WRITING HISTORIES OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Rybnik Micro-History

I chronicle the micro-history of Rybnik, a city in Southern Poland home to three methane superemission sites (located on the 1,800 Histories map around 50°5′N 18°33′E).

Rybnik, located in Southern Poland, contains roughly 136 thousand people. The city is the urban centerpiece of the Rybnik Coal Area, which, while officially rebranded as Subregion Zachodni, is still home to 19 mines representing nearly all of Poland's coal production. Three methane plumes appear in the region; one additional plume is located a few dozen miles away in the adjacent town of Katowice.

Rybnik's citizens do not appear to worry about large-scale methane leakages emanating from their mines. Instead, smog — a symptom of heavy coal usage — is top of their minds.

Rybnik burns much of the coal it mines, funneling over four million tons each year to Rybnik Power Station, a coal-fired power plant built in 1970 on the outskirts of the city. Reliance on coal has led to serious air quality problems: Rybnik was rated the fifth most polluted city in the European Union in 2018.

As I was researching the specific mines proximate to the methane ultra-emissions, I was surprised to learn that much of the pollution problem in Rybnik is attributed not to ultra-emitters, but to so-called "low emissions" from local heat sources. Burning millions of tons of coal at the Power Station surely releases soot and toxins into the air, but the majority of Rybnik's smogproducing emissions come from individual furnaces used to heat homes and apartments, also powered by coal. For centuries, Rybnik residents have manually shoveled coal into furnaces heating their single-family homes, apartments, and businesses. The constant, decentralized coal burning left Rybnik with a constant blanket of smog. Twentieth-century Rybnik possessed a "characteristic smell of the streets", "grayness of snow", and "color of the air", according to a recent collection of resident interviews called Rybnik 360.

Rybnik 360, conducted by an EU-affiliated climate research program, noted that residents expressed a nostalgia for the intense smog associated with the city's past. This is because coal mining has defined the area's economy and culture for over a century. One of the detected methane plumes sits near the Marcel Coal Mine, located in the town of Radlin that abuts Rybnik.

Originally called "Emma", the coal mine opened in 1883 and has powered Poland ever since. 3,168 employees work at Marcel, producing roughly eleven thousand tons of coal each working day. Other mines do not possess similarly affectionate names, but their economic impact has likewise been longstanding and essential to the community. The Polska Grupa Górnicza (PGG; largest producer of coal in Europe) mine in Chwałowice, for example, opened in 1907 and today employs 2,800 workers. Also owned by PGG, the Jankowice mine opened in 1913 and employs roughly 3,100 more. 

Mining became the dominant industry in Rybnik following the first discovery of coal deposits in the eighteenth century. By 1989, following centuries of expansion under a vast array of political regimes, seventy mines employed 416 thousand workers across Poland, concentrated in Upper Silesia, the historical region containing Rybnik. Coal mining, and mining in general, had provided generations of steady jobs and income, both of which fueled the city's infrastructural development. The district of Niedobczyce, located southwest of the city center, sprung up around the Rymer mine, which employed around 3,600 workers at its height. The mine not only created jobs but built up the workers' neighborhood, providing essential infrastructure services like waterworks. Miners were partially paid in kind, taking home their paycheck along with rations of coal used for heating homes.

Since 1989, the coal industry in Poland has observed a steady decline. Polish coal has grown uncompetitive relative to neighboring Russia, which produces a higher average quality coal for a lower average extraction cost. Poland and many of its trade partners have committed to phasing out coal from their energy infrastructure. Today, only eighty thousand miners work across twenty mines in Poland. The Rymer mine in Niedobczyce is one of roughly sixty mines that have shut down since the 1980s. The mine's closure in 1999 removed the beating heart of the district. Residents interviewed in Rybnik 360 refer to the neighborhood as a "dangerous" "commuter district"; a place one passes through rather than a place anyone lives, works, or socializes in.

Rybnik has plans to de-smog the cityscape and decarbonize the city economy, but change is expected to be slower than in nearby cities in Upper Silesia. Poland plans to phase down coal usage to fifteen million tons of coal per year by 2035 (sixty-three million tons were used in 2021). The last two Polish mines expected to be in operation are both located in Rybnik, in the Chwałowice and Jankowice districts.
Decentralized 'low emissions' from residential furnaces are expected to fade away, though slowly. In 2017, Rybnik residents were restricted from using solid fuels (i.e., coal) to heat their homes and encouraged to upgrade their furnaces to gas or electric-powered options through various subsidies. The inertia of the coal industry remains, however. A black market for heatinggrade coal still exists and is used particularly among the working class, who are often unable or unwilling to upgrade their home heating system.

