Opencast mining is vandalism

It is both environmentally destructive and a clear contributor to climate change. If the government won't act to stop it, we must
Kevin Bland
guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 23 2008 00.07 GMT

Climate change is real and happening. Of course the Earth has natural cycles of heating and cooling but human activites - burning fossil fuels, livestock production, waste disposal and deforestation - accelerate the process. As a species we must take urgent and collective action to avert the disastrous consequences of the climate changing for the worse.
Coal has played a big part in the situation that we find ourselves in. Burning coal has in part led to the current climate crises and continues to do so. We continue to burn coal unabated to produce electricity and so we contribute to our own demise. Coal is the least efficient way of producing energy from a fossil fuel, and even with technology improving, there is no way currently of removing the CO2 from the process on a large enough scale, or soon enough to count.
There are currently 30 applications to extract coal in the UK. Fourteen of these are in the north east. All are for surface - or opencast - mines. All to feed coal fired power stations.
For me and many other folk opencast mining is vandalism. The scale of destruction of a modern opencast operation is obscene. How UK Coal, Miller Argent and the Banks Group can use phases such as "sustainable" and "environmentally sensitive" about opencast is beyond me. A look over an opencast site leaves no doubt as to the environmental destruction of such an operation.
Recently residents took us on a guided walk over a site that UK Coal plan to opencast. The guide that lead the walk - a local historian - was amazingly well informed and the son of a mining family. He explained the political and social aspects of mining over the last few 100 years - this site at Bradley/Billingside woods is part of the fabric of mining heritage in the North East.
We went on to look at the wildlife in the area: red kite nests, ponds where crested newts have their home, badger sets in ancient holly copses and the woodland that provides habitat for the nearly extinct red squirrels. UK coal has stated that the mining history and the unique wildlife is of no significance.
The supposedly democratic planning process is also being undermined. A recent planning application for a new Banks Group opencast close to Cramlington was correctly refused by Northumberland County Council as the proposed site is located within an opencast constraint area. The ironically named communities minister at the time, Hazel Blears, stepped in and overruled them.
As open cast mining expands across the UK, this is the experience of many more communities at many more sites.
We must not allow new coal-fired power stations to be built. The same goes for the new opencast mines planned to feed them. The government has failed to act, and the corporate interests continue to push for the wrong courses of action. In this situation, it is left to ordinary folk to act, and we have very little time.