ANTI-COAL campaigners were slammed as “shortsighted” by the leader of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) yesterday.

General secretary Chris Kitchen spoke exclusively to the Morning Star as climate campaigners blockaded an opencast coal quarry in Cramlington, Northumberland.

The climate campaigners, with banners and placards stating “end coal” and “keep it in the ground,” argue that burning coal to make electricity causes environmental damage through carbon emissions.

But Mr Kitchen said the development of carbon capture could make coal a “clean” fuel causing little or no environmental damage.

Britain has an estimated 200 years of known coal reserves, which were abandoned by the Tories in their mission to destroy NUM.

In the early 1980s there were 180 deep coalmines in Britain employing 180,000 miners and more than half a million in ancillary industries.

Today one deep coalmine remains, Kellingley in Yorkshire, which will close this month.

But Britain imports more than 50 million tonnes of coal a year, and coal remains a mainstay of UK electricity production.

Mr Kitchen said: “Keeping fossil fuels in the ground is a shortsighted idealistic view that will do little towards preventing climate change.

“Carbon capture and storage, if implemented, will not only decarbonise electricity generation but also has the option to decarbonise other industries, therefore better for the planet.”

He said the anti-coal activists should “think through the consequences of their actions,” which would cause greater reliance on nuclear power at a cost of billions of pounds.