Only in America

Where else would somebody ask for song lyrics to be entered into a court case and the judge allow it?

That is what has happened in the case of two environmental activists who are taking on Peabody Coal.

According to The Courier-Journal the activists are suing Peabody, claiming it violated their civil rights by having them arrested outside a 2013 shareholders meeting.

The activists, the paper writes, quoted two verses from singer-songwriter John Prine’s famed 1971 ballad about Peabody’s mining practices in Kentucky.

The quoted lines are:

“Then the coal company came with the world’s largest shovel and they tortured the timber and stripped all the land. Well they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken, then they wrote it down as the progress of man.

“And daddy won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County, down by the Green river where paradise lay? Well I’m sorry son by you’re too late in asking, Mr Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away.”

The paper writes that Peabody’s lawyers asked for the lyrics to be removed from the suit, however Magistrate Judge Kelly Rankin said the song was arguably relevant to the suit.

Perhaps Peabody could return fire with some lyrics from one of the surprise packets of last year’s America’s Got Talent Jimmy Rose and his song Coal keeps the lights on:

“They went plumb down crazy in Washington. They're talking about closing the mines.

“They're gonna bleed us all dry from the inside out. They don't care that much about the little man or the calloused hands.

“It's a way of life 'round, just like it's always been.”

India is not the answer

That is what Goldman Sachs commodity analysts Christian Lelong and Amber Cai reckon.

According to a Business Spectator report the analysts believe peak coal is coming sooner than they expected.

It had been thought that should China’s demand for Australia’s seaborne coal India would pick up the slack.

Unfortunately, the analysts reckon China’s demand growth has not slowed but rather gone into reverse and Indian demand will likely not exceed the shortfall.

Dark times

Adding to the gloom from looming peak coal, the ABC reports of concerns the dark times experienced in the wake of the BHP steelworks closure is playing out across the Hunter Valley region as the coal slowdown bites.

Twenty years ago, according to the ABC helped former workers at the steel plant find work in the wake of its closures and how he is trying help former mining employees into other industries.

The news organisation quotes him saying the similarities between the two times are stark.

“Now we’re almost seen to be placed back to those early post closure days at the steelworks,” he said.

“We’ve got high unemployment, not a lot of casual jobs and older workers are being made redundant as well.”