Keep it in the ground: Energy giants claim they dig new opencast mines to fund the closure of old ones. Will anyone call their bluff?
Wrapped up in this story is everything that’s wrong with the way our economy works. Corporations ream the land with giant holes, extract a stack of money, then clear out, leaving other people with the costs. There’s a briefer description: legalised theft.
This is an account, scarcely mentioned in the national media, of the massive unfunded liabilities emerging from coalfields throughout Britain that opencast mining companies have been allowed to walk away from. In terms of irresponsibility, it’s comparable to the nuclear industry’s failure to fund its decommissioning costs. And it offers a solid argument, even to those who continue to reject climate science, for keeping fossil fuels in the ground.
Fire and forget: that’s the psychopathic business model we confront