The NSW Planning and Assessment commission heard from the people on 3rd February 2015, in an all day hearing at Wollongong. The project approval in question is a re-opening of an old Russell Value Colliery, to long-wall coal mining, that will take out even more coal from seams from under parts of the Sydney Water Catchment.

This is a highly charge political challenge.  It is also involves a basic existential question for our species, about how we run our economies in the larger context of the ecosystems of the planet that we depend on. This larger question is better addressed by the field of "Ecological Economics" rather than the awfully disconnected ideas of "Market Economics". Given global warming producing climate change, due to carbon emissions, and our persistance in plundering the planet, our species survivability is in question. It is not  a question of "economic sustainability". We all should know now that what we are doing now is not sustainable.

Clash of human values for resource use

In general terms, we have a serious predicament about how we decide which human values prevail in our use of natural resources, and which time frames are important, the near present, or the forseeable future.  When we frame it as "Market Economics" question, people from our future are simply not around to put in their claims. The people from the future will be most concerned about the availability of fresh water, because by then, the coal from the mine will be long gone, and its remains will be in the atmosphere, in a much warming climate. There will be increased demand for water, because of thirst, and evaporation. There will be difficulty in obtaining enough nutitrious food from vanished agricultural production, and local grown food will be more important.

Where are the Ecological Economists?

Of the makeup of PAC government representatives at the hearing, it is apparent that their is not one member who is trained as an "ecological economist".  One of the 3 present admitted that he was at least an economist by training. For me, theat means a "free market theory" economist, a  narrow reduced frame of reference. I told him he was on the wrong side. Although the field of Ecological Economics is a relatively new one, it has already has a number of generations of legendary teachers and thinkers, and textbooks are available for standard courses at most institutions of higher learning.

Our clash between "Economics" and "Ecology", at this is at the moment one of the defining features of our times, because of the exponential growth of civilization reaching its limits, and because bio-diversity is declining everywhere. The human take of global net primary productivity now does not leave enough for other species. The human take of the most productive biomes, leaves man other species with no place to live.  The human fragmentation of ecosystems with roads and rail, and fragmentation of ecosystems, makes migration of many species difficult.

A formal education into ways of thinking about Ecology and Economics in some form of integrated fashion, would very desirable. Instead the panel are definitely from a background of traditional experience in the mining industry, and plain money market economics.  The record of PAC in a near 100% approval record for new mining projects, is plenty enough evidence of their political and industry bias. There is also no doubt that the all NSW governments always want more mining industry in NSW.

A critical viewpoint from Ecological Economics makes the distinction between "Renewable" and "Non-renewable" resources.  Renewable resources include Natural services like a wetland ecosystem, which captures rainwater, filters it, and releases it at a steady rate. To have any pretence of sustainability, it is a crime to destroy a "renewable" resource stock, which gives a continuous resource flow, such as the wetlands supplying Sydney's water, in order to obtain by destructive means, a one use non-renewable resource, such as coal.  It is an even more heinous crime now, because of the long term effects of the carbon dioxide generated from that non-renewable resource as waste. Who knows what futher wastes where generated using the energy from that one-time use of the coal. As bulk sellers, we are not entitled to know.

The entire scale and range of Nature's world, before humans was a "Renewable Resource" stock. The overall stock and resilience of Nature is now rapidly depleting.

Mining as the Killer Industry

"Farming and mining. They are two of the most important industries in NSW, and today’s trip to Tamworth highlighted to me the importance of ensuring we find ways to ensure they can work together side by side." -- Mike Baird facebook post on 4th February 2015.

Not true. Only one of them is seriously needed for life and civilization. Only one of them is potentially renewable. Only one of them is able to destroy the other. Although farming itself is thought of as renewable, crop growing is also a process of "soil mining". The mined nutrients taken by the food parts of the plants do need to be replaced, otherwise the quantity and nutrition value of our food declines. The soil nutrients are only gradually supplied by the break-down of underlying bedrock. The science of agriculture and permiculture allows for continuity only if natures cycles of returning nutrients back to the ground from human and animal biological wastes are continued. This currently does not happen, especially because our food comes from far away, and returning our wastes to the original source fields is practically impossible.  It is possible to maintain nature's nutrient cycles, and the soil, without fossil fuel inputs, if the food sources are much more local, and biological waste collection and reuse is organized. "Organic farming", is supposedly about the preservation of a renewable resource, as well as having food growth not dependent on the petro-chemical industry.

