Fossil fools in unholy alliance

 

Written by: Nick G. on 9 June 2023

A South Australian company that once sought to use its Labor Party contacts to win approval for it to mine uranium inside the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary is in the news again – but under a new name.

Marathon Resources rebadged itself as Leigh Creek Energy Ltd on 3 September 2015 after purchasing the Leigh Creek Energy Project from Marathon’s then largest shareholder, ARP Tri-Energy Pty Ltd. 

Opposition to Leigh Creek Energy’s proposal for in-situ, or underground coal gasification (UCG) was opposed by the Adnyamathanha traditional owners and by conservationists. UCG differs from fracking in that it has to first burn coal underground to release the gases that are then captured and sold on the market.

The Adnyamathanha were also the traditional owners of the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary.

We wrote about opposition to Leigh Creek Energy in 2018 (see here Vanguard: Oppose the Leigh Creek UCG proposal! (vanguard-cpaml.blogspot.com) ).

Chinese social-imperialism wanted “in” on the uranium project through its giant China International Trade and Investment Corporation, the Pacific region operations of which were headed by Chen Zeng. The blogger mike-servethepeople wrote about China’s investment in Marathon here: servethepeople: Chinese increase stake in Marathon (mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com) .

They have remained a Top 20 shareholder in the Leigh Creek Energy until 2021 by which time they had focussed their attention, and their investments, on Australian coal, iron and aluminium.

Having been rebadged once, Marathon – as Leigh Creek Energy – rebadged itself again on 28 March 2022, this time as “clean green” NeuRizer Ltd, claiming to be “Australia’s first carbon neutral producer of urea fertiliser - the building block of crop production around the world”. Not a bad claim for a company that has not even started production.

NeuRizer aims to use the same UCG process to convert coal from its solid state into a gaseous form, resulting in the production of synthesis gas (syngas) containing methane and hydrogen, which is then further refined into urea fertiliser.

However, it has run into problems with the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO), a legal body acting for the Conservation Council of SA, which has written to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) asking it to investigate whether NeuRizer had made "misleading or deceptive" carbon-neutral claims.

Part of NeuRizer’s claims to carbon-neutral status relies on the discredited process of purchasing carbon offsets. The Conservation Council SA has responded that urea production using this process is “a very carbon-hungry process”.

Chinese finance capital continues to be heavily invested in Marathon/Leigh Creek Energy/ NeuRizen. In addition to CITIC’s shareholdings, NeuRizen raised $21 million in new capital on 30 March 2017 when it sold a new release of 150 million shares to Hong Kong based China New Energy Ltd.

China New Energy is heavily involved in fossil fuels, with large asset holdings in China. They are joint owners with Shanxi Meijin Energy Ltd in 3 steel mills, 3 gas-fired power stations, and 4 coking coal and PCI (pulverised coal injection) mines. The latter uses thermal coal rather than the more expense coking coal in a process in which coal particles are injected into blast furnaces.

The two largest shareholders in NeuRizer are now China New Energy Ltd (12.96%) and Citicorp Nominees Pty Ltd (11.86%).

On June 1, 2023 NeuRizer announced that it had signed a binding contract with Meijin Energy Investments (MEI), part of the Meijin Group, the largest integrated hydrogen company in China, to produce hydrogen at two Chinese sites using the UCG process. 

We wish the Environmental Defenders Office of the Conservation Council SA every success in challenging NeuRizer’s greenwashing attempts. 

NeuRizer’s unholy alliance with Chinese fossil fuel giants is not in the interests of the working classes of either country, and is part of capitalism’s destructive war on nature.

 

Exposing Glencore's greenwashing

(Photo credit: "NT Borroloola Indigenous travel to Glencore in Sydney" by lockthegate is licensed under CC BY 2.0.)

 Written by: Omar Vera on 23 October 2022

Omar Vera is a Colombian journalist, researcher of environmental conflicts and social movements, and director of the techno-activist and journalistic collective El Turbión (https://elturbion.com ). He is leading a campaign to link together people opposed to mining multinational Glencore which operates 16 of Australia's coal mines. The following is a presentation recently made to an ICOR webinar on the environment - eds.

