Coal miners union focuses on sustainable future

KERRY O'BRIEN: As concern about climate change escalates, Australia's coal industry has been the focus of increasing attention. Tonight, the union representing the nation's 20,000 coal miners is revealing publicly for the first time a dramatic policy shift. The Construction, Forestry and Mining Union, or CFMEU, will give its public endorsement on Kyoto treaty on global warming, a trade in carbon dioxide emissions and an increase in renewable energy targets, despite concerns about job losses in the industry. The union also is joining green groups in a campaign urging coal companies to dramatically increase their investment into the search for clean coal technology. As Matt Peacock reports, the union's change of heart is driven in part by its concerns about the industry's future.MATT PEACOCK: It's the early morning shift change at Mandalong mine in the Hunter Valley coal country, north of Sydney. The national president of the Coal Mining Union, Tony Maher, is here with a message for the miners.TONY MAHER: We need to come out with a position that doesn't run away from climate change. Global warming is a global problem, so what we've got to do is deal with the CO2 emissions.MATT PEACOCK: It's green rhetoric coming from a union which for years has been the arch enemy of environmentalists.TONY MAHER: We're the concrete it, chop it down and dig it up and burn it union and we can't change that.MATT PEACOCK: But those days are now over and what is driving the change of heart isn't just concern over global warming. It's the survival of it members' job.TONY MAHER: It is time now we came out publicly because our members' job security depends on the industry cleaning up its act.MATT PEACOCK: And there is a new urgency behind the union's shift - a growing campaign by Greenpeace to ban the development of any new coal mines.BEN PEARSON, GREENPEACE: We are saying to the Australian coal industry that, frankly, your days are numbered; if we are going to save this planet and deal with climate change, we need to have an immediate moratorium on new coal mines and be looking at actually getting the Australian economy weaned off coal, both for electricity generation domestically and also for export revenue. TONY MAHER: People at the moment are being demonised in their communities. You go to the Hunter Valley and pick up the paper and you would believe that all the mine workers working at these coal mines, it is their fault about global warming. That's how people feel and they are dead sick of it.UNIONIST: You've got a position by the NSW Greens and some of the conservation groups which simply say the answer to this problem is to shut down the Australian coal mining industry. That is crap.MATT PEACOCK: Last week the union's national council resolved the evidence on climate change is undeniable and a grave threat and urged immediate ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by Australia, a domestic greenhouse gas emissions trading scheme, more than doubling Australia's target for renewable energy like solar and wind power, and a campaign to force coal companies to massively increase their investment into so called "clean coal" technology.BEN PEARSON: It's a step in the right direction in that they are taking climate change seriously, talking about Kyoto and the need to act, but until they recognise we need a moratorium on new coal mines and need to move towards getting Australia off its coal addiction, frankly, they will only be a marginal part of the debate.MATT PEACOCK: But while Greenpeace energy campaigner Ben Pearson is sceptical, it's a different story for the Australian Conservation Foundation's Don Henry who sees the union's new stance as a major shift.DON HENRY: These big coal mining companies at the moment are responsible for a lot of damage to our climate. It is costing us big time, but the union is very smart because long term it can cost jobs as well. What is crucial here is these companies invest billions of dollars of private sector investment to start reducing emissions from coal.MATT PEACOCK: The union is pinning its hope on the "clean coal" technology.TONY MAHER: It's a funny term, really, "clean coal", but all it means is getting the CO2 emissions as close to zero as possible.TONY MAHER: There are a range of technologies that are available to ensure that it has very low and in some cases zero emissions from the burning of coal. That's where we have to get to. It takes money. MATT PEACOCK: Essentially the plan is to take the CO2 gas out of the coal as it is burnt and bury it back underground into un-minable coal seams, old oil and gas fields or saline aquifers, but the technology is untried commercially and still a long way off.BEN PEARSON: We won't even know if it works for another 10, 15 years. Now we need to act on climate change in 10 years so we won't know if CCS works until frankly it is too late.MATT PEACOCK: Australian coal companies currently spend $300 million on clean coal research. That's not enough, says the union.TONY MAHER: That represents about 15 cents a tonne. Now for companies that are making billions of dollars profits, I mean BHP alone made nearly $14 billion profit this year, that's far too small. It needs to be at least a dollar a tonne and we will be campaigning to have that increased.MATT PEACOCK: The miners union is hoping to mobilise overseas pension funds and others to pressure coal companies to invest $2 billion into the carbon capture technology.DON HENRY: I'd be very happy to sit down and talk with the unions because I think that I agree strongly with them, the big coal mining companies are not investing enough in cleaning up their act.MATT PEACOCK: The Australian Coal Association, which is yet the see the union's new policy, says its present voluntary investment is what is necessary to fund current research projects over the next five years. But even if Australia's power stations did use clean technology, three quarters of the nation's coal still goes to the big greenhouse polluters like China. Not our problem, says the union.TONY MAHER: It would be like asking the Middle Eastern oil countries to take responsibility for US oil pollution.MATT PEACOCK: With many scientists, though, now alarmed that earlier greenhouse projections were underestimates, environmentalists are warning that time is running out.BEN PEARSON: Let's remember that every tonne of coal that we export from Australia comes back to us as climate change. It comes back to us as droughts and water shortages and comes back to us as sea level rises.TONY MAHER: We get $25 billion a year in export revenue. That is the biggest single commodity earner or export earner for this country. It would be economic suicide for the country to strangle that export. It's not going to happen.