This metaphor of physical closeness of mining industry bumping up against another industry is true only if we consider it a polite description of a rape scene. Farming and mining can only be side by side, after the mining has gazumped farming land for the mine, its logistics and transport, and  has permanently destroyed the land and soil to below the bedrock to obtain the minerals. Mining is allowed to steal large quantities of water, and pollute even larger amounts of water. It may permanently reduced the amounts of water left for agricultural use for quite some distance around.  Mining is neighbourly like a blood sucking parasite is neighbourly. Mining exports large amounts of raw materials to overseas, and the much greater parts of the profits revenue as well., and leaves the local mess behind as Someone Elses Problem.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks

Although mining does provide the raw materials for most things in our technological civilization, it really does have an image problem. How else are we to explain the bias with which governments promote the industry, and the hype by which it promotes itself. How else can we explain the large amounts of money paid to political party donations, lobbying, and insider party control. How else to explain mining friendly legislation that claims rights to the ground below our houses, and stacking of evaluation committees by mining industry representatives. A good thing by itself does not need so much assistance for promotion. This bias is particularly helped by the large amounts of money that the industry generates, which leads to social blindness to the harm it causes, and to its non-renewable nature.

Yes, mining does generate local jobs and businesses, population growth, rather like a parasite that takes over the hosts mind, and changes the organism from a self supporting entity, to change its organization for the sake of the parasites growth and reproduction. After the mine is finished with plundering the resources, it needs to move to elsewhere.  The enlarged local population and business community must re-organize on more sustainable and mine-less existance. This may not be too successful, leaving behind "rust-belt" towns and economic collapse of local communities, that will subsist with help from government welfare, the cost which will far exceed any income the government recieved from the mine while it was operating.

Mining uses lots of energy to move around all the unwanted rock and soil. Mining creates lots of waste, "overburden", leaving behind big holes and piles of waste. It turns layered rock strata into piles of unorganized rubble.  These render the sites and much of the surrounds useless in supporting human agriculture or bio-diverse ecosystems for the forseeable future.

Because of its political power and intrinsic destructive nature, the mining industry is always in danger of crushing the sustainability of the human species it is professes to serve.

Mining as the economic driver

In this PAC show there was much presentation of arguments about the degree of money and jobs return to the local economy from mining industry.  The degree of current economic dependence on the mining industry is not in doubt, since all the evidence suggests that the Illawarra region is in an economically depressed state, with high youth unemployment, and low job participation rates. Mining the easier stuff by more limited and labor intensive technology has been in the Illawarra region for over a century. Their was then a much bigger social distribution of the mining profits by a larger number of jobs. The mechanisation of mining with low labor usage, and this attempt to reopen mines with a more invasive automated technology indicates that the usefulness of the Mining Era will be soon over for Illawarra. Illawarra also gets some of its water from swampy areas that the mines will destroy.

Peak mining and Peak Energy

The energy and waste costs of mining are increasing exponentially, along with global demand for the raw minerals. At the same time the resource ore percentages are declining, the resources are deeper underground with more "over-burden" to remove, the hardness of containing rocks is greater, and grain size of the contained minerals tends to need to be smaller, and require a finer, exponentially more intensive, pre-extraction grind.   The way humanity is continuing the process is by building the mines at an ever increasing scale and depth. All of these trends require more machines and use up more energy.

At the same time, the rate of supply of Diesel Oil is limited by difficulty in growing our global oil supply rates.  Global oil reserves still exist, but the rate of pumping oil out of the reserves is energy limited. Our oil reserves have increasing energy costs, and extract from harder to get resources, with more complex extraction, transport and processing.

Something has to give in this exponential race of growing energy demand, increasing energy cost, and depleting resource stocks. All such mines will become uneconomic before they run out of resource.  The evidence suggests we are now living in a world which has both "peak fossil fuel energy" and "peak mining". The other reason for needing to decline our economic throughput is Global Warming, and the other "Planetary Boundaries" of ocean acidification, nitrogen excess, biodiversity decline.

