Extract from The Guardian
The Australian prime minister is contradicting other world leaders to echo the coal industry’s own PR message
- Lenore Taylor, political editor
- theguardian.com,
“Coal is good for humanity”, Tony Abbott declared as he opened a new coalmine on Monday,
and its use should go “up and up and up in the years and decades to
come”. It’s a pronouncement at odds with the international climate goals
his government says it supports but remarkably similar to the coal
industry’s own global public relations campaign.
It is also a statement out of step with what most other world leaders and global institutions say on the subject.
Faced with increasing evidence that it will be impossible to avoid dangerous global warming and also burn all their coal and gas reserves, the mining industry has developed a “moral” argument to advocate continued coal use on the grounds that it is actually good for humanity because it provides cheap energy that ends poverty.
Peabody, the world’s largest private sector coal company, teamed with global PR firm Burson-Marsteller to produce a website and slick social media campaign targeting China, America and Australia, called “Advanced Energy for Life” with the stated aim of “educating and mobilising world leaders, multinational organisations, a wide range of institutions and stakeholders and the general public to end the crisis of global energy poverty”.
Peabody Energy’s chairman, Gregory Boyce, recently argued that “reasonable people can disagree on the urgency of addressing concerns about carbon, but no one can question the crisis we face when more than 4 million people die annually from indoor air pollution resulting from energy poverty,” and included at the top of a list of positive recent global policy choices the fact that “Australia repealed its carbon tax, which the prime minister called a “useless, destructive tax, which damaged jobs, hurt families’ cost of living and didn’t actually help the environment.” In Australia, the Minerals Council of Australia uses similar arguments.
And now the Australian prime minister is running the “coal is good for us” line too.
He is not just arguing, as Barack Obama did in June, that the transition to a low-carbon economy has to happen slowly and carefully in order to protect the economy.
“A low-carbon, clean energy economy can be an engine of growth for decades to come. And I want America to build that engine,” the US president said, but added “now, one thing I want to make sure everybody understands – this does not mean that we’re going to suddenly stop producing fossil fuels. Our economy wouldn’t run very well if it did. And transitioning to a clean energy economy takes time.”
He is not just arguing, as the British prime minister, David Cameron, did recently, that existing coal-fired power plants in the UK should be phased out in the next 10 or 15 years, and new coal-fired stations must be fitted with carbon capture and storage technology.
He is not arguing, as the former prime minister Kevin Rudd did – faced with the same obvious tension between Australia’s status as one of the world’s largest coal exporters and the (ostensibly bipartisan) commitment to play our part in limiting global warming to 2 degrees – that Australia should be at the forefront of research into carbon capture and storage and other technologies that reduce emissions from producing electricity from coal.
He is certainly not arguing, as the World Bank chief, Jim Yong Kim, did recently, that inaction on climate change is “killing people”. The World Bank board has said it will no longer fund coal-fired power stations in developing countries, except in rare circumstances where there are no feasible alternatives.
And he is in direct disagreement with Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, who warned this week that “the vast majority of reserves are unburnable” if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change.
No, he seems to be arguing that no transition is necessary – on the grounds that coal is “vital” for the future energy needs of the world. “Let’s have no demonisation of coal. Coal is good for humanity,” he says.
Some commentators have actually claimed there was nothing else the prime minister could have said at the opening of a coalmine. Well, he could have started by explaining how a coal trajectory going “up and up and up” for decades can possibly be compatible with domestic and international climate goals.
It is also a statement out of step with what most other world leaders and global institutions say on the subject.
Faced with increasing evidence that it will be impossible to avoid dangerous global warming and also burn all their coal and gas reserves, the mining industry has developed a “moral” argument to advocate continued coal use on the grounds that it is actually good for humanity because it provides cheap energy that ends poverty.
Peabody, the world’s largest private sector coal company, teamed with global PR firm Burson-Marsteller to produce a website and slick social media campaign targeting China, America and Australia, called “Advanced Energy for Life” with the stated aim of “educating and mobilising world leaders, multinational organisations, a wide range of institutions and stakeholders and the general public to end the crisis of global energy poverty”.
Peabody Energy’s chairman, Gregory Boyce, recently argued that “reasonable people can disagree on the urgency of addressing concerns about carbon, but no one can question the crisis we face when more than 4 million people die annually from indoor air pollution resulting from energy poverty,” and included at the top of a list of positive recent global policy choices the fact that “Australia repealed its carbon tax, which the prime minister called a “useless, destructive tax, which damaged jobs, hurt families’ cost of living and didn’t actually help the environment.” In Australia, the Minerals Council of Australia uses similar arguments.
And now the Australian prime minister is running the “coal is good for us” line too.
He is not just arguing, as Barack Obama did in June, that the transition to a low-carbon economy has to happen slowly and carefully in order to protect the economy.
“A low-carbon, clean energy economy can be an engine of growth for decades to come. And I want America to build that engine,” the US president said, but added “now, one thing I want to make sure everybody understands – this does not mean that we’re going to suddenly stop producing fossil fuels. Our economy wouldn’t run very well if it did. And transitioning to a clean energy economy takes time.”
He is not just arguing, as the British prime minister, David Cameron, did recently, that existing coal-fired power plants in the UK should be phased out in the next 10 or 15 years, and new coal-fired stations must be fitted with carbon capture and storage technology.
He is not arguing, as the former prime minister Kevin Rudd did – faced with the same obvious tension between Australia’s status as one of the world’s largest coal exporters and the (ostensibly bipartisan) commitment to play our part in limiting global warming to 2 degrees – that Australia should be at the forefront of research into carbon capture and storage and other technologies that reduce emissions from producing electricity from coal.
He is certainly not arguing, as the World Bank chief, Jim Yong Kim, did recently, that inaction on climate change is “killing people”. The World Bank board has said it will no longer fund coal-fired power stations in developing countries, except in rare circumstances where there are no feasible alternatives.
And he is in direct disagreement with Mark Carney, the governor of the Bank of England, who warned this week that “the vast majority of reserves are unburnable” if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate change.
No, he seems to be arguing that no transition is necessary – on the grounds that coal is “vital” for the future energy needs of the world. “Let’s have no demonisation of coal. Coal is good for humanity,” he says.
Some commentators have actually claimed there was nothing else the prime minister could have said at the opening of a coalmine. Well, he could have started by explaining how a coal trajectory going “up and up and up” for decades can possibly be compatible with domestic and international climate goals.
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