The Last Coal Mine in Rybnik

Poland plans to wind down its coal industry by 2049. Below is a fiction about a future miner in the last operating coal mine in Poland who reflects on the history and legacy of the oncedominant fossil fuel industry

Coal miners no longer control the city of Rybnik, but you wouldn't be able to tell from within the mineshaft I work inside. I'm finishing up a Friday shift at KWK Chwałowice, the last remaining coal mine in Poland. Three generations ago, three thousand people worked here. My father and countless other Rybnik men would descend any of Chwałowice's five mineshafts to dig up coal nestled five hundred and fifty meters underground. Their generation created the initial coal phase-out agreements between the government and the miners' union. Many of the pledges in these agreements were watered down, delayed, and trivialized over time as mining interests fought to eke out every last rock of coal they could extract. Nevertheless, the union's revolutionary pledge – to end its own existence – is finally due to take effect. Important to the negotiations was designating Rybnik as the nation's holdout mining center, set to maintain large mines as the rest of the industry erodes in the background. Chwałowice and nearby KWK Jankowice were elected to be the last two coal mines in Poland. Originally set to close in 2049, wars, domestic crises, and general lethargy pushed the end date back ten years to the end of the 50s.

Today's miners work some of the final line shifts ever to be scheduled in the country. Over four hundred thousand men worked the mines in the 1970s. Today, I am one of roughly seven hundred miners left, employed to work a single mineshaft located seven hundred staggering meters below the ground. Two skyscrapers of rock separate us from the surface. Apart from the minutes-long elevator trip underground, the experience inside the cramped mineshaft is no different from before. The stale, dank air still makes me sweat in the middle of winter. The constant noise of heavy machinery, oscillating air pumps providing life-supporting ventilation to the cavern, and the patter of rocks being chipped away create a chaotic din magnified by the narrowness of the underground space. The constant danger and back-breaking labor foster a strong sense of community among everyone who wears and has worn a hardhat and miner's uniform, which have remained nearly identical for decades. Our mineshaft is alive with the energy of generations past.

Our seven-hundred-meter mineshaft was completed in 2028, a full ten years before extraction began at this ultra-deep level. This mineshaft could not be constructed today. For decades, coal mining has pushed along as an anachronism subsidized by the government; auxiliary industries that once supported the mines did not receive the same public support and have since wound down. Local supporting businesses — Silesia Steelworks, Ryfama Mining Machines, and the like — and local customers, including our city's coal-fired power plant, shut their doors when my parents' generation still worked the mines. The mining equipment still in use is aging and irreplaceable; wood-handled pickaxes and rusted excavators accumulate endless layers of black coal dust. Old tools are scrapped and thrown into the landfill when their useful lives expire, all according to a hyper-detailed retirement schedule painstakingly negotiated upon by the union and the government. People are handled in a similar way, though with far more humanity. The union, compelled to agree to unceasing waves of forced retirements, secured immense pensions for all who held a pickaxe at one point in their lives. Investment in anything besides miner safety is foregone to conserve remaining cash.

The clamor, bustle and camaraderie of the mineshaft abruptly fade upon reaching the surface of the Chwałowice mine. The entrance to the mine resembles that of a commemorative on-site museum. Statues in front of the administrative building celebrate the service of past workers and bronze placards proclaim Chwałowice's official designation as the final Polish coal mine. There exist similar memorials in the city center and at many of the nearby mines, describing both the coal industry's scale at its height and the successful winding down of the mines as the city pivots away from fossil fuels. Festivals held in Rybnik and neighboring villages connect the extractive legacy of the twentieth century with earlier mineral mining traditions in past centuries.

I mostly ignore the brass plaques and other exhibits on my way out the front gate. Even after the last ton of coal at Chwałowice is extracted, I don't believe any of the deliberate commemorations are necessary to comprehend the history of coal in Poland. The drive home from the mine reveals unplanned monuments to the coal industry formed by the physical legacy of generations of miners. Massive slag heaps form colossal mounds that dwarf the chain-link fences they sit behind. Certain steel foundries and other energy-intensive factories have survived the economic transition and dot the highway from Chwałowice to central Rybnik, sitting between newer office buildings and apartments. Neighboring cities are now free of smog, but Rybnik's coal production has prevented certain parts of the city from completing the local energy transition. Rows of chimneys along certain city streets emit a familiar smoke and smell which reveal the old-school solid fuel furnaces found in the basements below, still in use despite a decades-old ban on solid fuel burning. The outmoded heating technology reminds residents of the ever-present inertia of the coal industry even as the last embers of production burn out. New communities are constructed near old mines to take advantage of the existing community infrastructure set up to support the industry. Even in its twilight, the coal industry takes up so much physical space that today's residents are confronted with the past each day. Unlike myself, however, most people in Rybnik experience coal in passing and in memory.