Arthur Scargill to debate at climate camp today
Well sounds like an interesting one to me, well no new coal and lets have workers plans for some alternative jobs say in solar, wind, waves and building thousands of ecological homes….both Arthur and the climate camp have taken on the state and on occassions won….looks like an debate worth listening to, not sure who Arthur will be debating with.
Thanks to Strategist for flagging this up. I think Arthur is debating in the afternoon, so that gives you all a couple of hours to start peddling.
I am down on wednesday talking about Venezuela and on sunday to talk about green economics. Traditionally the Green Party speakers get arrested on the saturday.
From http://www.climatecamp.org.uk/home
“Monday sees Arthur Scargill, ex-president of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) and iconic figure of the 1980’s miners strike who fought against Thatchers attack on the working class and the unions, attend the camp for a discussion on the potential resurgence of coal. There are sure to be lots of different opinions - but for me that’s one of the great things about climate camp. Where else will you find radical environmentalists, energy workers, and local residents all in the same place?”
Beyond parody…
Comment by Mike — 4 August, 2008 @ 9:55 am
“Where else will you find radical environmentalists, energy workers, and local residents all in the same place?””
Scargill isnt an energy worker. He doesnt represent energy workers. The climate camp have made it clear that there is no negotiation or talks with workers in the coal industry over their plans, only measures on how to make then unemployed.
Scargill wants to sink many new deep mines, I know for a fact you wont find a queue at the job centre for those jobs where I live. Scargill wants a return to the old days, the workers in the coal industry want to create sustainable jobs, reduce carbon commissions dramtaically, cut export and import of coal. Under the plans from Scottish open cast workers, we would see a 100% cut in imports and exports of Scottish coal, a 40% cut in reduction and an intial 20% cut in emissions growing to 90% in the future. They want open cast mines reclaimed as sustainable energy parks, and coal workers retrained in the new technologies. The climate camp wont listen to this as it involves another 50 years of gradually reducing coal.
Scragil wants a return to every house burning coal, the climate camp want coal shut down now.
The real debate on the future of coal will, (and already is), taking place elsewhere.
Comment by Jim Monaghan — 4 August, 2008 @ 11:59 am
Well thats great Sacrgill never wanted to help the miners he wanted to rule Labour, hence he refused to ballot the miners which really stuck up my nose, he decided what i wanted to do for me.
As for coal well in the end we are going to dig it up even if only to flog to China or Russia, we have enough pf the stuff to last about 200 years.
I myself would not go down the mines again, but hell it can be used as a youth offending regime.
Comment by Robert — 4 August, 2008 @ 12:48 pm
Some alternative views about the use of ‘clean coal’ no doubt advocated by Auther Scargill today.
From the Guardian Monday March 31 2008
TUC presses for clean coal decision
· Fears that uncertainty will hold back technology
· Campaigners concerned about environment impact
The government comes under renewed pressure today to step up backing for the use of clean coal as part of future electricity generation.
The call to speed up decision-making comes from the TUC’s clean coal task group, which includes representatives from unions and companies within the coal and power industries. It said delays in backing emerging technologies behind clean coal and carbon capture and storage “are causing uncertainty and delaying vital investment, increasing risks to the UK’s security of electricity supplies”.
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: “Carbon capture and storage (CCS) can help make coal clean and [the] government must throw its weight behind the technology if the UK is to maintain coal-fired generation amongst all other sources of power generation, including renewables and nuclear.
“Ministers need to show how they intend to boost research and development into carbon capture and storage, build capture-ready plants and establish a carbon dioxide pipeline infrastructure.”
Publication of the report coincides with the deadline for the pre-qualification stage entries for the government’s competition to develop a coal-fired plant capable of demonstrating the full range of technologies.
The government launched the scheme last year and a number of energy companies have already announced or indicated that they intend to take part in the competition. It is expected to culminate in the construction of a 300-400 megawatt plant, capable of capturing up to 90% of its CO2 emissions.
