[Joakal]

Simple solution, provide a bond as condition to start.

But it won't get implemented, why? It would be in many billions because the bond needs to cover clean up costs, etc. Companies want this risk to be borne by government and indirectly, the population/environment.

[adrianN]

If you start out you won't yet have destroyed a lot of land and you won't have many miners. Just require a fixed amount of money as a bond for every ton of coal produced. This could also cover CO2.

[roenxi]

The cost of cleanup is in no way linear with the amount of coal being produced; that solution would be complicated and impractical.

A better approach is to make the mine operator come up with some sort of remediation plan as part of the approvals process and then insist that they follow it, backed with the threat of massive fines. Se a standard so that remediation has to be ongoing or commence before the economic phase of extraction is over (to prevent bankruptcy from being a rational out).

That does front-load the costs and so push out smaller operators from starting mines; but that is pretty much inevitable when tightening environmental standards. If the goal is to force a company to do something that isn't economically rational, a determined regulator is a reasonable way.

[kortilla]

Not really. When coal wasn’t getting crushed by natural gas, cleanup costs for seem mines were easily covered (assuming co2 not priced in as is standard right now).