Coal - “If we don’t sell it, someone else will” August 2007
When CCBR asked Ms Plibersek “How will the Labor government, if in power, deal with the expansion of the fossil fuel industries?” we got the response that “you can’t just ‘flick the switch’” (we weren’t asking for that) and “If we don’t sell it….someone else will”.
This last response, immoral as it sounds, is becoming somewhat of a Labor mantra. (Every Labor politician CCBR has seen has said virtually these same words!)
We responded by saying that we are facing a climate change emergency and COAL, as the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions, will inevitably be phased out (ref IPCC, Ian Dunlop, Tim Flannery, a raft of international experts) Further, Australia must take a leadership role in leading the economy from its reliance on carbon. But maybe we should have mentioned a few more things…
• Australian coal is in demand because it is cheap, it is cheap because it does not factor in the full cost of mining – the destruction of our rivers and fragile ecosystems during the necessary total annihilation and restructuring of landscapes. Not to mention the resultant fracturing of communities.
• Flooding the world market with cheap Australian coal will just further encourage the use of fossilised carbon.
• We should be making an orderly transition away from coal dependency towards a sustainable energy manufacturing industry that will create long term jobs and export revenue.
Over the last 20 years the coal industry has shed 18000 jobs due to massive investment in mining technology. Alternatively there has been little investment in renewable energy sources which could have easily absorbed those jobs. Denmark invested in wind technology 20 years ago, creating 16000 jobs. Spain and Portugal now also have a vigorous renewable energy sector.
(Note: 63000 full time jobs are provided by the tourism industry on The Great Barrier Reef, more than 100,000 jobs in the agricultural sector will be threatened by drought and extreme weather)
• Australia’s economic dependence on fossil fuel exports puts us in a very vulnerable position as the world inevitably moves away from coal-fired power stations. The environmental consequences of global warming will dictate the vigorous pursuit of non-polluting renewable energy sources.
Remember coal is a finite resource
• If and when Australia participates in the global carbon emissions markets, or introduces a national carbon tax, our coal-fired power will be more costly and the coal industry economically unviable (more so if we count Sir Nicholas Stern’s costs of $110 per tonne of CC damage AND withdraw the govt. subsidies)
• Are our political leaders representing the long term interests of Australian people or the fossil fuel industry and short term profits?
Some Quick Facts:
• Only 25% of our coal is used for domestic energy production, the rest (75%) is exported to Japan (mostly), Korea, Taiwan and Indonesia, to lesser extent China.
• Our exports account for 600 million tonnes when combusted in the power plants and steel mills of Asia, meaning that we have a responsibility, globally, to reduce CO2 pollution.
• We are responsible for 2.7% of global GHG emissions, though we have only 0.3% of the world’s population. (We emit 10x world’s average per capita emissions)
And a word on clean (sic) coal and geosequestration:
a) Clean coal technology currently promises to make the pollution from the combustion of brown coal to a similar level of pollution coming from black coal i.e. it still produces 2.7 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of coal.
b) If you can picture that 1 kilogram of CO2 gas would fill an average size fridge, sequestering even our domestic CO2 (226 million tonnes p.a.) is going to need a very big hole. The only current geosequestration project (Iceland- North Sea) attempts to bury 1 million tonnes per annum….that’s state of the art geosequestration today!
Finally, as a planet we are fast approaching the critical point of more than 400ppm of CO2 in our atmosphere which will herald unprecedented ecological and human disaster.
We are facing an emergency that all the abatement schemes, all the low energy light bulbs, all the energy efficient appliances cannot hope to solve while we continue to dig up increasing amounts of fossilized carbon.
We need an immediate global dialogue amongst leaders who are informed, principled and visionary.