Britain is seen as an attractive location for CCS plants because of the availability of depleted North Sea oil and gas fields which can be used to store CO2. The government is hoping that the technology developed in Britain will be exported to other countries, such as China and India.
Clean coal has attracted opposition from environmental campaigners concerned about the impact of the continuing use of coal in the battle against climate change.
Mike Farley, the chairman of the clean coal task group said: “If we are to avoid 60% of our electricity coming from gas by 2016, then new clean coal power plants need to be built now. If these are built capture-ready and if CCS is demonstrated in parallel, we will set the right global example.”
A government spokesperson said: “Within seven years one of the world’s first commercial-scale fossil-fuel power plants with CCS will be up and running in the UK, reducing associated emissions by up to 90% … This has tremendous potential in decarbonising our future energy supplies.”
More on clean coal technology
Clean coal technology - Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_coal_technology
Clean coal technology: How it works - BBC (2005)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4468076.stm
Comment by Another view — 4 August, 2008 @ 12:49 pm
And we all know that if we’d gone down the French route with Nuclear power in the 80s,we’d have no spiralling energy prices this winter, and less emissions.
Comment by Jim Johnson — 4 August, 2008 @ 1:12 pm
I don’t understand why so many people believe that CCS is an answer to coal fired power stations. This is an untried and untested technology that doesn’t actually exist but along with nuclear power it will be profitable for big business.
CCS is only a maybe technology, it maybe developed and it maybe deployed and there maybe a place to store the captured carbon. but there is no guarantee that any of this will happen,
Even where this captured carbon can be stored is not certain. North Sea oil fields are being talked about because the gas can be used to force out oil that cannot be accessed by existing technology.
The coal power station at Kingsnorth is being built without CCS on the understanding that CCS will be developed sometime in the future and then the company running the power station will spend vast amounts of cash to fit it. How likely is that?
What we need to do is cut energy use and generate electricity from alternative renewable sources. Unlike CCS and nuclear power, many of these renewables use tried and tested technologies, turbines etc and can be deployed relatively quickly. And this needs to be done now, not in 10 or 20yrs time.
Comment by DuncanB — 4 August, 2008 @ 1:23 pm
Tim Gooden: For a Union Response to Capitalist Climate Change Plans
Comment by Entdinglichung — 4 August, 2008 @ 1:57 pm
Arthur Scargill remains Honorary President of the National Union of Mineworkers and, I think, retains a role in an international miners’ union federation. Therefore if the implication at #2 is that Arthur does not retain union credentials then that is simply untrue.
The criticism that Arthur “wants a return to the ‘old days’” and “wants a return to every house burning coal” is also fictitious - in fact it’s precisely the sort of slander one would expect of the right wing press. One would expect better from a socialist talking about, in Tony Benn’s words, “Britain’s greatest trades union leader”.
Open cast is a blight on the landscape and an environmental hazard opposed by communities everywhere. It desecrates vast expanses of countryside and I doubt has the support of anyone outside the industry. Deep mining avoids this, could create thousands of jobs (that I think would be warmly welcomed by devastated coal communities).
I include below the Energy section of the SLP 2007 manifesto to the SP.
Energy Policy
Scotland has never had an integrated energy policy. As a result, our economy has never been able to plan energy supply and, more important, plan the cost of such a policy.
The situation has become worse during the past 30 years, particularly as a result of the destruction of Scotland’s deep mine coal industry. Our indigenous energy resources are now so badly abused that we have to rely increasingly on coal imports, oil imports, opencast mining and gas for the generation of electricity, despite the fact that we warned that Scotland’s gas supplies would exhaust as a result of using gas to generate electricity.
Economic commonsense plays no part in Scotland’s energy programme. Following the destruction of the coal industry, international gas and oil prices have rocketed and the price of oil and gas on the world market is at an all-time high.
Without a sensible integrated energy policy – based on indigenous clean coal technology, Scotland’s economy will face a major crisis sooner rather than later.
The price for deadly nuclear power is astronomic – at least 450% more expensive than indigenous Scottish deep mined coal, 400% more expensive than gas, and over 350% more expensive than oil.