 

Coal, energy and war

The coal business has become one of the most lucrative in the world today. The post-COVID-19 economic revival plans of the major economies of the global north have called for a significant increase in the production of electrical energy destined mainly for analog and digital industries, commerce and, to a lesser extent, domestic consumption. This has multiplied the demand for fossil fuels, mainly extracted from southern countries, and destined to be burned in thermoelectric plants.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), in 2021 the global demand for electricity rose by 6% to more than 1,500 Twh and the use of thermal coal for electricity generation increased by 9% to a level never before recorded to cover 36% of this voracious consumption that has China, the United States, India and Europe, especially Germany, as the countries that burned the largest amount of this mineral. Likewise, according to the international entity, CO 2 emissions related to electric energy were 36.3 billion metric tons, the highest amount ever recorded, of which the majority were related to coal burning, which corresponded to 15.5 billion tons (gigatonnes). Europe was the largest contributor of this greenhouse gas with more than 700 grams of CO 2 per kWh produced, followed by China, the United States and India.

At the beginning of 2022, war broke out in Ukraine, after months of tensions over gas prices from Russia and uncertainty about the future of energy production in Europe. The shortage not only sent international fossil fuel prices soaring, but also caused the world's strongest economies to turn to coal, which reached its highest price in history on March 8 at USD 439 per tonne.

In short, the big mining companies are richer today than ever before thanks to the dependence on fossil fuels to enforce the economic revival plans of the imperialist bourgeoisie, to the unjust war in Ukraine and to the power they wield over coal exporting countries which, like Colombia, are located in the global south. Meanwhile, we see how the plans for 'decarbonization' of the world, the agreements of the Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP) and the internal regulations of the countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are going down the drain.

The voracious appetite of the most powerful economies and the large international financial monopolies is destroying life on the planet, while the peoples who suffer colonial and neocolonial oppression are left with holes in the earth, the waters of our rivers and our contaminated soils, displaced communities and thousands of sick and disabled workers to deliver coal to them.
 
Our research

Since 2012, El Turbión has accompanied union organizations of mine workers and communities affected by coal mining in northern Colombia. At that time, workers at the La Jagua de Ibirico mine, which until a few years ago was the fourth largest open-pit coal mine in the world, rose up and carried out a 92-day strike against Glencore, a company they accused of evading taxes in Colombia, committing all kinds of abuses against workers (an estimated 1,200 workers were ill out of the more than 4,000 who worked at the mine) and environmental damage that is impossible to repair after almost three decades of operations.

From there, we have documented the impacts of coal mining on the rainforest, rivers, soils and air in northern Colombia, where the country's largest extraction pits are located, and we have accompanied the struggles of the workers and the affected indigenous, Afro-descendant and peasant communities to vindicate their rights and strengthen, through investigative journalism, their capacity for organization and collective bargaining. We have also investigated human rights violations committed in mining regions and the responsibility of companies such as Glencore and Drummond in the murders of trade unionists, forced displacement of communities and the death of at least 4,000 indigenous Wayúu children from physical hunger and thirst due to water grabbing for mining at El Cerrejón, the largest open-pit coal mine in Latin America.

Over time, Glencore became the largest mining company in the world, precisely thanks to the 'relaxation' of the rules of the global north regarding the consumption of coal for electricity production and the global shortage of the mineral derived from the port crisis and the war in Ukraine. This, of course, in addition to various financial maneuvers by the company to strengthen its monopoly, which included aggressive acquisitions of mines around the world, closure of some of its facilities with massive layoffs of thousands of workers, evasion of taxes and environmental remediation obligations, and even the use of child slave labor by its suppliers, all of these behaviors denounced by different social organizations worldwide.

In 2021, this company whose headquarters are located in the city of Baar in Switzerland, reached total revenues of USD 203,751 million dollars (203.7 billion in English), and counts among its investors the pension funds of countries such as Sweden and Denmark, public companies in the electricity sector and various capital funds (many of them of a public nature in the countries of the global north) that benefit from the company's bad practices in oppressed nations and its gigantic contribution to the emission of greenhouse gases. It currently operates 16 coal mines in Australia, the leading exporter of this fuel; 8 in South Africa, the fifth largest exporter; and 1 in Colombia.

