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Plans for a new coal mine off the coast of Cumbria in northern England threaten to compromise the UK's reputation in the face of the climate crisis.

Former NASA scientist James Hansen has personally written a letter to

Prime Minister

Boris Johnson warning him that it would be "an outrage and humiliation" for the host country of COP26 in Glasgow to give the go-ahead to the controversial Whitehaven mine, which could begin construction this year.

Hansen has asked Johnson to show "insight and courage" and bury the project,

originally approved by the Cumbria County Council and currently under review.

It would be the first coal mine in the last 30 years in the British Isles.

Its purpose would in any case be the

extraction of bituminous coal for the production of coke, a solid fuel that is used for the smelting of steel, aluminum and other metals

.

The defenders of the mine - among them, the conservative deputy Trudy Harrison - maintain that the coal would not be used for power generation and that the project

would serve to economically reactivate the area and generate 500 jobs

.

The Climate Change Committee, led by fellow conservative John Gummer (Lord Deben), has however warned that opening the mine would create problems.

The British Government has pledged to stop using coal as an energy source by 2025. The committee has recommended that coal be discontinued for steel production by 2035, unless carbon capture technologies are developed by that time. carbon.

David King, a former British government special envoy for climate change, has also intervened in the controversy.

"They shouldn't authorize the mine," King told

The Guardian.

"It would be a big mistake and I think James Hansen has expressed it very well."

Reduce polluting emissions

The approval of the Cumbria mine would leave the host country of COP26, which is also the promoter of the global alliance to abandon coal, Powering Past Coal (PPCA), in a highly compromised position, in which more than a hundred countries are already participating.

85% of the production of the new mine would also be for export.

Curiously, the PPCA virtual summit has just been held, sponsored by the British Secretary of State for Energy, Anne-Marie Trevelyan.

"Having exceeded 5,000 hours without using coal for electricity generation in the last year, the UK is driving the transition to clean energy with enormous potential," said Trevelyan, as he advocated for "a greener future and more. healthy for this generation and those to come ".

The

premier

Boris Johnson has yet to comment personally on the mine project in Cumbria

.

Forty Conservative MPs have sent him a letter defending the project, as part of the British Government's investments for the economic recovery of the north of England.

Pressure is mounting at the prime minister's table, who could ultimately cancel the plans with an express order to his secretary for Communities, Robert Jenrick.

The mine, budgeted at 190 million euros

, would extract the coal under the bottom of the Irish Sea and emit the equivalent of 8.4 million tonnes of CO2 per year.

The plans openly clash with Boris Johnson's recently announced 68% emission reduction commitment by 2030.

Its symbolic impact would be even greater, as it would ostensibly damage the UK's leadership in action on climate change.

The country that led the industrial revolution celebrated its first "carbon-free" day in 2017 and its first "carbon-free" week a year later.

Although there are still four operational coal-fired power plants (Drax, Ratcliffe, West Burton and Kilroot), they only contribute 5% of the electricity pie.

In 2020 the "sorpasso" -42% to 41% - of the energy generated with renewables (wind, solar, hydroelectric and biomass) to gas and coal in the United Kingdom was also consumed.

The rest is nuclear power, with the old Sellafiled plant still active on the Cumbrian coast, less than fifty kilometers from the projected mine and a stone's throw from the Lake District National Park, one of the most popular destinations. landmarks of North West England

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