In the case of this Wollongong coal mine under the water catchment areas, the side by side relation of Water and Mining resembles a parasitic  worm eating the flesh beneath the skin. The skin of our water ecosystems collapse with "subsidence". The worm has eaten the underlying fleshy bits of interest, excreted them, and moved on. Other negative results include the transport and processing of coal from the mine entrance to loading ships. This is inherantly noisey, and the coal dust is a health hazard to everyone in the area.  The exported coal ends up being burnt, and increases the Earths Temperature Thermostat, its atmosphere carbon dioxide. The local economy is challenged , manipulated and changed by the parasite, and so is the host society.

Global economic collapse

Mining is important in the sense that it provides energy and materials for the global growth economy.  If the local and global outputs of mining drop the global economic output drop. It seems that our global economies, just the like the local mining oriented economies, are not resilient to losing available energy and materials supply, and the human jobs that go with them, that formerly supported overgrown populations.  When the circulation of goods and services drops, the local economies collapse very much the same way as if the mines had suddenly left their local hosts. This has big effects on the financial and banking systems which depend on the real economies. 

A politician tries to keep the mining boom going

The bias of the Mike Baird NSW government in helping the mining industry can be easily deciphered from Mike Baird's facebook posts. Here is the full segment of text of his post on 4th February 2015.

Farming and mining. They are two of the most important industries in NSW, and today’s trip to Tamworth highlighted to me the importance of ensuring we find ways to ensure they can work together side by side.

We announced today a $300 million package to help farmers get better equipped to deal with the challenging weather conditions which will no doubt come in the future.

I also officially opened the Maules Creek mine. It is the largest mine currently under construction in Australia. It will employ 400 locals, and the collaboration between the mining company and the local Indigenous community has been commendable, especially the strong focus on Indigenous employment.

Destroying a renewable resource flows to mine a non-renewable resource stock.

It was very clear from the testimony of witnesses at the PAC, that the subsidence above long wall mining, which takes out an entire rock layer, devastates the swampy ecosystems above. Such mining could possibly avoid subsidence only by back filing the mine void with something like a complete concreate fill. As this does not happen anywhere that I know of, I presume it the extra costs would make the mine "uneconomic".

Photos were shown to the PAC of before and after pictures. Rivers SOS has lots of such pictures and videos on its website.  Before is a thriving bio-diverse swamp, which has lots of spongy, water-filled root systems and soil. Outlet creeks or rivulets from the area are filled with plentiful clear water. After subsidence there is a drained area, with bare rocks where the water outlets were. Remains of former swamp vegetation die off, and are replaced by species suitable to a dry climate, like sclerophyll trees. The altered ecosystem is then vulnerable to further catastrophes like bush fires.

Above : Swampy wetland squelching with health.

It still rains of course, but the water runs of rapidly, mostly down the deep subsidence cracks. Some is likely end up below where the coal layers were. Some of the water run off carries the original soil sediments in muddy flows, and some water reappears at lower landscapes, carrying dissolved minerals, such as iron and manganese.

There should be no doubt that the original biological service of water holding and filtering is destroyed by the subsidence caused by the long wall coal mining, and that the total flows of clean water available for dam storage are decreased, and the flow that does reach the dams will be of a poorer intrinsic quality, that is, more unsuitable for drinking.

Climate Change from Coal burning

ParraCAN is most concerned over the current high rate of approvals for new coal mines in NSW. We have just witnessed the approval of another big sacrifice to the coal industry, to sacrifice the Liverpool Plains.  That was a 268 million tonnes of coal, with big impacts on soil, water and native forests.

This PAC  was for Wollongong Coal, to take out 4.7 million tonnes of coal over 5 years. It also wanted to process 15 million tonnes of coal. Whatever figure we try to believe, this is a terribly small fry coal project, only 5% of the tonnage of the Liverpool plains one.  It is nothing like the size of the Maules Creek project, just officially opened, but which has already been exerting itself in violent rape and take-over of its local region for the past two years.

https://www.facebook.com/notes/stop-mining-sydney-drinking-water-catchments/background-2015-wollongong-coal-catchments-expansion-pac/779479685474424

How can this PAC be a State Significant Project? No way. Money for coal subsidies and jobs is better used in other parts of our economy.