In this country, in this Colombia that is located in a corner of South America, between 2021 and 2022 Glencore took control of the El Cerrejón mine and closed those of La Jagua de Ibirico and Calenturitas, throwing thousands of workers into the street and returning to the Colombian State the mining lots and licenses to be sold to another company or to resume activities there, depending on the winds of the international market. In this way, it managed to evade a good part of its responsibilities with environmental, labor and criminal reparations for three decades of activities, while informing its shareholders of an exemplary conduct in its operations and assuring to maintain one of the lowest carbon emissions of the extractive industries in a gigantic greenwashing operation that assures it an important flow of capital.

For the first half of this year Glencore had extracted 55.4 million metric tons (mt) of thermal coal from its mines in the world, of which it had already sold 35, obtaining revenues of USD 13,598 million: 27.6 mt were exported from Australia, 6.3 mt from South Africa and 10.8 from Colombia, according to the half-yearly report published for its investors on its website. Despite complaints from environmentalists, Indigenous peoples and workers, the company expects to increase production by the end of this year, as well as its sales to the global north and its profits.

We at El Turbión are working on a cross-border investigation with investigative journalist collectives from South Africa, Switzerland, Denmark and Sweden, and information from Australia to expose this 'green' greenwashing and other questionable behavior by the company.
 
With this we intend to:

1. reveal the environmental impacts produced by the coal mining activity developed by Glencore in Colombia and the possible contradictions between these and the information reported by the company in Switzerland and to its investors in different European countries.
2. Compare this situation with that of Australia and South Africa, and possibly include Canada, where exploration work is being carried out.
3. Expose the green lies that Glencore spreads in its home country (Switzerland) and among its investors in terms of environmental impacts and violations of human and labor rights.
4. Create a public repository of information on Glencore's misbehavior (which can be organized as a mapping database, for example) in its coal mining operations, which can then be extended to its other activities.
5. To provide the world's social and workers' movements with meaningful information about the company's behavior, so that knowledge about it can be deepened and more effective strategies can be built as people around the world struggle to stop the human, environmental, social and labor rights violations it commits.

Thank you.

Goans protest coal rail line expansion

 Written by: Nick G. on 23 November 2020

Australia is not the only place where Indian coal giant Adani is facing opposition to its coal and railway expansion projects.

In the small former Portuguese colony of Goa, on India’s south western coastline, tens of thousands of Goans are fighting to stop an increase in coal imports, and their subsequent 350-kilometre transportation by train to steel plants in the neighbouring state of Karnakata (below).

Each day, an average of nine trains carrying 3800 tonnes of coal each, make the journey, the coal inadequately covered by blue tarpaulins. Coal dust settles on nearby villages and farm lands and contributes to acid rainfalls.

Currently, three importers – Jindal, Adani and Vedanta – bring in some 12 million tonnes of coal from South Africa and Australia. Now they want new infrastructure to enable them to handle up to 51 million tonnes by 2025.

Specifically, they want a new double-track rail line, new highways and the opening up of six rivers for coal-carrying barges.

Citizens and activists in Goa have for long protested against the increased coal movement and the pollution caused by coal dust. They have now banded together under two movements – Goa Against Coal, and Our River, Our Rights – to stop these projects. “We promise to continue and escalate our efforts until we defeat this attempt by a few corporations to destroy our rivers, lands and environment for transient profits,” the groups said. 

In early November, South Western Railway started laying tracks at a village in Goa. The anti-coal movement called for a midnight blockade of the rail line, and up to ten thousand people responded, sitting on the tracks and causing the cancellation of train movements. 

Christabelle Gomes, 22, stood with her friends. “I want to sit home and study. But so much disturbing information on social media that we are going to lose our biodiversity makes me angry. The government thinks we are foolish. I want to stand here. They need to take my consent, our consent.” When asked if she is scared of catching the Covid-19 virus, she replies, “I am not scared of the virus, I am scared of Coal. Why else will I be out at midnight by a railway track?”

Threats to biodiversity

Gomes’s concerns about biodiversity are widely shared. 

Goa, which is well known for its idyllic sandy beaches on the shores of the Arabian sea, is bound to its east by the densely wooded and biodiverse ranges called the Western Ghats. For coal to reach the steel factories from the coal port, it would have to traverse the Ghats.  This would entail takeover of 113.86 hectares of forest land and the felling of 18,451 trees. It would disrupt sensitive habitats, including the Bhagwan Mahavir Wildlife Sanctuary and the Dandeli-Anshi Tiger Reserve. The expansion of the highway connecting the port to the steel belt will cost another 12,000 trees. Also on the cards is an electrical transmission corridor along the same alignment.

