Coal Will Kill More People Than World War II. Why Do Our Ministers Joke About It?

Fairfax - Julian Cribb*

While the numbers are not yet in on Australia's latest heatwave summer – one of the worst in our history – between 1100 and 1500 people will have died from heat stress. That's been the average of recent years.
When Treasurer Scott Morrison jovially informed the House of Representatives "Mr Speaker, this is coal. Don't be afraid! Don't be scared! It won't hurt you," he was, according to all reputable scientific and medical studies worldwide, misleading the Parliament.

Scott Morrison with his pet coal in Parliament. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

By mid-century, the effects of worldwide burning of coal and oil in heating the climate to new extremes will claim more than 50,000 Australian lives per decade, a toll nearly double that of World War II.
And that doesn't include the 12.6 million human lives lost globally every year (a quarter of all deaths), according to the World Health Organisation, from "air, water and soil pollution, chemical exposures, climate change, and ultraviolet radiation", all of which are a consequence of human use of fossil fuels. The main sources of those toxins are, indisputably, the coal and petrochemical industries.
To pretend, as do Morrison and Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce, that this is all a great joke shows a cynical and contemptible disregard for the sufferings and painful deaths of thousands of Australians from exposure to the effects of fossil fuels. Understanding of the toxicity of burnt fossil hydrocarbons has been around since the 19th-century industrial revolution. The climatic effect of fossil fuels has been accepted universally by world climate and weather authorities since the mid-1970s – almost half a century ago.
Yet certain Australian politicians and leaders still pretend they are ignorant of facts that are known to everyone else. And they jeer at Australians with the common sense not to want to die from them.
As eastern Australia sweltered through the recent 40 to 47-degree heatwave and elderly people who couldn't afford to switch on their air conditioners for fear of the power bills suffered and died, floods and bushfires related to the same climatic disturbance claimed further victims.
The Australian Climate Institute warned politicians a decade ago that the death toll from heat stress alone was then about 1100 in the five cities of Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Nationally, the number is now probably 1500 to 2000 a year – but no national records are kept, perhaps for obvious reasons.

'Clean coal' makes a comeback
New technology means coal will play a role in electricity generation long into the future, says Malcolm Turnbull. Courtesy ABC News 24.

The institute said at the time: "With no action to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, Australia is projected to warm by between 0.4 to 2.0 degrees by 2030 and 1.0 to 6.0 degrees by 2070. This warming trend is expected to drive large increases in the frequency, intensity and duration of extreme temperature events. For example, by 2030, the yearly average number of days above 35 degrees could increase from 17 to 19-29 in Adelaide and from 9 to 10-16 in Melbourne."
According to more recent projections – such as, for example, those of Professor Peng Bi of Adelaide University – annual heat-related deaths in the capital cities are predicted to climb to an average of 2400 a year in the 2020s and 5300 a year in the 2050s. And that's just in the capital cities.
Added to deaths from fire, flood, cyclone and pollution-related conditions such as cancer and lung diseases, fossil fuels will be far and away the predominant factor in the early deaths of Australians by mid-century. Not a single family will be unaffected by their influence.
It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the Abbott/Turnbull governments' policy – promoting the use and export of coal, trying to discourage its replacement by clean renewables and foot-dragging on climate remediation measures – has dreadful consequences in the short, medium and long term for individuals and families.

We want to know the road toll – but not the fuel toll.

Directly and indirectly, these policies will contribute to the loss of far more Australians than did the combined policies of the Hitler/Hirohito governments in the 1940s (27,000). They will cost many thousands more Australian lives than terrorism. Yet ministers treat them as a jest.
While it's true Australia's emissions, from fossil-fuel burning, mining and exports, are a small percentage of world emissions, they nevertheless contribute meaningfully to a situation that, unchecked, could see the planet heat by 5 to 6 degrees by 2100. If the frozen methane deposits in the Arctic and ocean are released, then warming may exceed 10 degrees, beyond which large animals, including humans, will struggle to exist.
With such temperatures and climatic extremes, it will become impossible to maintain world food production from agriculture. Hundreds of millions of refugees will flood the planet. According to the US Pentagon, there is a high risk of international conflict, even nuclear war, in such conditions.
These are the rational, evidence-based truths that politicians like Morrison and Joyce gleefully ignore in their enthusiasm for coal. Indeed, Joyce is advocating a course likely to ruin his party's main long-term constituency: farmers.
Australians rightly regard deaths from motor accidents, suicide, domestic violence, preventable disease, war, drugs and other causes as tragic, unjustifiable, unacceptable and unnecessary. Yet there is a curious national silence, a wilful blindness, about the far larger toll of preventable death from coal and oil. We want to know the road toll – but not the fuel toll. This national ignorance encouraged by dishonest claims that they "won't hurt you".
Yes, they will. Coal and oil will hurt you worse than almost anything else in your life. They will reap your family, and maybe you, too.
When there are clean, safe, healthy substitute readily available – renewables, biofuels, green chemistry – sensible Australians will turn their back on the untruths and the propaganda, and vote only for politicians whose policies do not knowingly encompass our early death.

*Julian Cribb is a Canberra science writer and author. His latest book is Surviving the 21st Century (2017).

Links

• What A Relief That Climate Change Doesn't Really Exist
• Turnbull government sharpens attack on Labor's clean energy
• Coalition's renewable energy target won't last forever, says Turnbull
• Malcolm Turnbull says coal, CSG and renewables vital for energy future
• Barnaby Joyce backs Government funding coal-power stations following Malcolm Turnbull's Press Club address
• Turnbull's coal embrace will leave critics cold
• Red hot: NSW smashes February statewide heat records two days in a row
• Old king coal will still be fiddling with his lump as the world burns
• Government on the wrong side of history on the coal debate
• PM dubs Labor's renewable policies mindless, negligent
• Brandishing coal in a heatwave? Morrison might as well fiddle
• Strange bedfellows urge politicians to ditch 'partisan antics' on energy
• PM and ministers told wind not to blame for SA blackout