Coal...no longer king.

Being from the left i suppose i have an intrinsic soft spot or coal based on the valiant struggles waged by the miners throughout the Labour Movement's history. Indeed my politics were formed by the 1984 struggle. I wondered why ordinary men, just like my Dad, felt so strongly about something that they would go without wages for a year, take beatings on the picket line and at the same time be branded "the enemy within" by the government and media. I knew that couldn't be right. Subsequently i have learnt about their key role in the General Strike and the bringing down of the Heath government in the 70's. The miners have always seen industrial struggle as essentially political and have never shied away from putting the broader aims of our movement at the centre of their disputes.

It is strange therefore to find myself opposing comrades in some sections of the union movement who call for re-opening of the mines based on the governments belief that coal should continue to play a significant part of our energy mix, a point illustrated by this week's announcement that a existing coal fired plant in Kent is to be replaced with another.

In our market driven world, coal has two very attractive qualities. Firstly it is cheap when compared with oil and gas. Secondly it is available from politically stable countries in large quantities (Canada, Australia, America), thus making it a secure commodity. The temptation may be to look for cleaner ways of using coal (including carbon capture) as an alternative strategy to investing sufficiently in renewable technologies. Such an approach must be resisted; if we want to reduce our impact on the planet then we must ensure that renewables are top of our energy mix and the investment necessary is incentivised through regulation of the market using subsidies and things such as feed in tariffs.


As George Monbiot has recently stated the cleanest, cheapest and safest form of carbon capture is to leave it in the ground. This contribution from Monbiot was part of an excellent speech to the Climate Change demo on 8th December which made trudging through some awful weather worthwhile. The 2 video clips below contain his speech and cover many of the fundamental points made on this blog to date.