Opposition growing

In Goa, the people’s movement is picking up pace.

Several of Goa’s parliamentary parties including the Goa Forward Party (GFP) and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), took part in the rail protest on November 3.

Another joined on November 18 when the opposition Nationalist Congress Party formally announced its opposition to the double tracking of the South Western Railway.

"We oppose the coal corridor 100 per cent. All people are against it. NCP is also against it," state president of the NCP Jose Phillip D'Souza told a press conference in Panaji.

Over the past few weeks, the panchayats or village councils in 54 of Goa’s 183 villages have passed resolutions opposing the movement of coal through their areas.

Abhijit Prabhudesai, founder of an environmental advocacy group called Rainbow Warriors, predicted that “If the government does not relent, the agitation is going to grow and take bolder steps.”

 

Climate change: Beware green swans with fat tails!

Written by: Nick G. on 1 February 2020 

Sometimes human language fails to find adequate expressions to accurately and scientifically describe phenomena beyond our lived experience.

At the two extremes of matter in motion, where observations require extremely precise mathematical calculation, scientists fall back on metaphor and poetry to describe phenomena. Particle physicists attribute to a range of sub-atomic particles known as quarks the properties of “charm”, “colour” and “flavour”. Astrophysicists have given us “white dwarfs”, “black holes” and more.

In Capital Marx revealed in painstaking detail the economic laws of motion of modern society derived from his analysis of the production, distribution and exchange of commodities and embedded in the various circuits of capital.  Bourgeois economists have spent 150 years distorting and denying Marxist political economy. Part of that distortion and denial is the creation of terms which capture surface appearances while obscuring the underlying laws. They develop their own language in the process, for example, “naked shorts” and “dead cat bounces” in the share markets and “deep pools” in the murky world of under-the-counter derivatives.

Fat Tails

The economic and financial crisis of 2007-8 shocked and scared the economic observers of the ruling class.  Instead of using scientifically correct Marxist terminology, they gave us “fat tails” and “black swans” (see below) amongst others.  A fat tail describes an aberration in the bourgeois belief that the economy (profits and losses on the stock market in particular) follows a fairly predictable rise and fall over time.  A horizontal graph will therefore have movement above and below the line within an understood range. Investors try to “read” this movement to buy and sell shares at the most advantageous moments.

However, the law of uneven development does not allow such “normality”. Crises of overproduction (including overproduction of speculative capital, of capital with fictitious values unrelated to the production of commodities) conspire to disrupt the imaginary normality of capitalist activity.  A fat tail is therefore a major spike either above or below the normal range of rises and falls on our horizontal graph line. Fat tails on the “loss” side of the horizontal axis are the stuff of financial nightmares. They are, however, required for a periodic destruction of over-inflated values within the circuits of capital.

Black Swans

2007-8 was such a major nightmare that finance capitalists awoke to the use of a new term: “black swan”. Black swan events were said, post-2007 when the term was coined, to have three characteristics: (i) they are unexpected and rare, thereby lying outside the realm of regular expectations; (ii) their impacts are wide-ranging or extreme; (iii) they can only be explained after the fact. The existence of black swans was based on the proven inability of central banks (such as Australia’s Reserve Bank) to predict and control through regulation and supervision, the desired state of financial stability.

Green Swans

The more perceptive analysts of finance capital are now acknowledging that climate change, as a consequence of the search by fossil fuel corporations for endless and expanded accumulation of capital, is looming as a threat to the capitalist classes of the world as a whole. One such analyst is the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the central banker to the world’s central banks (eg the Reserve Bank in Australia). The BIS has credibility – in their June 2007 Report they warned of an impending crash. The Great Financial Crisis followed. Now the BIS has just released a paper called “Green Swans”.  A green swan event is one arising from global climate change and is qualitatively more dangerous than a black swan event. The authors of the paper argue that green swans are different to black swans in three regards:

1. “there is certainty about the need for ambitious actions despite prevailing uncertainty regarding the timing and nature of impacts of climate change.”

