any, they wonder whether the owners have thrown in the towel for good...

“As the Trump administration dismantles one of the world’s most aggressive programs to confront climate change, it is invoking the suffering of communities like this one, where the coal power plant that anchors the economy teeters on insolvency… Yet as the administration declares an end to what it calls the ‘war on coal,’ Homer City isn’t any less under siege.

“The plant is an albatross to investors, and a source of increasing anxiety to the hundreds of Pennsylvanians who rely on it for their livelihood. It is likely to remain a loser financially no matter how far President Trump rolls back regulations… ‘I’m not sold on the fact that the war on coal is putting that power plant out of business,’ said Nymick, pointing to competition from cheaper natural gas, solar and wind energy.

“Other U.S. coal facilities are also finding no salvation in the elimination of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, a move the Trump administration promised would reinvigorate them… A fresh round of closures expected to cost at least 850 jobs was announced by Vistra Energy in Texas last week, even as the administration launched its repeal of landmark regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.

“‘The Clean Power Plan is not what hurt coal,’ said Michael Wara, a professor of energy law at Stanford. ‘It is hard to hurt someone more when they were already mortally wounded.’… That’s put the administration in an awkward place. Officials strained to show that repeal of the Obama-era rules would boost the economy, using financial assumptions that many experts dispute — but even so the plan doesn’t do much for the sagging coal industry.

“A coal revival would require more than a Clean Power Plan repeal. It would require a bailout, an even less popular option that the administration is also pushing. The Energy Department’s plan to force regional electricity grids to buy large amounts of coal, unveiled days before the Clean Power Plan repeal was made public, is getting a hostile reception. Oil and gas companies are joining solar and wind advocates to fight the move… ‘The entire energy economics and energy law community thinks it is a crazy proposal,’ Wara said of the subsidy plan.” Los Angeles Times, October 15^th.

So if the U.S. and perhaps the Australian governments are pushing coal projects forward, even though that an impossible task here in the United States, how could those damaged from fossil fuel-driven climate change and simple pollution use the legal system at least to make those who produce these toxic products pay for what they have done?

The realities is that fossil fuel polluters – from those who extract these carbon products to those who use them massively – have never born the hard dollar costs of the resulting medical toxicity and physical damage… even though they have known the realities for a very long time. It has recently come to the surface how these corporate interests, now very much in the pocket of the Trump administration, have paid even high profile academics from prestigious institutions to release purportedly objective scholarly works denying or minimalizing what they knew was accelerating damage from the use of fossil fuels. We’ve been here before.

We were sold a bill of goods by the tobacco industry (see the old ads promulgated by “King Tobacco” half a century ago) with the same campaigns and the same efforts. We found out, they paid billions of dollars for what they did, and their products are restricted and labeled accordingly. But they had individual victims without inflicting the kinds of damage that fossil-fuel-driven global warming is unequivocally creating today. So if the feds are bought and paid for by these industries, perhaps it is time to use to same campaign against the purveyors of massive use of fossil fuels.

“Meanwhile, [in San Francisco,] the city attorney’s office has decided to try a new approach. On September 19, San Francisco filed suit against five of the nation’s largest oil companies demanding they pay for the updates the city needs to protect its residents against climate change. The suit, filed in San Francisco County Superior Court, argues that the corporations—Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Shell, and BP—promoted fossil fuels as “environmentally responsible and essential to human well-being” amid multiple warnings that the planet was in danger.

“The lawsuit cites a slew of examples alleging that the oil companies continued promoting their product when they knew it would harm the environment. A 1968 Stanford Research Institute report, for example, warned the American Petroleum Institute and its members (which includes all of the defendants) that sea level rise and changes to the earth’s environment were almost certain. ‘There seems to be no doubt that the potential damage to our environment could be severe,’ the report reads.” Mother Jones, October 14h. I’m Peter Dekom, and where government policies are out-and-out stupid or seriously conflicted, it may well be time for those impacted to pick up the legal sword and use it.

I’m Peter Dekom, and these inane pro-fossil fuel social and environmental costs are a challenge to human existence, as the recent spate of fires and hurricanes has rather clearly illustrated.