A debate that may have worldwide consequences is now taking place in Oakland. Developers are proposing to build a coal export facility on the Oakland waterfront that will receive newly mined coal from Utah and ship it to China. The environmental impact could be tremendous:
...the scale of fossil fuel exports from the project would be so big it would have measurable climate change effects on a global scale... if one assumes... exports [of] the maximum allowable coal from the terminal for the 66-year term lease... [that is] about 660 million tons of coal to overseas power plants. These coal-fired plants would burn it and then release as much as 1.5 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.
"The City Council is now considering the health and safety impacts of facilitating the release of over a billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere... The incremental amounts of atmospheric carbon that will drive climate change are measured in billions of tons. A billion tons matters."
The coal processing facility is part of a larger bulk commodity terminal that developers plan for the old Oakland Army Base. Except that they didn't tell anyone coal would be part of the deal until long after the Oakland City Council signed on the dotted line. In fact they pledged that coal operations WOULD NOT happen.
...CCIG is publically on record as having no interest or involvement in
the pursuit of coal-related operations at the former Oakland Army Base.
Now these same developers are basically saying "FU" to Oakland and its government, claiming that all authority over what goes on at the terminal was negotiated away at lease approval time.
That isn't the only stink associated with the coal plan. On Monday, September 21st, the Oakland City Council held a public hearing to take input from the public. As Darwin Bond-Graham, an investigative reporter for the East Bay Express, reports
...the companies behind the coal export proposal bused in dozens of construction workers to the hearing... but none of these workers were allowed to speak to the council.
Instead they were instructed to cede their time to... lobbyists, attorneys, and other experts paid... to speak in favor of coal. It's not the first time, and it won't be the last time, big business literally paid for the appearance of popular support...
...I attempted to interview at least 20 of the workers... but none of them would utter a word... One of these workers [finally] did talk to me.
"Lots of these guys are getting paid their regular hourly wage to be here. They were given free lunches and these T-shirts too," said... a construction worker brought to the meeting.
The money flow by no means stopped there...
In a series of quiet meetings, the businessmen behind a plan to export millions of tons of coal... have offered local churches and environmental organizations money in exchange for their support... The private company that wants to export the coal from the redeveloped old Oakland Army Base met with leaders of West Oakland environmental organizations and several churches to offer them potentially millions of dollars if they would agree to back their plan.
And it paid off. While environmental groups turned them down, pastors from local churches appeared at the Oakland City Council that evening to advocate for coal and the supposed jobs that the project would bring to impoverished communities.
Not that there isn't wide-scale opposition. Hundreds of people spoke at the hearing, many of them against having coal shipped into and then out of Oakland, fearful of the health effects of coal dust, the effect on the climate, and the very idea.
Many labor unions, just not those who would directly benefit, staked out a position against coal:
Leaders from the ILWU Local 10, ILWU Local 6, SEIU 1021 (including the leader of its port chapter) all said that the city doesn't have to accept coal to successfully create jobs at the Oakland Global project and its bulk commodity terminal.
Current politicos such as
Libby Schaaf, Oakland's Mayor, and
California legislators representing the East Bay, are opposed.
The former Mayor of Oakland, Jean Quan, reviled by, well, just about everyone, even showed up to speak against the idea.
Were it not so deadly serious, the idea of shipping coal through Oakland would be ludicrous. Why that? Because coal is a dying business. And the market knows it.
One of the biggest coal companies in the United States (Peabody, symbol BTU) has seen its stock price reduced from $25.00 per share in January of 2013 to $1.30 this week. Another, Arch Coal (symbol ACI), went from $75.00 per share to $3.15. Bankruptcy, it seems, awaits:
The fall in coal prices has caused many mining companies including Walter Energy, Inc. (OTCMKTS:WLTGQ), Alpha Natural Resources, Inc. (OTCMKTS:ANRZQ), Patriot Coal Corporation (OTCMKTS:PCXCQ) and others to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy. Analysts expect that Arch Coal Inc (NYSE:ACI) may also file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy soon, if it remains unsuccessful in finalizing the credit swap deal this week.
While banks got bailed out while we got sold out, it seems unlikely that coal companies will meet such a favorable fate even if the world gets "drowned out." And while
removing our money from the Big Banks had little effect, the same
cannot be said for fossil fuel companies, especially coal-dependent ones:
More than 400 organizations and 2,000 individuals across the world with $2.6 trillion in assets have pledged to divest from fossil fuel companies, according to a new report from Arabella Advisors, a consultancy firm for philanthropies. A year ago, the total amount of assets being divested from fossil fuel companies was just $50 billion.
and
A bill requiring California's state pension funds Calpers and CalSTRS to sell their investments in coal companies passed the Assembly, a major step... backers hope will inspire other funds to address climate change.
The bill... would require CalPers and CalSTRS - public employee pension funds that manage a combined $476 billion - to liquidate holdings in companies that generate at least half of their revenue from coal mining by July 2017.
For Oakland to count on coal to produce jobs is like investing in horse-drawn carriages in the 1910's or enticing vacuum-tube manufacturers to Oakland after the invention of the transistor.
Yet the siren song of at best fleeting coal jobs continues to draw in some of the Oakland City Council. No one wants to be accused of causing job loss (and yet, paradoxically, no one is willing to legislate a massive program to make Oakland solar, likely creating far more installation and solar-industry-related jobs than a highly mechanized coal facility could ever hope to generate).
The battle talk of environment vs. jobs and global, long term good vs. fleeting, immediate profit, will continue. No decisions were made at the City Council hearing, but the Oakland City Council ordered the City Administrator to bring before it by December 8th various ordinances that could either ban or restrict coal processing from taking place at the old Oakland Army Base facilities. (Neither the City nor the County nor the State can restrict the shipment of coal by rail, that is forbidden by Federal decree)
We know that we are already fucked, but unless the oil that would flow through the Keystone pipeline stays in the ground, and unless the coal that would ship through Oakland keeps its carbon buried in Utah's hills, we're fuckeder. Bigtime.
Oakland needs to tell its coal advocates to pound sand, not produce carbon. And Oakland needs to know that the whole world is watching.
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Background articles:
Banking on Coal in Oakland.
A Dustup in Oakland Over Plan to Ship Coal Through New Terminal.