Category: Coal

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Australia Coal

 April 15, 1994 – Greenpeace sues to stop a coal-fired power station being built

Thirty one years ago, on this day, April 15th, 1994,

Greenpeace yesterday sought to test a new international treaty on global warming for the first time by filing a lawsuit to stop the construction of a $220 million New South Wales power station. The executive director of Greenpeace, Ms Lynette Thorstensen, said the action would test the force of the United Nations convention on climate change, which seeks to cut greenhouse gases.

1994 Kelly, H. 1994. Greenpeace Sues To Halt Building. The Age, 16 April, p.4.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 361ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Australia had signed up to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which talked about stabilising emissions at 1990 levels by 2000 and of course, Australia had nominally agreed to 20% cut by 2005 though this was totally hedged with caveats to make it meaningless.

Building new coal fired power stations was going to blow an enormous hole in all of that. Ironically, this was the day that the UNFCCC became international law, because 90 days had passed since enough nations had ratified it. 

What I think we can learn from this Is that government pronouncements and policy statements are not worth a bucket of warm spit unless there are vibrant, uncooptable and irrepressible social movements forcing them to keep at least some of their promises. They will promise you anything that you want to hear and worry about the consequences of being caught having broken promises later.

What happened next

Greenpeace lost that court case in, I think, November of 1994 and the coal fired power station got built. 

And the emissions kept climbing.

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

April 15, 1965 – Murray Bookchin warns about carbon dioxide build-up

April 15, 1969-  Coventry lecture – Mellanby says Air Pollution could cause flood… – All Our Yesterdays

April 15, 1974 – war criminal Henry Kissinger gives climate danger speech

April 15, 1974 – Kissinger cites climate concerns

Categories
Australia Carbon Capture and Storage Coal

April 5, 2005 – Clean Coal conference begins in Sydney

Exactly 20 years ago, the first “clean coal” conference began in Sydney. 

“The Australian Coal Association says advances in technology have boosted the prospects for a zero emissions power station in the New South Wales Hunter Valley in the not too distant future.

“New clean coal technology and carbon capture and storage projects will be the main topics on the agenda at this week’s inaugural COAL21 annual conference which gets under way in Sydney today.”

Conference considers clean power generation – ABC News

COAL21 – 1st COAL21 annual conference (Conference) | ETDEWEB

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 380ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Australia had become the world’s biggest coal exporter in 1984 primarily from Queensland and New South Wales. From 1988 Australian political elites had had to pretend to give a damn about carbon dioxide and the greenhouse effect. There had been efforts to get a carbon pricing mechanism (first a tax and then an emissions trading scheme). All of these had come to nothing. 

Australia had pulled out of the negotiations around the Kyoto Protocol, despite having extorted an extremely generous reduction target, the reduction being an increase in their emissions. But nonetheless, there were presentational concerns and probably some well-meaning people within various public and private bodies who genuinely believed that clean coal could be a thing, and it’s always nice to believe technosalvationist fairytales.

What I think we can learn from this is that people believe what they need to believe. People say what they need to say, and the emissions keep climbing. 

What happened next

People said what they wanted to say, other people heard what they wanted to hear, and the emissions kept climbing. 

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

April 5, 1971- a UK scientist explains “pollution in context”

April 5, 2008 – Charlton Heston dies, star of first movie to mention the greenhouse effect

Categories
Australia Carbon Capture and Storage Coal

March 13, 2007 – ACTU talks up “clean coal”

Eighteen years ago, on this day, March 13th, 2007,

Australia’s coal and power generation industries must shoulder a large part of the cost of developing clean coal technologies, investing ”billions not millions” to mitigate climate change, ACTU secretary Greg Combet says. ”We are talking about companies that make multibillion-dollar profits from coal mining. It is only fair that a slice of those profits be directed to the research and development needed to substantially reduce greenhouse emissions,” he said. Speaking from the Hunter Valley, where he was launching a clean coal discussion paper with Opposition environment spokesman Peter Garrett, Mr Combet called for the Federal Government’s Minimum Renewable Energy Target for green electricity generation to be boosted.

