Well Ben,

Coal and Iron ore have been important exports for Australia for decades. Over the past 10 years they have increased six-fold from $17.7 billion in 2001 to $110.9 billion in 2011.

Any ideas on how you would replace that $110 billion?

"If Australia is to make a contribution to avoiding dangerous climate change – and more weeks like this one - then the problem of our coal exports must be addressed."
Wow - so all we have to do is stop exporting coal and we wont have any more really hot summers. Amazing!

Cheryl, your comment exposes your city-bred ignorance. You think that everything can be reduced to money terms, balance of trade, etc.

I live in a rural environment and I have spend the last days and weeks sweltering and worrying about when a bushfire will come roaring over the paddocks and burn my heritage-listed home to the ground thus killing a unique piece of Australian history.

Surely the harrowing scenes of bushfire destruction have made some impression on you or do you only care about your coal shares gaining more value?

Why not try putting yourself in other peoples' shoes for once?

There's absolutely no link between the media's recent obsession with our annual bushfire season and so called "climate change". Nor is there any link between coal production and the bushfires. Bushfires are more affected by amount of leaf litter and human factors rather than minute temperature variations. At least 30-40% of fires were deliberately lit or resulted from human intervention ie not Climate Change.

The monsoon trough is late coming this year and this led to higher temps in central Australia.Sydney,though, has had only ONE day in January over 29 deg so far. 41.3? Big deal we get one or two of these every year.

Last year was a particularly cool winter. Remember??

Correction: Last year was a particularly cool and wet SUMMER. Remember??

We offer the drug dealers' excuse that if we don't export coal, someone else will. This is similar to using the gun merchants' excuse that coal doesn't raise global temperatures, coal-fired power plants do. We just mine it and sell it. What "they" choose to do with it is not our business.
But in our ever busier and ever more crowded world, it is our business.
Gillard has chosen to back her Minister for Resources and Energy, Martin Ferguson's while throwing an occasional bone to her Minister for Climate Change, Greg Combet. She is playing us, or attempting to play us, like trout.
And the Coalition would do the same, although they might do without the bone, let alone the trout.
All my life I have had reservations about nuclear power. But with the advances being made in the types of uranium reactors and the advent of thorium reactors, maybe it's time to reconsider.
The world does not want to go without power, and more of it every year, and it will not go without if it can possibly avoid it.
Australia earns good export dollars from coal. Could that earn be replaced by uranium? And then what do we do with all the coal projects already in the pipeline?
I noticed that the hoax recently worked by a Green was on a coal project one of whose directors is a former Federal minister. There are a lot of vested interests out there, and they do fight their corner.
I think we're in for some hot and hotter summers, and we will either adapt, or we won't.