Commonsense would see dangerous, unnecessary nuclear power phased out as it has been in Denmark, Sweden, Germany and other countries throughout the world.
Scotland needs a long term integrated energy policy based on a deep mine coal industry which is publicly owned and controlled but at the same time our country needs to develop all forms of renewable energy such as wind, wave, tide, geothermal and solar power.
An energy policy of this kind would result in the employment of 50,000 people.
The Socialist Labour Party would reduce Scotland’s dependence on imported oil and gas and would reopen at least 15 pits including those closed in 1992/93. We would also develop 15 new mines, many of them in areas which have suffered vicious deprivation as a result of the pit closure programme.
The Socialist Labour Party’s energy policy is not only cost effective but a policy which would provide cheaper energy for the consumer. Our proposals would actually reduce energy costs, not increase them.
Such an integrated energy policy would include the cost of new technology for power stations and a move away from nuclear power to an indigenous deep mine, clean coal-based, integrated energy policy – a policy which would involve taking the mining industry back into public ownership, the opening or re-opening of 30 coal mines and developing renewable energies.
Already Wales has announced the re-opening or opening of six pits – if it can be done in Wales, it can be done in Scotland.
Comment by Jim — 4 August, 2008 @ 6:25 pm
“The price for deadly nuclear power is astronomic – at least 450% more expensive than indigenous Scottish deep mined coal, 400% more expensive than gas, and over 350% more expensive than oil. ”
Post your figures please and tell us why French Nuclear is cheaper than Oil or Gas.
And cleaner than coal.
Comment by Jim Johnson — 4 August, 2008 @ 6:59 pm
Do the French eat their nuclear waste? Presuming not then they have to dispose of it. Is that cost factored into their “cheap” nuclear power? Clean? You’ve got to be joking!
Comment by Jim — 4 August, 2008 @ 7:44 pm
An NUM view on the future use of clean coal:
Below the contents of a speech made by Steve Kemp, NUM National Secretary to the TUC/CBI Conference in London on 28 February 2006
Chairman:
In addressing the question of climate change and energy, I have noted the comments of Sir David King and I would like to begin my contribution with one of the more important points he has made several times already:
China.
As you would expect with a union with a 120 year history we try to keep in touch with other miners around the world. China is producing 2.1 billion tonnes of coal a year ? 10 times as much as the UK did at its peak in 1913. This will rise to 2.4 billion tonnes in 4 years, when it comes to the climate, that has some impact!
That is why the European Union is funding a clean coal programme in China and why China intends to build its first zero emissions coal fired plant within 15 years. The Chinese are not sitting around when it comes to clean coal technology. They know they have a problem.
Less well known is the fact that 6,000 miners are being killed every year in Chinese mines. As a union we are looking at how we might help them get that fatal accident rate down.
The safety and health of miners and the environmental degradation in coal mining communities are linked together, always have been.
A safer, more productive industry is a cleaner industry. A cleaner, more mechanised industry provides energy more efficiently and does less environmental damage. It is a package.
The EU and the UK should see the linkage here, too. Help us ? and we say this to the CBI members, too ? to get the accident rate down in China. You can sell safety technology and clean coal technology to China. You know that, because your members are already doing it. But don?t forget the UK.
Let me put a few points forward here for our situation:
First, we need to find a way to incentivise cleaner technologies, lower carbon energy or the deep mines will die and Britain will lose access to its coal resource.
This will need to be sorted out at the EU level, too, because of the rules on state aids.
Second, like the Chinese we should be using supercritical boilers ? they have 80% of the worlds? supercritical boilers; and we don?t have a single one ? even though they are designed here. They can cut CO2 emissions by 20% or more.
Third, we should be investing in clean coal power stations like the IGCC ? Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle - or other processes. These can be built next to the pithead ? like the proposal to revive the mothballed Hatfield colliery, instead of leaving the mine in mothballs.
Where pits are close to pipeline networks, then as the technology is proven, carbon capture and storage techniques can pump CO2 into disused North Sea oil and gas wells.