Beeby, R. 2007. Put power profits into clean energy: Combet. Canberra Times, 13 March.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384ppm. As of 2025 it is 427ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the ALP, in opposition federally, was using climate as a big stick to beat Prime Minister John Howard with. It had the added advantage of squaring the circle of their support for coal miners and coal mining; they needed something like geosequestration, CCS. So here we have Greg Combet, who would end up as Gillard’s Environment Minister, but that’s for the future, spouting guff about “the industry has to do X or Y,” and this is the classic triangulating position of seeming to be a friend of the worker and chiding industry bosses. It’s all nice theater. 

What I think we can learn from this that CCS is an extremely useful way of squaring various circles. 

But I think we’re now entering the world of nobody really bothering to pretend. We’re into the unmitigated disaster phase of it all.

What happened next Rudd bunged 100 million of Australian taxpayers dollars at a Global Carbon Capture and Storage Initiative. So, money well spent. 

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

March 13, 1989  – UK Energy Department shits all over everyone’s future by dissing Toronto Target

March 13, 1992 – Australian climate advocates try to get government to see sense… (fail, obvs).

March 13, 2001 – Bush breaks election promise to regulate C02 emissions…

March 13, 2010 – first UNEP Emissions Gap report

Categories
Coal Upcoming events

Upcoming event: “The Coal in Violence” – Andreas Malm, Thurs Nov 7, 6pm, London

So, presumably a Swedish journalist travelling around British coal fields in the 1920s and wondering about global warming will have been influenced by Svante Arrhenius, the Swedish scientist who’d done the calculations about what carbon dioxide build-up would mean in 1895 as a way of distracting himself from a messy divorce.

But maybe not. Maybe Lotka (see footnote)? In any case, all will be revealed by Andreas Malm (for it is he), this coming Thursday, in Bloomsbury, London.

Text and image below copied and pasted from the website of the Social History Society.

6.00pm, Followed by a wine reception

Andreas Malm, author of How to Blow Up A Pipeline: learning to fight in a world on fire, discusses British histories of coal intertwined with Swedish working-class literature in the 2024 Raphael Samuel Memorial Lecture.

In 1928, a young Ivar Lo Johansson, soon to become the leading Swedish working-class novelist, published what might have been the first consistently dire warning about the climatic effects of large-scale coal combustion. It was included in a book of reportage about life in the British coal districts. What led Lo Johansson to his precocious prediction? This lecture will trace the intersecting paths of subaltern wilderness politics and early climate science in the Swedish movement of working-class literature in general and the works of Lo Johansson in particular.

Andreas Malm is associate senior professor of human ecology at Lund University, Sweden. His latest books, both out from Verso in October, are The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Earth and, written with Wim Carton, Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown.

For information contact Katy Pettit k.pettit@bbk.ac.uk

Book via Eventbrite

And back to All Our Yesterdays text.

  1. Hat-tip to the Morning Star‘s excellent “what’s on” listing, inevitably called “The Red List.”)

2. That Lotka thing? See this from 1983.

Categories
Coal Fossil fuels Industry Associations technosalvationism United Kingdom

October 4, 1993 – Coal chief wringing his hands about “greenhouse,” promises new tech

Thirty one years ago, on this day, October 4th, 1993,

London, Sunday It was difficult to see how global carbon dioxide emissions could be stabilised by 2000 unless governments implemented politically unacceptable decisions, the new chief executive of the World Coal Institute said last week.

But Dr Alex Toohey, a former director of Shell Coal International who took over as head of the WCI on Friday, said the move toward clean coal technologies would be stepped up in the next five years.

Noack, K. 1993. Emission Cuts A Hard Choice, Says Coal Chief. The Age, 4 October.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 357ppm. As of 2024 it is 422ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that the fossil fuel lobbyists had managed to defeat a strong deal at the Rio Earth Summit in June 1992. But the issue clearly wasn’t going to go away because already a bunch of nations had ratified the treaty. And it was clear there was going to be a series of meetings about what to do. The coal industry was still largely helpless because none of the technological options was convincing to them, let alone to anyone else. And so, we see here some hand wringing and some indication of technology as a magic fix. Sprinkle the word “innovation”, bish bosh and you’re done.

