When might we emigrate to another planet? The mining company is not concerned. Using global coking coal prices, he estimates the coal itself will bring in around $25 billion – of which only around three percent will be spent on the salaries of workers, he predicts. “The idea of this coal mine, it only really came strongly onto my radar quite recently, because I had naively assumed it was such an obviously stupid idea that it would surely never get any traction. Her expertise is obvious as we sit in her front room and she methodically works her way through the tangled planning system, and why she believes West Cumbria Mining has failed to meet its rigorous demands. The Liberal Democrat leader of Cumbria County Council said that “the need for coking coal, the number of jobs on offer and the chance to remove contamination outweighed concerns about climate change and local amenity.”. The name has merit: two years ago, Michael Jackson ate Scurr’s false teeth. The pillars of the Victorian Turkish Baths, which escaped demolition a few years ago, have been streaked green with time and neglect. The colours are flaking off its buildings, and the brickwork is cracked. This latest publication is an attempt to provide quantitative answers to some of the key questions around climate change today: should we frack? “You really don’t want earthquakes around it.”. “A town needs its self-respect,” writes Jeremy Godwin of Penrith, in The Whitehaven News. But it was enough to secure the almost unanimous support of local politicians from the Labour, Liberal Democrat and Conservative parties. Nor is the company hampered by national emissions targets. She also points out that West Cumbria Mining, to date, has only received approval for the onshore part of the development – the more significant offshore seams have yet to be permitted. The losses will be felt painfully and acutely across the county. UK coal mining saw a sharp decline in the 1970s and had practically disappeared by the start of the 21st century . Their line of thinking is that the consumption of coal is driven by demand; coal produced on the shores of Cumbria and used in the UK and Europe would simply displace coal mined further afield, from regions like Appalachia in the USA. Raymond Scurr is a 71-year-old former miner, who owns a whippet called Michael Jackson – named such because he’s bad, he says (a reference to the 1987 single, rather than recent allegations of sexual abuse). “Mining is a calling that some have and others don’t. This is a list of coal mines in the United Kingdom, sorted by those operating in the 2010s and those closed before this decade.. I think if they can’t find a way of backpedalling from this, I think it’s going to be the end of some political careers.”. Want our celebrated digest of weekly news straight to your inbox? What’s more, given the UK‘s ambitious diplomacy on climate change abroad, the mine “gives rise to substantial cross-boundary or national controversy”. ... Plans for the UK's first deep coal mine in decades will go ahead after the government decided not to intervene. With similar contortions of logic, Cumbria County Council and West Cumbria Mining agreed that the coal mine would actually help to combat climate change. These, he argued, would replace other sources of coal rather than increase UK coal consumption overall. It’s a flaw in their planning application, and grounds for an eventual judicial review, she believes. Chile’s ‘Blue Cop’ will push leaders to protect oceans to heal climate. On the other side of Cumbria, on the eastern edge of the Lake District, another kind of opposition is afoot – one that’s scarcely more organised, given the suddenness of the announcement, but certainly more connected and more attuned to the world of planning, policy and the environment. We’ve had decades in which you could get away with being disingenuous about climate change, nodding to it and how important it is in one sentence, then going off and opening a coal mine in the other, and just got away with that kind of behaviour.”, “But I think they’re going to be really badly caught out by this, because the mood has changed, the school kids are prepared to take to the streets, and people don’t want to vote for this rubbish anymore.”, “More people are getting actually scared by climate change. “That’s the reason fossil fuels are coming out of the ground. Michel Barnier: We need a Green New Deal for Europe. “This mine is opening up, but the question I want to know from all these bigwigs is, why just now are they reopening the mine when they could have kept people in work in 1984?” says Andrew Matthews, who helps run a stall at the market, and who fundraises for an Alzheimer’s charity. The week I visit, the company has been fined £380,000 after a worker punctured his hand through a protective glove and was exposed to plutonium. All are legitimate reasons to reconsider a planning decision, she says. He’s also unconvinced by the argument that this coal is needed to produce steel, although he confesses that the claim has caught the group of environmentalists, used to battling coal used for power generation, off-balance. “Why just now are they reopening the mine when they could have kept people in work in 1984,” asked Andrew Matthews (Photo: Sophie Yeo).

Indeed, among locals, Sellafield and the proposed mine are inextricably linked.

These may appear to be technicalities — coal consumption emits carbon dioxide, wherever it is used and whatever grade is extracted.