This is really is another State Significant Destruction project. Destruction of wetlands results in a predicted loss of 2.31 megalitres a day. The estimated Coal processing usage is another 2 megalities a day. At a price of retail water about one dollar per kilolitre, thats 4 thousand dollars a day of water loss. The current total loss from the ongoing damage from other coal projects is 8.3 ML/day. This is the same figure as the 3 billion litres a year. It does add up!  I will try to use ML/day as the standard unit for comparison.

Its our water and health at risk

The Doctors for Environment described our current water reserves as being in a state of chronic "base-load water stress". That is , we are using a large proportion of each years rainfall to our catchments, after evaporation and other run-off losses. We are emptying our dams almost as fast as they fill, so that a few bad years of low rainfall, added to further loss of catchment area, added to greater demand from a larger population, could see our dams dry. We will only have ourselves to blame.

The cost of replacing Natures free services with Expensive Technology.

Consider the Sydney Desal Plant. This can extract 250 ML a day from sea water. I suspect the Desal Plant was built in part for the reason that Coal Mining was expected to ruin our water catchment areas. This coal plunder has been planned for a long time. The hatchet jobs to the Planning and Environment legislation and process were done decades ago, in order to reduce legal opposition to this coal plunder. I have been told that a particular 'fix-up' was done for this purpose in 1997, and I will need to find out more detail.

Our backup Desal plant costs half a million dollars a day to maintain its operational status, even when it is not supplying any water, since 2012. It is too expensive to shut it down, then start it up again years later. The Desal plant will be processing water again, when Sydney's dam water reserves fall below 70%.

The Desal plant consumes a lot of electricity. A lot of that power must still needs be from coal burning power stations. NSW electricity is 85 percent from coal. Total carbon emissions will rise if use Desal generated water, and the cost of water will rise.

It costs money for the electricity and pumps to move water around Sydney. Every ML that comes our gravity assisted wetlands, is one that does not have to be pumped out from the DeSal Plant. A kilolitre of water weighs 1 tonne, and it takes energy to push it around, and that energy costs money.

Nature comes last in our priorities

Sydney Catchment Authority releases a proportion of environmental flows to keep our rivers and dependent wildlife alive. As we collapse the source wetlands, it is the environmental flows will need to be reduced sooner in drought times. Our population is expected to keep growing, and thirst and evaporation will increase as global warming proceeds. As our agricultural regions get destroyed by coal mining, global warming and drought, we will need more water to grow our own food locally just to survive. We are going to need every bit of water reserves we can get. I simply cannot imagine that the government will pay for DeSAL water to be pumped back up Dam areas to maintain the river environmental flows. The current river dependent vegetation and wildlife in Sydney will die in coming harder times.

All these changes themselves have flow-on effects. Subsidence reduces flows downstream into other wetland areas. Dams fill up sediment on average about 1% of their capacity each year, so replacement of wetlands with eroding landscape shortens the working life of our dams. The DoPE can only claim limited effects if it draws a very circumscribed boundary in its impacts study.

Why do some people want to do this?

It is hard for me to believe that any government can consider this extractive over-kill a wise plan. It is a behaviour that has been noted to occur in humans facing similar situations of declining resource, or "wins".  It is known as "gambler's fallacy".  It is the same process as enlarging the scale and scope of mining as the overall resource declines. For declining returns from fisheries, people sent in ever bigger boats to the size scale factories, with longer tracking ranges, so that every possible fish was caught, until the reproducing stock crashed so low, their was not enough left to justify one boat trip. The proper response was to understand how that part of Nature's system worked, to limit the catch, to back off to well below a safe sustainable fishing harvast. With minerals being a non-renewable resource, the proper response, is to back off the rate of using it up. When we burn lots of thermal coal for energy, that leaves far less for other purposes. In the case of this new Illawarra Mine proposal their is a false belief that bigger and more intrusive mining techniques will bring properity back again for some. This is not true. It is more likely to bring ruin to many.