What we learn is that the fossil fuel industry was helpless, and naked. The reason it’s fighting so hard now with CCS is because it doesn’t have anything else. 

What happened next? The World Coal Institute changed its name more than once. But you can’t really put that much lipstick on a pig and the emissions kept climbing

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

October 4, 1969 – “If we melt the Antarctic, our problems are solved because all of the ports of the world would vanish and the ocean will rise 200 feet.”

October 4, 1978 – the Interdepartmental group on Climatology meets for the first time…

Categories
China Coal

April 11, 2014 – Greenpeace China releases coal report

Ten years ago, on this day, April 11th, 2014 Greenpeace China releases report

6 things you should know about coal

Issuu https://issuu.com/greenpeace_eastasia/docs/the_end_of_china_s_coal_boom-_6_facts_you_should_k

Interview https://www.ecologic.eu/10568

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 398.8ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that China was industrialising at warp speed. That of course meant coal and all that that entails, both in local air pollution and also carbon dioxide emissions. 

What we learn from this is that outfits like Greenpeace China, my goodness, what a tough environment to be in…

What happened next? China then also overtook the US as number one emitter (but not per capita). And China has continued to be a Rorschach test. You can see whatever you want to see in it

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

April 11th, 1987 – A matter of… Primo Levi’s death

 April 11, 1989 – “Ark” sinks its credApril 11 – Interview with Sophie Gabrielle about memes vs Armageddon….

Categories
Australia Coal

April 5, 2005 – Coal21 holds first conference

Nineteen years ago, on this day, April 5th, 2005, the coal lobby got moving on spouting idiotic guff about carbon capture and storage.

5th April 2005 COAL21 first conference

https://fossil.energy.gov/archives/cslf/sites/default/files/documents/Taskforce_PublicCommunicationandOutreach.pdf

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 380ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that everyone was still banging on about technology as the solution, not that messy UNFCCC process with all those poor nations with their hands out. 

And of course, Kyoto had been ratified. So Australia was going to have to engage with whatever came after Kyoto if it wanted to be a player. The Coal21 process was shambling along, it had been launched just over a year earlier. And everyone still believed (or pretended to do so) that technology would save the day.

What we learn is that there’s no necessary connection between reality and technology advocacy.

What happened next? The CCS bandwagon rolled on, especially thanks to huge injections of cash from Kevin Rudd. But then, regardless, the wheels fell off in 2009-10, in Australia at least. 

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

April 5, 1971- a UK scientist explains “pollution in context”

April 5, 2008 – Charlton Heston dies, star of first movie to mention the greenhouse effect

Categories
Coal United States of America

March 28, 2017 – Trump “brings back coal”

Seven years ago, on this day, March 28th, 2017, the once and future President does another empty stunt.

28 March 2017 Trump signs exec order to ‘bring back coal’ https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/trumps-order-on-energy-promises-coal-jobs-and-a-clean-environment-what-does-that-look-like

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 406ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

The context was that Donald Trump had just enjoyed the biggliest inauguration crowd ever, and was doing the normal sorts of grift that conmen do, signing executive orders and bleating and ranting. 

 What we learn is that people want to believe them. By the time this post, which was drafted in December of 2023, is published, it will be clearer about whether Trump is indeed going to be the Republican nominee for president. It’s looking at the stage that he will be. But anything can happen.  (update – but hasn’t yet, Jan 27 2024).

What happened next, Trump did not bring back coal, because coal is in structural decline. And you can piss in the wind, and that seems to be enough for some people….