2. “climate catastrophes are even more serious than most systemic financial crises: they could pose an existential threat to humanity, as increasingly emphasized by climate scientists”

3. “the complexity related to climate change is of a higher order than for black swans: the complex chain reactions and cascade effects associated with both physical and transition risks could generate fundamentally unpredictable environmental, geopolitical, social and economic dynamics.”

The BIS is yet to convince itself that the system, post-2007, has returned to anything like the textbook equilibrium of bourgeois economics. It is honest enough to admit that it doesn’t really understand what is going on, that a new black swan event could be hidden under the near-zero, or even in some countries, minus interest rates, or the unusual phenomenon of bond and share values going up at the same time. It has no idea of the severity of a crisis in which a black swan is crossed with a green swan beyond already conceding that green swans “pose an existential threat to humanity”.

Morrison and Trump isolated on climate change

In a major repudiation of the climate change inactivity of leaders such as Scott Morrison and Donald Trump, the authors warn that central banks must not wait for changes in government policy if they are to deliver financial stability and, more broadly, to avoid threats to the existence of capitalism.

They say that central banks must be more proactive, withstand any “sociopolitical backlashes” and lead public opinion away from fossil fuel reliance and in the direction of mobilising “capital for green and low-carbon investments in the broader context of environmentally sustainable development”.  The risk of not doing so is that a green swan systemic financial crisis will blow up and central banks will have to “intervene as ‘climate rescuers of last resort’ and buy large sets of devalued assets, to save the financial system once more.”  Those devalued assets would include coal mines and coal- and gas-fired power stations, as well as the financial institutions exposed to or dependent on fossil fuel corporations.

The spectre of green swans with fat tails is seriously beginning to haunt finance capital.  It is having to concede that saving the system may require sacrificing fossil fuel industries, although in the first place they argue for carbon pricing and various other regulatory measures.

For climate’s sake, capitalism must go!

Capitalism has long disrupted the essential unity of humanity and nature, and that disruption is nearing breaking point It is a catastrophe waiting to happen.  We can no longer endure a system which ha to expand, at the cost of people and their planet, to exist. None of the amusing gobbledygook behind which the bourgeoisie attempts to conceal scientific socialist examination of capitalism will save this system. If we want to avoid the catastrophe and restore balance to the relationship between people and nature, we must reject and abandon capitalism.

Young People Leading on the Challenge of Our Time: Climate Action

Written by: Ned K. on 3 January 2020 

The current bush fires in many parts of Australia, the driest continent on Earth, have had a direct impact on the lives of thousands of Australians, wiped out millions of animals, birds, insects, destroyed flora and increased CO2 emissions in to the atmosphere.

This has caused great hardship for many people who have lost their homes and lives in some cases, but it has also shown the great power of collective action by ordinary working people in fighting the fires and supporting those most in need. A microcosm of how different society would be if run by ordinary people instead of the current set up.

This is in stark contrast to the climate change deniers who run the country, epitomized by the Prime Minister Scott Morrison who turned his back on the looming crisis caused by the fires and went for a holiday in Hawaii!

 

As bad as the bush fires have been this summer, they are only a symptom of a bigger problem, the problem of global warming and climate change. The ruling class know this and occasionally there are reports from their own press about the whole environmental crisis of climate change that gets worse every day.

 

On Thursday 2 January 2020, the Australian Financial Review featured an informative article by Sarah Kaplan headed "Warning Signs Turn Up Heat For Climate Action".

 

The article begins by telling the story of Kallan Benson, the daughter of an environmental scientist. Kallan was five years old in 2010 and remembered her mother explaining to her about the state of the planet, but then she thought that "grown-ups" in government would do what was needed to protect.

Kallan does not feel that way in 2020 and is a climate change activist. She is now national co-ordinator of the youth climate organisation, Fridays For The Future.

 

Kallan now says, "this decade we are going in to now will be the most important of our lives, we're kind of running out of options. And we're running out of time."

 

The journalist, Sarah Kaplan, explores this "running out of time" concern of young people in particular by turning to the science, and the UN commitments and reports on climate change rather than ignoring it as the climate change deniers and greedy multinational corporations do.

 

From these she concludes that the promises made at the 2015 Paris climate accord to limit global warming below 2 degrees Celsius fell way short. According to the latest UN emissions gap report from the UN, temperatures can be expected to rise 3.2 degrees above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century unless the world's top emitters increase their Paris commitments and actually achieve their commitments.

