The coal industry’s death by a thousand cuts

James Hansen and other scientists have figured out that if we want to get carbon dioxide emissions back to a safe level, we’ll need to stop using coal for electricity by the year 2030. This is a bit of a problem, given that in Australia 12 new coal plants have just been approved.

I’ve been reading an article about how new coal projects have been slowed in the USA, called A messy but practical strategy for phasing out the US coal fleet, by Tom Nace over at Grist.org. Nace demonstrates how many proposed coal plants were canceled, not because of any one action by activists, but simply because of lots of small actions taken in different areas which affected the fossil fuel companies.

He calls it a death by a thousand cuts. The activists used lots of different methods, and business issues played a part too. Some of the factors that led to the cancellations were:

• direct action protests
• petition drives
• renewable portfolio standards (similar to our Mandatory Renewable Energy Targets, I think)
• rising construction costs
• competition from wind power
• lawsuits
• and the prospect of climate legislation, even though it’s not settled yet.

Nace shows how the number of proposed coal plants in the US has dropped significantly, and feels that it’s time to move on to the next stage: phasing out the old plants. And he recommends using the same ‘war of attrition’ methods to ensure that they keep making progress towards their goal.

We’re still in the first stage here in Australia: stopping new coal-fired power plants. I was pretty disheartened to find out that a dozen new ones have been proposed recently. The fossil fuel companies don’t believe there’ll be anything to stop them from raking in the profits at our expense, no opposition from the government or from the people.

But Nace’s article gives me hope. We don’t have to come up with the silver bullet that will stop new coal projects. We just have to keep working at it, using whatever methods we can, and getting more and more citizens to join in.

There’s a great website called CoalSwarm that could be really useful to Australians trying to prevent climate change. It’s a citizen group, with a wiki set up so that people can share their information and make contact with other groups who have the same goals.

They’ve got a page about Australian coal projects, although it could do with some updates. That’s the beauty of a wiki, though – anyone with information can join and share their little bit of knowledge with everyone else.

So let’s keep up the good work. Let’s keep increasing our energy efficiency, switching to wind and solar, signing petitions, going to protests, and hassling our politicians to stop subsidising coal. It working in the US, and I think it’ll work here too.