See also Obama’s vague shout out in 2008…

Also on this day: 

March 28, 2010 – protestors block Newcastle coal terminal #auspol

March 28, 2017 – Heartland Institute spamming science teachers

Categories
Australia Carbon Capture and Storage Coal

March 26, 2007 – Lavoisier Group lay into CCS

Seventeen years ago, on this day, March 26th, 2007, the broken clocks at the Lavoisier Group (a denialist outfit) were right about CCS, with an article in the Brisbane Courier Mail denouncing it as a boondoggle that would not ‘work’ but would waste a lot of money.

Last month Federal Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd announced Labor’s National Clean Coal Initiative.

Roughly speaking, the term clean coal refers to various technologies for removing carbon dioxide from coal when it is used to generate electricity, both before and after combustion occurs. The term encompasses carbon capture and storage technologies.

Rudd’s policy commits $500 million of taxpayer funds on the development of these technologies, with the proviso that each taxpayer dollar must be matched by two private sector dollars.

Rudd also proclaimed that Labor would establish an emissions trading scheme, set renewable energy targets, develop plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, convene a summit on climate change and ratify the Kyoto protocol.

Apart from ratifying an obsolete international treaty and organising yet another Canberra talkfest, Labor’s policy of subsidising corporations, making grandiose plans and setting impressive-sounding targets is eerily similar to existing Government policy.

The Howard Government happily boasts about Australia meeting its Kyoto targets and has already set up a taskforce to examine emissions trading schemes.

Its Low Emissions Technology Demonstration Fund has committed taxpayer funds of $500 million for research, with the proviso that each taxpayer dollar must be matched by—you guessed it—two private sector dollars. Additional funding is planned for future years.

Robson, A. 2007. Clean coal is all hot air. Courier Mail, March 26

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 384ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that a few days before the ACTU had been in the news, promoting CCS. And everyone was talking about CCS; the Lavoisier Group were keen to try to debunk it. 

What we learn from this is that just because they’re climate denialists and idiots, doesn’t mean they’re wrong about the plausibility of a technology, even if it is being pushed as a solution for a problem that they don’t believe exists. Stopped clocks right twice a day and all that. 

What happened next The Lavoisier Group, which was essentially Ray Evans and his mates funded by Hugh Morgan, kept going and were pretty effective at what they did. This was also in the lead up to Labor Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd‘s conference in Parliament as opposition leader on March 31 2007 when he said that “climate change is the great moral challenge of our time.” 

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

March 26, 1979 – Exxon meets a climate scientist

March 26, 1993 – UK government to ratify climate treaty

Categories
Australia Carbon Capture and Storage Coal

March 24, 2004 – Launch of Coal21 National Plan

Twenty years ago, on this day, March 24th, 2004, all that nonsense about “clean coal” got a boost.

LAST Wednesday Federal Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane launched COAL21, a plan of action aimed at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions arising from the use of coal in electricity generation.

O’Neill, M. (2004) Coal industry’s plans to clean up its act should not be lightly dismissed .Canberra Times, March 30.

The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 377ppm. As of 2024 it is 425ppm, but check here for daily measures. 

The context was that Liberal Prime Minister John Howard had pulled Australia out of the Kyoto negotiations in 2002. And therefore, technology-centric so-called solutions, such as CCS were flavour of the month. There was an Energy White Paper on the way. And it was a battle between fossil fuels and renewables. Things like Coal21 provide nice talking points, and sources of sound bites and images for supporters of the status quo to pretend matters are in hand.

What we learn is that much of what seems to be the official government policy aimed at making everyone’s lives better, especially Vorsprung durch Technik, is in fact, short-term PR stunts, where it really doesn’t matter if it comes off or not. It only has to last until slightly beyond the next election. And as long as it’s all plausibly deniable, then the politicians and funders are largely happy. 

What happened next 

Coal21 had some conferences. And then various projects were announced and didn’t eventuate or were failures even under their own terms – looking at you Gorgon. But that’s okay because their success or failure in the real world was kind of irrelevant. They were there primarily to support the continued existence of the fossil fuel industry. 

What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.

Also on this day: 

March 24, 1989 – Exxon Valdez vs Alaska. (EV wins)

March 24, 2010 – Scientists explain another bad thing on the horizon, this time on soil.