 

Latest scientific reports, according to the article say that even two degrees of warming will prove intolerable for living in parts of the world, which of course could include Australia.

 

A landmark 2018 UN report found that to limit rises to even the lesser 1.5-degree target by 2030, nations would have to halve current CO2 emissions levels!

That is only going to have a chance of happening due to a mighty people's movement crossing national boundaries. This is a distinct possibility, as it has already started and is sure to grow.

 

Reading the Australian Financial Review article made me think how important it is not to portray a doomsday view on climate change as it will lead to despair and possible inaction by some people.

 

Climate change science researcher Kim Cobb from Georgia Technical College in the USA makes the sober point: "Climate change is not a cliff, it's not a pass-fail course. If we meet the 1.5 target, there may still be some ugly surprises. And if we don't make it...it's not that everyone is going to die."

 

In other words, while time is running, there is still time. Cobb ends by saying, "Our decisions over the next 10 years will affect the magnitude of climate change for centuries to come. I don't think it can get more sobering than that".

 

Is It Terrible Or Is It Fine?

 

The impact of human-made climate change on people and the whole planet is terrible, as is the destruction of the environment and whole species since capitalism came in to being.

 

What is fine is that the youth of today and future working class are up for the challenge and have initiated a people power movement that is capturing the imagination of millions of people across the world and isolating the ruling class and its government puppets of all descriptions across many nations.

 

In Australia, the movement is correctly targeting the biggest polluters in the fossil fuel and related industries and their puppets in governments led by the "coal in hand' Morrison Government.

 

The future is bright for the people while the days of the big corporate polluters are numbered.

Siemens told to withdraw from Adani project

Written by: Nick G. on 7 December 2019 

Anti-Adani activists at a rally on Thursday night told representatives of German Siemens AG, the largest manufacturing company in Europe, not to facilitate the Adani coal mine project.

A large crowd carrying placards denouncing Siemens’ involvement in the project gathered outside Luna Park in Sydney where delegates to a rail industry conference were attending a $1500 a head dinner.  Under the smoky haze from the unprecedented number of bushfires that have raged throughout NSW in recent weeks, Adani executives were told to listen to the community and rule out working on Adani's dirty coal mine!

Adani wants to install signalling on the 200km railway that it plans to transport its coal to the coast. And Siemens in the only company in Australia who can do this work — the others, under pressure from the people, have ruled it out.

The ruling class and its political servants fear the capacity of the people, combining and organizing their strength in unions and community organisations, to force change on big corporations.

“Scummo” Morrison has identified secondary boycotts by such groups as a major threat and indicated that new laws may be passed to take away even more rights from the Australian people.

On the 1st of November 2019, in an address to the Queensland Resources Council annual lunch, Morrison identified three new threats to the resources sector: disruptive protest, economic sabotage and, “even more worrying”, a “new form of secondary boycotts”:

Environmental groups are targeting businesses and firms who provide goods or services to firms they don't like, especially in the resources sector. … Some of Australia's largest businesses are now refusing to provide banking, insurance and consulting services to an increasing number of firms who just support through contracted services to the mining sector and the coal sector in particular, which is the nation's second-largest export sector…

 

Let me assure you, this is not something my government intends to allow to go unchecked. Together with the Attorney-General Christian Porter, we are working to identify a series of mechanisms that can successfully outlaw these indulgent and selfish practices that threaten the livelihoods of fellow Australians, especially in our rural and regional areas and especially here in Queensland. Now, we will take our time to get this right. We will do the homework and we're doing that right now. But we must protect our economy from this great threat.

 

In Morrison’s firing line is that section of the old Trade Practices Act (now the Competition and Consumer Act) which provides exemption from prosecution for secondary boycotts to consumer and environmental groups.  He has also identified activist shareholders as part of his “threats” to the economy.

When “Scummo” obscenely fondled a lump of coal that he had brought into the federal parliament (some people at first thought the dead matter was his brain), most people thought he was just a joke.

But the threats he is making against our rights are no joke. They are part of a whole agenda of repression being built up by Morrison to protect the big foreign multinationals and their “Australian economy”.

We must build the broadest coalition of defenders of people’s rights and within that, voice our own agenda for anti-imperialist independence and socialism.

