Learning to love an old enemy: the future of coal when it's no longer a fuel.

• In Event: STS Underground: Governance, Deliberation and Expertise

Abstract

This whimsical paper may be more important than you think. Why are hipster travellers reclaiming the Illawarra as the 'Coal Coast'? What are the alternate readings of politicians' use of coal as a prop for parliamentary debate? What are the intrinsic properties and characteristics of coal that might make it one of our favourite rocks – after we've stopped warming the planet with it? Starting with a geologist's assessment of its components and microscopic structures, this paper considers the values society may ascribe to coal once it's no longer our worst enemy. Coal strata is responsible for dramatic shaping of our landscape (not least the Illawarra Coast) and, as a soon-to-be-retired industrial material, coal has inspired equally dramatic shaping of our corporate and labour history. Its 'macerals' are beautiful under the microscope, so perhaps we should familiarise ourselves with vitrinite, liptinite and inertinite varieties – these components of coal are fossil leaves, remnant pollen spores and algae, metamorphosed roots, branches, and even buried tree trunks. In other words, as a 'seam' coal is a graveyard for ancient forests, heath lands and wet lands – thus deserving of our respect. With that respect comes renewed appreciation of 'the underground' as a place no longer to be bored, shafted, driven, roomed and pillared, long-walled, quarried, and backfilled with muck. There is much to love about coal, and we'll need to think of it differently in a post fossil-fuel age – even as we remember it can still catch fire spontaneously.

Author

• Paul Frederick Brown, School of Humanities & Languages, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia