Power to the People: Coal Mining Restrictions Are NOT Going Anywhere!

No matter how quiet lawmakers in Alberta, Canada, thought they were when they revoked a policy on coal mining, tens of thousands of Albertans came together to make sure the government reversed its decision – and so it did!

“The government simply did not imagine that this kind of mobilization could happen,” says Laurie Adkin, a political science professor at the University of Alberta. “This mobilization is unprecedented. I cannot think of any example in Alberta’s history where this kind of coalition has come together and on this scale.”

According to a poll, around 70% of Albertans are against the expansion of coal mining in much of the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, including surface coal mining on land which was prohibited since 1976 – until it was temporarily deemed “no longer required” by the government. Canada represents 10% of the global supply for metallurgical coal, but since the world is “starting to look at ways of steelmaking that are low-emission” as Blake Shaffer, assistant professor of economics at the University of Calgary, puts it, Alberta’s reserves of hydrogen and renewable energy sources could make a serious dent in the demand for metallurgical coal in steel manufacturing.