Develop a program of reassurance to win workers from coal

Nick G.               5 June 2019

Many Queensland workers will rightfully feel gutted and betrayed by yesterday’s (June 4, 2019) admission in the Australian that the Adani coal mine, should it proceed to full-scale production, will only generate around 800 jobs.

This contrasts sharply with the hubris of Adani CEO Jeyakumar “JJ” Janakaraj who said, back in April 2016, that the mine would create 10,000 local jobs and provide crucial work opportunities for small- and medium-sized businesses.

This was before Adani was forced into a humiliating downsize operation following its failure to attract funding from banks.  It said that the $16.5bn project would now be a much smaller project costing less than $2bn which it would self-fund. Many doubt its capacity to self-fund.

Yesterday’s press report also stated that the company would not use driverless trucks or other autonomous operations. “JJ” Janakaraj had let the cat out of the bag in his 2016 interview in which he stated: “We will be utilizing at least 45, 400-tonne driverless trucks. All the vehicles will be capable of automation. When we ramp up the mine, everything will be autonomous from mine to port. In our eyes, this is the mine of the future.”

Yesterday’s denial was a sop to the mining section of the CFMEU and to certain politicians still toadying to Adani. It was a totally preposterous statement since capitalists always adopt that technology which enables them to have more surplus value created from fewer workers. Sooner or later, Adani will have to adopt autonomous operations.

Iron ore miner Rio Tinto has adopted autonomous operations in the Pilbara, and the coal industry on the eastern seaboard is doing likewise. Breathing down Adani’s neck are the likes of the Stanwell Corporation-run Meandu coal mine in Queensland and the Whitehaven Coal’s Maules Creek mine in New South Wales where Hitachi Construction Machinery has been promoting and using its Autonomous Haulage Systems (AHS) driverless trucks.

According to a report on australianmining.com.au “Hitachi believes Australian mining will be almost entirely autonomous by 2030, with integrated operations centres, autonomous vehicles, AHS, drone image analysis, and other analytics-focused technologies dominating the landscape.”

Hitachi general manager Eric Green said “discussions about automation in the east coast coal sector have definitely increased over the past 18 months“.

Adani without driverless trucks, trains and other operational capacity is as likely as walking down Collins St and hearing the clack-clack-clack of Remingtons, and the shuffling of carbon paper from some left-over typing pool.

In any case, Adani has already placed orders for AHS vehicles from Komatsu’s Illinois (USA) plant.

Spanish government re-elected on anti-coal, pro-coal miner policy

Instead of alienating workers conned into thinking that Adani would be a jobs paradise, steps must be taken to develop their confidence in a coal-free future. 

In late April’s Spanish general election, the social-democratic Socialist Party increased its vote and was able to again form a coalition government with PODEMOS by promoting a so-called Green New Deal. The Green New Deal was popularised in the US by Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The Green New Deal committed the Spanish government to slash greenhouse emissions to 90% of 1990 levels by 2050, ban fracking and end subsidies for fossil fuels.

The districts with the largest vote for the Green New Deal were coal mining districts.  The previous October, the government agreed with unions and the industry that €220m ($A400m) will be injected into mining regions over the next decade, boosting retirement schemes and retraining. Early retirement will be offered to miners over 48, with environmental restoration work in pit communities and re-skilling schemes for cutting-edge green industries for those ineligible for retirement.

This gave coal miners the assurance that phasing out their industry would not harm their standard of living or alternative job prospects. It didn’t divide workers as, for example, happened in Queensland where the Maritime Union opposes Adani while the mining section of the CFMEU supports it.

Of course, it is easier identifying a few thousand miners employed in currently operational coal mines. It is much more difficult offering retraining and other assurances to workers yet to be employed by a miner whose project is still on the drawing board.

A plan for winning over workers and communities in Australian coal mining areas will have to be different from that adopted in Spain. 

However, the effort must be made by unions, environmentalists, climate change activists and First Peoples in the affected regions – in concert with miners and their communities - to identify those elements of a package to reassure workers that there can be a transition from coal to sustainable and renewable sources of energy.

A program of struggle must be developed which can unite workers against politicians and the big multinational mining corporations.  It must have a sufficiently clear focus of reliance on mass struggle so as not to be diverted into a parliamentary dead-end.

It must complement broader aims of an independent and socialist Australia.