1 day Ago By Caitlin Fitzsimmons
Grant Howard has been a coal miner since he left school in Wollongong 44 years ago. At the weekend he was arrested at a protest, trying to hasten the end of his industry. Howard was one of 170 people arrested for paddling out to blockade the Port of Newcastle, the largest coal port in the world, in what NSW Police Minister Yasmin Catley described as a “dangerous and volatile situation”.
The protest, organised by Rising Tide, demanded an end to new coal and gas approvals and the imposition of a 78 per cent tax on coal and gas exports to fund the energy transition. Coal miner Grant Howard at Horseshoe Beach, the site of the Rising Tide protest. Credit: Dean Sewell At 61, Howard is still a coal miner.
He has worked in the Illawarra, the Hunter Valley, and now in the Bowen Basin in Queensland. He is also deeply concerned about climate change and wants coal miners to be at the heart of the energy transition. Otherwise, he fears, mines will close suddenly and workers will be left in the lurch.
Loading Howard is particularly concerned about exports of thermal coal, rather than coking coal used for steelmaking. Burning thermal coal for energy is one of the major sources of greenhouse emissions, and ending it is essential to global plans to reach net zero by 2050. “Thermal coal is the first market that’s going to be affected,” Howard said.
“That change is already under way, and there’s nothing we can do as mine workers to stop that happening, so we need to be better informed and be a part of the conversation.” Howard recalls learning about the greenhouse effect in year 11 science at high school in Wollongong in 1979, and mining companies trying to reduce emissions in the 1980s..