Ugo Bardi's Resource Crisis web-site has a unique presentation of the concepts underlying our behavior in the face of resource depletion. Unfortunately when faced with other peoples own innate beliefs and bias, Cassandra was unable to convince people of the truth of her prophecies. This was the ultimate necessary condition for them to come true.

http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/senecas-gamble-how-to-create-your-own.html

The mental miswiring that gives rise to the behavior of gamblers and fishermen can create even larger disasters. With mineral resources, we are seeing something similar: operators redoubling their efforts in the face of diminishing returns of extraction; the story of "shale gas" and "shale oil" is a typical example. Maybe it is done hoping that - somehow - the destruction of one stock will increase the probability to find a new one (or to create one by some technological miracle). So, instead of trying to make mineral stocks last as long as possible, we are rushing to destroy them at the highest possible rate. But, unlike fish stocks that can replenish themselves, minerals do not reproduce. Once we'll have destroyed the rich ores that created our civilization, there will be nothing left behind. We will have ruined ourselves forever.

In the end, the gambler's fallacy is one of the factors that lead people, companies, and entire civilization to a rapid collapse. It is what I have called the "Seneca Cliff" from the words of the ancient Roman philosopher who first noted how "the way to ruin is rapid". In the case described here, we might call it the "Seneca gamble" but, in all cases, it is a ruin that we create with our own hands.

Legislative Protection should be used

The relevant Environment Planning and Assessment Act 1979 , was originally a fine piece of legislation. Since then it became corrupted. The "State Significant Development" clause enables any corrupt dill of a planning minister to overcome any protections in the act.

Their is A special provision in the Act in Sydney water catchment relating to water quality. Clause 34B reads as follows:

Provision is to be made in a Planning Policy requiring a consent authority to refuse to grant consent to a development application relating to any part of the Sydney drinking water catchment unless the consent authority is satisfied that the carrying out of the proposed development would have a neutral or beneficial effect on the quality of water.

The quality of most concern should be quantity , availability and cost are the primary qualities that people in Sydney expect of their water supply, and these are precisely the qualities that long wall coal mining is destroying. If you interpret that clause any other way, that clause in the Act is a piece of unprotective drivel. Therefore, this project and the others like it, should be rejected outright on prima facie evidence, as this project is neither neutral nor beneficial to anything apart from shareholders and directors of rich coal corporations. Anything other than rejection deserves a high court challenge on this clause alone.

Another leak in this legislation, is that even if the legislation strictly meant the average intrinsic composition of water from the catchment areas, this quality given by intact swamp wetlands is (was) so good, that any interference or destruction of wetlands area, could be said to be detrimental, without any before and after intervention sampling, and could be imagined to be detrimental, prior to approval.  The attitude that "lets try long wall coal mining, if it damages the catchment water, we will stop then", is contrary to the spirit of legislation clause 34B. The precautionary and commonsense expectation principle must apply.

Assurances of ‘strict environmental conditions’ for coal mines, particularly long wall mining under the catchment area, are phooey balony from ministers  who are unlikely to fool anyone apart from the feeble-minded. The damage caused by the fundamental operations of mining cannot be undone by legislation or conditions.

Game over for our global civilization

The threshold for melting the Arctic permafrost ice is about 1.5 degrees of global warming. After that please count on the warming to increase rapidly, as it forces the release of another trillion tons of carbon dioxide, with added methane, from the bacterial decomposition of deep layers of buried organic material. Yes, there goes all natures future coal up into the atmosphere, to match the stuff we have already burned.

This will happen, and is already starting to happend, because the Arctic regions warm up to at least double the average value. Some scientists are thinking we are all ready at "game over". Perhaps we have some time. That depends how fast our fossil fuel burning addiction ends.

Carbon dioxide acts like a thermostat on the global average temperature. Its a big planet, so it takes decades for global temperature to respond to the thermostat setting. We have already turned the thermostat far to high for our own good. Very soon nature will turn it up a few degrees further. Some people think we are already critical danger threshold in the Arctic region, making it a “game over” event.

Australia will reach its "game over" contributions of export coal to the rest of the world in a year or two. Commodity prices of coal are dropping for multiple reasons, as global economic growth has gone beyond its safe limits. Plundering Coal from the earth needs to stop now for our own good. The external costs of coal to our communities and economy are something like four times its market price, and the royalties that our government gets for it are a negligible fraction of that commodity price.

