Lord Stern responds to media reports that the Government is due to give approval this week for a new coal mine in Cumbria

Responding to media reports that the Government is due to give approval this week for a new coal mine in Whitehaven, Cumbria, Professor Lord Stern of Brentford, Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science, said:

“Opening a coal mine in the UK now is a serious mistake. An economic, social, environmental, financial and political mistake. Economically, it is investing in the technologies of the last century, not this century, and that is the wrong path to growth. Socially, it is pursuing jobs in industries that are on the way out, creating future job insecurity.

“There are surely better ways to promote employment and levelling up. Environmentally, it is adding to world supply and thus consumption of coal and releasing greenhouse gases, when there is an urgent need to reduce them. Financially, it is creating a potentially stranded asset. And politically, it is undermining the UK’s authority, leadership and seriousness on the most important global issue of our times.”