NANC activists met the councillors and the chap from ATH development as they entered County Hall for the planning committee hearing
ironically in front of a statue of a pair of miners - the ones that go down deep mines not the ones that scrape the top off land
Well we went to the planning committee hearing and stood outside with our banners as some of the councillors and the chap from the development company walked past. He definitely saw us. A planning committee hearing is a strange thing. You are allowed 3 minutes to put your case and you can be cross examined by councillors but you can’t ask questions of them or of the opposition. NANC put the arguement that councillors should consider the wider impact of this development and consider the impact burning coal would have in terms of carbon dioxide emissions. But all these guys were interested in were whether there would be lights at night – well, dur, it says so in the application; whether the coal could be transported by rail instead of by lorries – well, dur, the whole point of this exercise is to get coal and sell it and make a profit, not to ‘waste’ money on a rail track a couple of miles long; how much the community would get (10p per tonne of coal extracted = £45,000 for the locals – now divide up your blood money, folks) and what would it look like afterwards. Again – read the proposal – grassland, wetland, scrub and trees – exactly as it is at the moment PLUS the contours won’t change so the hill will still be there. So all those locals who thought they would get a nice park and the noisy motorbike riders would go away will be sadly mistaken. The impression amongst some of the councillors was that the land would be returned to agricultural use – hello? growing crops on a hill? On soil that is at most 1ft thick? I don’t think so! NANC has got hold of a document that shows that when the colliery was closed in 1968 and until 1970 the spoil heap was seeded and the land could be cultivated by a local farmer who was a tennant of the then Coal Board. Judging by the state of the land, that has never happened – well certainly not in recent years. So plus ca change plus ca meme chose – the more things change the more they stay the same.
The chap from ATH amazed everyone when he came out with the line ‘the lights will go out’. We were all speechless – metaphorically and literally as we were not allowed to comment on this outrageous comment. The lights will NOT go out. That is a tactic used by John Hutton (BERR RIP ha ha ha) and the coal industry to frighten us all into believing that coal is an integral part of our energy mix. It is not. It is an integral part of the past not the future. At any one time there is at least one coal fired power station (not to mention nuclear power station but we wont go there as we are not Notts Against Nuclear) that is not functioning for one reason or another. Do we notice? No. Now, some coal fired power stations are due to be closed soon because they do not meet European emission standards but IF – and this is a big IF – the Government actually got their collective finger out and invested in new renewables to meet the EU target of 20% renewables by 2020 then we wouldn’t even notice the lack of coal seeing as most of our renewables are aimed at making electricity – that would be 40% of our electricity from renewables which would more than compensate for the shutting down of those coal fired power stations. But will that happen? We do hope so but energy companies don’t like renewables. Perhaps its because once you have recouped the cost of building and maintenance of a wind turbine you can’t really justify charging the same amount of money for wind or solar cos ITS FREE! So you can’t justifiably make a profit. And thats what it’s all about at the end of the day. Money. Make money while the planet burns. Sorry chaps, money might insulate you for a while from climate change but not forever.
