Many of these challenges are what are called ‘eternity’ issues.  Funds have had to be set aside, for eternity (which is quite a long time), to stabilise the landscape, to stop the mines filling with water, deal with ongoing infrastructure challenges and so on.  I found myself thinking, on the 3 days I just spent there, what a powerful metaphor it was for the fossil fuel age as a whole.  Had the people at the beginning, when coal extraction first began, been able to know what the long term impacts would be, what the ‘eternity’ costs would be, how it would shape the future the place was then able to build on top of the tailings of 200 years of coal extraction, would they have bothered?