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| Illustration: Andrew Dyson |
Polling released by the Climate Institute last week reveals that 72 per cent of us are worried about global warming, and that while only 17 per cent think the Coalition's climate policies are credible, the plausibility of Labor's response is ahead by just a whisker, at a paltry 20 per cent.
And, really, is it any wonder? While the Coalition and the ALP have emission-reduction targets – neither of which, it must be said, will avoid dangerous global warming – the policy detail underpinning them is woefully inadequate. It's like trying to build the Eiffel Tower with a box of matchsticks.
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| Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and the leader of the opposition, Bill Shorten, remain unequivocal in their support for Australian coal mining. Photo: Peter Braig |
Maybe the reason for our distrust, our incredulity, is that at the core of this policy vacuum, on the most burning issue of all – the fate of Australia's gargantuan coal reserves – both major parties are intransigent.
You don't need to be Einstein to know that curbing emissions requires us to stop burning fossil fuels – and if you can't burn them, why dig them up? And why, more to the point, expand our already significant coal production with a swathe of new "mega mines" planned in the Galilee Basin along with expansions across the Upper Hunter and the Liverpool plains?
Undeterred, though, by estimates that around 90 per cent of Australia's coal reserves need to stay in the ground, or recent mining moratoriums announced by the US and China, the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and the leader of the opposition, Bill Shorten, remain unequivocal in their support for Australian coal mining. Indeed, without a hint of irony, Turnbull has overlooked not just the climate impact but also the deteriorating economics and what analysts say are "delusional" asset valuations to urge us all to approach the issue of coal mining in a "clear-eyed, cool-headed and rational way". The audacity is simply breathtaking.
There's no point in calling a halt to Australian exports, says he, because others will rush to fill the gap and anyway our coal is cleaner. But hardly anyone is suggesting an export moratorium – just a ban on new mines – and, for the record, coal from the Galilee Basin is relatively poor in quality. As for jobs and growth – the new three-word slogan haunting this election campaign – the industry is around 80 per cent foreign owned, and mining giants across the board have indicated a willingness, perhaps even an enthusiasm, to import foreign workers.
If you thought Resources Minister Josh Frydenberg was on thin ice spruiking the benefits of coal for the third world – asserting, I kid you not, that coal will reduce air pollution – then the Australian coal lobby recently dispensed with reason altogether by claiming, in the wake of the Paris climate agreement, that "coal will play a part in reducing emissions globally".
Where will this end? And why do we find it so hard to shrug off the enduring fiction that shackles our destiny to this shiny black rock? Because it's too politically unpalatable to do otherwise, you say? But unpalatable to whom? Not, it would seem, the two thirds of Australians who favour phasing out coal mining to address global warming, or even the majority of northern Queensland voters who support the same. Not to six out of 10 people in the Prime Minister's own seat of Wentworth, either. And not, ultimately, to the burgeoning number of local government, finance, tertiary education or religious institutions that are choosing to divest from fossil fuels and the big banks that fund them.
Naturally, major resource companies – a significant source of political donations – would probably take a dim view of any alternate reality. Let's not forget that in the lead up to the last election, the Coalition snared $1.8 million from companies in favour of a carbon price repeal. Mining industry executives – who are drawn, with disturbing regularity, from the ranks of former politicians and political staffers – would, no doubt, be similarly disgruntled. And when you factor in the effect of marginal seats – such as northern Queensland's Capricornia, home to the largest mining workforce of all north Queensland electorates – all the pieces start coming together.
Which is why Queensland Liberal Senator and Federal Attorney-General George Brandis has been toiling away in the State's north, cranking out the "six point economic plan" and Adani Coal's now discredited pledge of 10,000 jobs to anyone who will listen.
All of this just underscores what we already knew: that not every vote will be equal this Saturday, not every vote counts, despite what our leaders say. On issues as critically important and as broadly supported as climate change and coal mining, for the time being at least, we're snookered.
The world's largest privately-owned coal producer, Peabody Energy, may have recently filed for bankruptcy protection amid a slump in global demand and tighter environmental regulation, but our political leaders are resolutely peddling a narrative on the merits of Australian coal that could have been drafted by the Minerals Council of Australia. Who knows, maybe it was?
*Sarah Gill is an Age columnist who has worked as a writer and a policy analyst.
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