Greens call for all coal mines to close in NSW

Date
    February 8, 2015
    Sydney Morning Herald

The NSW Greens will step up the attack on coal, calling for exports to end in five years and existing mines to be phased out.   

The coal election policy will be outlined on Sunday by Greens upper house MP Jeremy Buckingham, just days after Premier Mike Baird faced noisy protests opening the Whitehaven Coal mine at Maules Creek, which the government says will provide 400 jobs.

Farmers have also been angered by last month's planning approval for Chinese coal miner Shenhua near the Liverpool Plains.

Mr Buckingham said the Greens were moving beyond the party's previous focus on "no new mines" to push for the complete phase out of coal, which would necessitate an economic plan for NSW coal producing regions to diversify into other, sustainable industries.

"It's time to talk about how coal is over, especially with the Baird government's rabid backing of coal," said Mr Buckingham.

A recent article in Nature concluded that 95 per cent of Australian coal reserves needed to stay in the ground to meet global warming targets. This means only three years more production in NSW at current rates, according to the Greens.

"The question is will NSW have a planned and managed phase-out strategy for coal, or will we wait for a chaotic collapse of the industry?" said Mr Buckingham.

The Greens want coal mining royalties lifted by 2 per cent, and mining royalties by 1 per cent, to divert $250 million a year to transition coal mining communities away from coal.

Mr Buckingham said food processing and sustainable agriculture were viable job creation opportunities.

"It will be a complex, long-term and difficult process, but we need to begin it now otherwise we will end up with a nasty shock."

The Greens' policy calls for coal mining licences to be reassessed in line with a limit of less than 600 million tonnes left to be extracted in NSW to meet the "carbon budget" of keeping within two degrees of global warming.

Existing coal mines would be reviewed and given a timeline to wind down and cease operations.

Mr Buckingham said coal mining royalties were "significant but not essential to the budget of NSW", and had plateaued.

"At the moment we have Mike Baird and the Coalition going hard on approving coal mines, and Labor in hiding on it. Labor are putting political pragmatism, and trying to win Hunter seats, ahead of what needs to be done," said Mr Buckingham.

In 2013, former Opposition Leader John Robertson backed away from comments he reportedly made at a public forum that Labor was working on a plan to phase out coal.

well there goes Qld...

cods wrote on Feb 8^th, 2015 at 8:46am:



Queensland a one trick pony cods?
Who's fault is that.

The Greens are a great political party.      

John Smith wrote on Feb 8^th, 2015 at 9:01am:



Let me guess, to be a great political party in your eyes, a party needs to 'me too' to all lib lab policies?

Like lib and lab do to each other.

I'm all for the cessation of using coal for our energy needs. However, there needs to be a reliable, cost-effective alternative in place that has been well and truly tested before we stop using coal. Any other course of action is simply reckless and irresponsible, as the Greens have proven to be time and time again.

Armchair_Politician wrote on Feb 8^th, 2015 at 9:57am:




Now, now, lets not get all sane and logical when discussing green's policy. At no time was there any mention on how all this new industry or even the old industry was going to be powered once the coal fired lights went off.

We all know there is no currently operating alternate power source that isn't being supported by coal or nuclear, but that isn't an issue for the green's because the magical fairy that lights up the green's offices will power the world. You just have to believe and that is the problem, not enough people believe in the magical power fairy and that is the only reason we are still burning coal.

Now Im not talking about a figurative fairy but an actual magic fairy that is the cornerstone of all green's policy.

Armchair_Politician wrote on Feb 8^th, 2015 at 9:59am:


the problem is that when push comes to shove, they don't always do what's right for the environment ... with the greens, ideology trumps environment everytime