Fourth, instead of relying on imported fuels, we should be using our own coal. There may be only 6 large deep mines still producing, but they do have extensive reserves and there are millions more tonnes of reserves that could be developed, not just in the three mothballed deep mines. There are untouched reserves as well.
Fifth, there needs to be recognition that the market will not deliver security of energy supply by itself. It has not done so. It does not think strategically.
There needs to be a clearer mechanism in the UK that ensures that we do not so easily abandon our energy resources as we have in the past.
Secure our energy, clean up our act and do it efficiently and work internationally. That?s our message.
http://www.num.org.uk/?p=news&c=press
Comment by Another view — 4 August, 2008 @ 8:55 pm
There is a real issue about this term “clean coal”. The Wikipedia article cited by Another View in #4 does help to sort out the confusion.
One problem is that carbon dioxide isn’t dirty. But enough of it would be created by burning the world’s coal reserves to make this planet utterly uninhabitable.
The TUC and Brendan Barber seem to be using clean coal to mean CCS (carbon capture and storage).
But the power industry don’t mean that when they splash the term around - they mean slightly more efficient combustion (a 20% improvement on 1960s technology, for God’s sake). For them, it’s a greenwash term - just slosh it around all over to hide what you’re actually doing.
I don’t believe that the industry has the slightest intention of progressing carbon capture & storage. It’s just something to point to, and say we can build cheap coal power stations now, and do something about the carbon impact later, in 5-10 years time. But I bet, in 5-10 years time it will still be a promise 5-10 years away. A bit like the hydrogen car, it’s actually a deliberate piss-take designed to give the impression something’s on its way and avoid having to do anything now.
Finally, Jim Monaghan #2 “the climate camp want coal shut down now.”. Sorry pal but you don’t know what you’re talking about. The slogan is No New Coal. Not for now, anyway. Show us the CCS first.
Comment by Strategist — 5 August, 2008 @ 1:14 am
See the link for a BBC interview with Arthur Scargill at the Kent Climate camp.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7541910.stm
Comment by Anonymous — 6 August, 2008 @ 5:00 pm
The BBC interview with Arthur Scargill at the Kent Climate Camp is available on YouTube.
Comment by Jim — 7 August, 2008 @ 2:22 am
And the BBC News24 version on the BBC site.
Comment by Jim — 7 August, 2008 @ 2:26 am
I didnt suggest that scargill didnt have union links. The Scottish Coalfields are not represented by the NUM who oppose open-cast mining and have a very small membership actually activelt working in the coalfields.
The industry dont want to spend anything on green measures other than the minumum to continue making money. The workers in the Scottish coalfields however, do want to clean up the industry and have specific plans, that can only be implemented fully in a publicly owned model.
As I have said before, the situation is different in England and Wales in several ways.
As for ‘no new coal’ being different to closing coal down, that is nonsense. Without any new coal the current stations would be closed in a few short years and the reserves would run out quickly.
We have moved on dramatically in the last couple of decades from having a Scotland where most houses burned coal along with most public buildings, to a situation where one new, state of the art, station could see a futher reduction of 40% in coal extraction from our current lowest level in centuries. This, with a stop in exports and imports would see the workers in the industry cutting levels far more than other industries with the generation of renewable energy part of the plan for reclaiming former open cast sites leading to a development of replacing coal with renewables and replcing jobs in coal with jobs in renewables.
It is a plan that is rejected by thos who believe in “coal, coal coal” and those who say “no, no, no”.
Mean while workers in the coalfields are in dispute over wage rises and other issues. The most important issue is health and safety where the families of two of our ayrshire comrades who died on site last year are now having to follow a trial against Scottish Coal after they surpsingly didnt plead guilty to the charges.
The issue of safety and the issue of wages are linked through the fact that coal workers in Scotland generally work 60 hour weeks and are paid just over 7 per hour.
The workers have rejected the latest offer, although the num and num/cosa accepted it.
Comment by Jim Monaghan — 7 August, 2008 @ 10:47 am