We need to be a bit practical about this business of importing coal. 

Yesterday Genesis, Mercury, Meridian, and Contact announced they're going to stockpile up to 600,000 tonnes of coal to keep the lights on at Huntly power station. 

The deal needs Commerce Commission's approval so it doesn't look like they're colluding on price, but the idea struck a deal, which still needs Commerce Commission approval, to keep the lights on at Huntly. 

The coal gives them a back up for times when we're low on electricity, when the lake levels are low, and the wind isn't blowing. 

Huntly is the largest electricity generation site in the country. It needs fuel to run on. 

Eventually, they'd like it to be all biomass and green, friendly fuels. But in the meantime, they need something reliable to keep things chugging along so as we avoid another energy crunch like last year when spot prices went berserk because we realised how little gas have in this country. 

And queue the predicable outcries of disbelief and feigned shock from some quarters in reaction. 

Including those climate protesters, who I can only assume are still disrupting operations at the Stockton mine in the South Island.

Last I saw, there was some woman up there in the bucket, health and safety be damned, zooming into a call with a journalist. Surrounded by a plethora of plastic in things like cabling, cell phones, battery packs, tools, even a helmet, she explained that coal was evil and would eventually ruin kill the planet. 

Never mind the fact her presence in the bucket meant workers were now having to truck their coal from one site to another using diesel, rather than the aerial rope pulley system whose bucket she and her plastic fantastic friends were occupying. 

No shame either, apparently, about a helicopter flying in, on AV gas, to check on the protesters after a bit of rain.

The reality is this. Nobody's saying coal is amazing and is the only solution to our problem and let's burn it till we all burn. 

They're just saying, we need this reliable fuel to tide us over till we don't need it anymore. 

If the choice is to either burn coal or have a cold shower, I know what I'd be doing. 

And let's not forget that even if we did stop digging up coal and using it to heat our homes occasionally, some other country would be just that anyway.