It seems like Big Coal and their captive politicians are laughing behind everybody's back. Just nod approvingly at APEC and Al Gore then do the exact opposite. The Federal ALP hypocrisy will be demonstrated when China asks Australia to 'help out' with more coal deliveries as their domestic supplies and standards tighten. It is thought that world coal production will peak by 2025. It would have peaked later for Australia except for the export boom that Rudd will endorse. Apparently even coalbed methane gas will be made into a form of LNG to be sent offshore in tankers. The positive side is that some climate scientists think global warming will be limited to 3C because of early depletion of economically viable coal. Meanwhile the world will be a hellish place to live, if not for this generation but those to follow.

"Coal is the enemy" when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, but it's misleading of Ms Rhiannon to tally emissions from *exported* to Australia.

Because we profit from other countries' coal use, Australia bears some moral responsibility for resulting pollution. But those emissions are not Australia's. Saying so just strengthens the widespread (false) belief that an emissions-reduction agreement would hurt Australia's economy twice over. Coal suppliers compete, so unlaterally cutting exports would be ineffective, only hurting our own balance of payments. *Multilateral* action is required where international trade is involved. Under an emissions pact like Kyoto or its successor, the fuel trade is incidental.

Australian environmental and energy policy should focus on improving domestic performance and on developing low-emissions energy technology for export. The world's most carbon-intensive electricity is not from exported Hunter Valley or Queensland black coal but right here in Australia, burning brown coal. We must clean up our own act first.

Australia's economy could benefit greatly from improved electric intensity. We have yet to adopt many simple efficiency measures which are now taken for granted in places like Japan, continental Europe and California, so the scope for us to profitably reduce our electricity use is very large.

It is not too late to adopt solar thermal power on a very large scale and to profit from exporting solar technology to other countries. We would also be mad to miss the development of algaculture for biodiesel and biomass fuel, optionally fertilised using combustion flue gases. Other established renewable energy supplies are applicable here too, though Australia missed the boat on becoming a technology exporter.

Australian research leads carbon-dioxide capture-and-storage theory, but the amount of money spent on developing these techniques remains very small. Our electric, aluminium and coal industries must undertake to eliminate emissions from domestic operations and acknowledge that coal-fired power's future is in emissions capture. This would accelerate CCS developments and enhance long-term earnings from coal exports.

Taswegian, two degrees of warming is already sufficient to trigger chaotic positive feedbacks, potentially far beyond three degrees. Economic limits to fossil-fuel extraction are insufficient to avert climatic disaster.

Congratulations, Lee Rhiannon!

And my congratulations also to Greens Senator Bob Brown who back in February, with courage and vision, proposed that the coal industry be scaled back. For his trouble he was hysterically denounced by Brisbane's Courier Mail Newspaper. Their story of 10 Feb 2007 "Kill coal off, says Bob" featured a photo of Bob Brown with the caption:

"This man wants to kill off 20,000 Queensland jobs, exports worth $24 billion and the lifeblood of countless towns and ports . . . Greens leader Bob Brown in Canberra yesterday".

We should not be under any illusion that this is going to be an easy cause to gain broad public acceptance for, let alone to win.

This issue directly counterposes real and very considerable prosperity today - and not just prosperity for large companies, but also for its workforce and much of the wider community - to the preservation of the health of this planet's biosphere and the interests of future generations.

If the coal industry is scaled back - as is it must be - then whatever alternative livelihoods can be found for the workforce and the communities who also depend upon those pay packets, is unlikely to be as lucrative - the reason being that the coal industry derives its wealth from our once-off bounty of tens of millions of years of captured solar energy. Whatever sustainable alternative is found will have to be ultimately derived from the relative trickle of solar radiation that reaches the earth's surface each day.

We can expect that powerful vested coal mining interests will be able to play upon the fears of financial insecurity, and, in some cases, greed, of its workforce, however, I think that the coal mining workforce can be largely won over if alternative livelihoods are offered and the peril that their industry is posing to the whole planet is put directly to them.

I have put my thought on the coal industry at http://candobetter.org/about#coal and http://candobetter.org/node/118

I think Peter McMahon's article "Back to basics: averting global collapse" at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=6345 may also be of interest.

re xoddam:
"Australian environmental and energy policy should focus on improving domestic performance and on developing low-emissions energy technology for export. The world's most carbon-intensive electricity is not from exported Hunter Valley or Queensland black coal but right here in Australia, burning brown coal. "

What pains me is that coal is being mainly dug up and burnt, or else carted away and burnt, rather than saved and used for chemical feedstock.

I suppose that I ought to bow to my own sense of consistency and first ask (or find out and tell) about the comparative net energy balance of manufacturing complex organic chemicals and polymer feedstocks, vs extracting them from caol, but my hunch is that coal will be a valuable chemical resource 100 years from now, and a realtively cheap one, if there's any cheap coal left.

It is a shame that energy companies aren't looking toward diversification into sustainable energy strategies, but are instead just grabbing the short-term profits. Maybe they ought to consider making a move in this direction:

http://www.alternativeconsumer.com/2007/03/04/wave-power-plant-goes-online/

A related article on Oceanlinx technology notes that:

"The Electric Power Research Institute deems Oceanlinx the lowest cost per unit producer of its wave power peer group."

"Oceanlinx technology can produce potable water, electricity and salable by- products like brine and hydrogen from its desalination process"

EPRI has a reputation for promoting nuclear electricity, so their endorsement of this alternative source of electricity is intriguing

Approving new coal mining,
Blocking neuclear power,
Building new CO2 emitting power plants,
Slating the liberal Party for not doing anything on climate change,
Building a power hungry desal plant.

Having your cake and eating it.

Lee Rhiannon must take up the challenge posed at a Coal 21 gabfest held over the past couple of days at Pokolbin in the Hunter Valley.
One speaker said the only viable CO2 sequestration site was around Queensland's Darling Downs, 600+ km from the major NSW generation centres. A new base load electricity generator is currently proposed for the Hunter. A pipeline should be part of the budget if logic and sustainability mean anything to the folk in Macquarie Street.