$50bn To End Coal Mining In The USA

Two interesting articles in the Guardian today. The first, by Seamus Milne, discusses the end of the coal mining industry in the UK after a battle of political wills between the Thatcher Government and the Unions in the 1980s. This destruction of union power and wholesale shutdown of the UK's mining industry was a huge political battleground and victory over the miners and change in the mining industry was achieved at a cost that the article pegs at £32bn in today's money.

The second, by environmentalists Felix Kramer and Gil Friend, discusses the potential to recoup hundreds of billions of dollars each year by making an investment of $50bn to buy up the US coal mining industry - and shut it down.

The argument is sound - the mining industry is in a tailspin anyway and by taking ownership of the whole industry and shutting it down in a controlled manner everybody wins: owners recoup some of their investments, employees get retraining and emissions of poisonous by-products like sulphur, merecury and lead; and carbon emissions could be reduced too. The payback comes in all sorts of ways, lower healthcare costs being the most obvious - whilst environmental benefits like reduced smog and acid rain are harder to quantify.

All in a fundamentally sound idea - if it's backed up by an increase in renewable power generation funded by central government.

That's a big 'if' though. With cheap coal powering the Chinese dragon economy and the US in no position to replace coal fired power stations at the sort of scale required to meet its power demands there's obviously more thought required before the idea can even hope to be taken seriously.

However as a call to arms to people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Richard Branson, who have the wherewithal and recognition to start these sorts of discussions it's a very effective proposal.