We don't need a coal industry, unless you think a hole in your head is a good idea. We have technologies now that are cheaper to run, that are practically zero carbon emissions. We need to be investing in those, and responsible politicians should be talking about a rapid timetable of closing down coal mining and coal burning power stations.

"The road to ruin is rapid " - Seneca

State governments in ecological and moral decline

There is a good comedy show made some years ago called "Yes Minister", or "Yes, Prime Minister". If a new version was made today, it would be called "Yes, Lobbyist", or "Yes Please, Money".

There is only one major political party in Australia, and we should call seriously call it the Lobbyists Party. Its main factions are called Labor and Liberal. Seriously, I have heard that todays' Liberal Party has a faction that insiders refer to as the "Lobbyists faction". They are members of parliament whose chief ability is to say "Yes" to lobbyists. These are the real “Yes-Men”. The coal and mining lobby has long been active in Australia, and they take what they want from politics more directly now.

The recent ICAC findings of corruption on the Obeids and Sydney Water Holdings, and funny donations, are the overflow from what I regards as a cess-pitt of money making, long term, white collar crimes, of business wich is assisted by the actions of the members of the NSW Parliament.

I don't believe either faction has changed their coal ideology, even when they speak fashionable environmental terms, like sustainability. I am not convinced they actually understand them, or they do not want us to understand what politicians mean by them.  For instance any politically statement that contains the term "economic growth" has a giveaway stink. Growth for whom?  Both Labor and Liberal factions rejected the NSW greens proposals to move quickly towards a 100% renewable energy infrastructure. All our current and proposed coal mine projects are incompatible with sustainability, in whatever sense it is used.

Both Labor and Liberal parties rejected the NSW greens proposals to move quickly towards a 100% renewable energy infrastructure. This is a dead giveaway of subservience and control from the fossil fuel and mining industry.  This will in the future, will make our state of NSW a dead giveaway.

I pleaded with the PAC , who have been entrusted this decision, by their adherance to government bias, vested interest, and unsuitability by training, to try some Systems Thinking. 

Our state wants to dig up more coal to burn, thus creating more of Some One Else's problems locally and everywhere. The external costs are greater than the return to a small subset of our local economy.  Our state seems to want to destroy our water supply ecosystems, bit by bit, project by project, so that we won't have enough left,  as global warming caused by the said emissions gets worse. With climate change we get more El Nina's , with killing hot summers and drought. Our state wants to destroy our best soils and agriculture, sacrificed to mining, so they are not there when food becomes expensive. Our state wants to continue our dependence on burning more coal and wants us to get our water by more carbon polluting and expensive means. Our state produces more income inequality so that people cannot afford the more expensive water. These are the system effects of these policies that I find to be clinical, suicidal insanity.

This is insane, on each and every consideration. The destruction of Sydney Water water catchment water quality, should be legislated against, and if you look at the Department Of Planning Environment legislation, it actually is, but any serious intention of the original legislators has been deliberated ignored or neutered. Any government with the slightest inclination towards honest sustainability, or even survivability, would cancel each and every project that threats our water catchments, right now. The current behaviour is good evidence that our government representatives wish to hasten the collapse of this local version of global civilization, and have no idea how to legislate for a "managed decline" to a "sustainable simplicity". They obviously want to continue with "economic growth" and "business as usual".

Off we go to our ecological deaths by thousands and thousands of cuts of those long wall coal death machines. All of them need to be stopped right now. All of them destroying our water supply were approved by this sham PAC process, in sneaky little bits and pieces, when they should never have started on simple principles of Ecological Economics, or sustainability, or just plain common sense. I remember the philospher Craig Dilworth calls this cycle of growth of civilization and its death by depletion and destruction the "Vicious Circle Principle".  Given our global scale,  and scale of global warming, this may be the last cycle. Joseph Tainter blames civilization decline on "decreasing marginal returns to complexity". Government politics seem to have problems managing tand communicating he complexity of ecological economics, and reduce ideas and slogans down to one to three words. Given the voter dismissal of the Queensland LNP government this year, I can safely say that the 1-word slogan "strong" is not always enough to justify maintaining a political party in power.