Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing | Hacker News Reader

Australia opposes Great Barrier Reef ′in danger′ listing

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89 pointsTomte122 comments

I love Australia but I do not like them — they’ve been such a disappointment to me. They’re the smart kid that grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and had so much potential. But, rather than forge an amazing path, out of fear they systematically sabotaged their own success by following the drop-kick popular crowd. Source: Australian now living in NZ.

Although the two are abound in cultural similarities, most every single aspect of life is better in Australia than NZ.

Voluntary emigration tells that story. 100 Kiwis move across the ditch for every 1 Aussie that returns the favour (per capita).

Like you, I really struggle with Australia (I was born in NZ. Lived 30 years in Australia, now a digital nomad).

Australia seems to be doing everything in it's power to not be climate friendly. Dismantling carbon tax, trying to maintain coal power[0], exporting coal, putting taxes on electric cars[1] (WHY?!). Plus, other things I've likely forgotten.

This is without all the other items unrelated to this story. Treating refugees badly[2][3], and finding new ways abuse indigenous Australians[4].

I can't see myself living in Australia again. Not that the rest of the world is perfect by any means, but if I had to pick at this point it would probably be somewhere like the Nordic countries that seem to take their international responsibilities seriously (I'm sure it's not all roses there either).

[0] https://www.powerengineeringint.com/coal-fired/fossil-fuel-p... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/30/electric... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/02/austra... [3] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/08/australia-abu... [4] https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/08/australia-off...

Don't let NZ's clean green marketing efforts delude you. Auckland is the most car dependent city in the world outside of the US. Christchurch is the most car dependent small city in the world.

To put that in perspective, there are as many cars on the road in Auckland per day as Berlin, which has 3.5x the population.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_share

I said nothing about NZ (except that I was born there).

It's considered bad taste to criticise other countries for that which your home country is.

I'm both an Australian and NZ citizen. One of my parents is Australian and the other NZ.

Not that my ancestral line matters at all the legitimacy of my views. I spent 30 years living in Australia and I'll point out all the flaws I want.

Otherwise, nobody in Australia should ever criticize China (or insert any other country). But that's not the way the world works, nor the way I want the world to work. Everyone should be held to account. We don't exist in a vacuum.

NZ has also, even more so than Australia, trashed all its rivers.

I'm an Aussie that left 15 years ago, and just flew back 2 weeks ago.

It's been really sad to watch the political leadership in Australia be so obviously bought by the massive mining interests, and continue to prioritize their wants and needs over those of regular folks and the environment. Australia will continue to go downhill until that changes, and I fear it could be a few decades until that happens.

Australia should be leading the world with green energy, instead we keep pandering to the massive mining conglomerates.

> putting taxes on electric cars (WHY?!)

This was such a weird move across the board. Climate change rejection aside though, I think there could be a sympathetic (to the government) explanation somewhere in there:

Eventually, EVs will need to be taxed in some way, if only to make up for the loss of fuel excise tax. It's far less controversial (and politically suicidal) to introduce a tax when only a tiny percentage of (presumably non-politically-donating) Australians will actually have to pay it.

Then once EV usage hits a significant percentage, there's already a tax in place that everyone takes for granted. And in the very unlikely event that such a tax would be repealed, what a great card to play at election time.

I can't remember who said it, but it reminds me of the "we should have taxed the Internet when we had the chance" comment. A realisation which came far too late (thankfully) for the government to do anything about it.

If the AU government didn't have such a denial / fossil-fuels attitude, I could even accept that. Unfortunately, with every other position that they hold it's hard to take that kind of explanation seriously.

putting taxes on electric cars (WHY?!)

As a two-edged sword to reduce EV sales.

First edge: to keep the petroleum boys happy.

Second edge: because they can't afford to make the electricity generation plants big enough and the electricity grids robust enough to stand the charging of millions of electric vehicles on a daily basis.

It's not "Australia" opposing the move, it's "Australians who will earn less money if fewer people spend money in locales near the Great Barrier Reef due to negative publicity" who oppose the move.

I'm an Australian. Let's go fully In Danger.

A danger warning would only boost tourism with "last chance" visits.

I would have thought this could be sold as protecting the livelihoods of the people that rely on tourism. It's not as if tourists will come to visit the former Great Barrier Reef when it's dead and gone. No one wants to go on holiday to feel sad and depressed that the world destroyed a natural wonder.

It appears De Tocqueville was wrong.

For those who don't remember, one of his arguments for democracy was that it was a lot less likely for democracies to make such huge mistakes that endanger them, unlike autocracies, where the decision making is so concentrated and so swift that massive bad decisions can be made in an instant and there's no coming back from them.

If Australia, fully democratic and an advanced democracy, does this then we're all lost.

I love my country, but we are struggling to escape from the influence of our mining magnates. Let's not forget our PM famously bringing a chunk of coal into parliament: https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2017/feb/09/scott-m...

And notice how it's not leaving any marks. I heard it was coated/varnished. Can't have people thinking coal is dirty or anything crazy like that.

I'm don't really see an issue if he did, but it isn't hard to find a good solid sample of coal where all the dust has been brushed off. NSW mines a lot of coal and covers the spectrum of different coal grades.

It's hard to tell from images available online, but it may have been anthracite or bituminous coal, which are both surprisingly hard - more like a brittle rock than, say, the charcoal you'd use in a BBQ.

True, this article claims it was varnished but I don't see any evidence for the claim. Regardless, it was a silly stunt but did show his allegiance clearly.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/weekend-australian-magazine...

Apparently anthracite is even sometimes used as a gemstone. I've certainly seen ornaments carved out of it.

Yancoal, like Australia, is owned by China.

What difference would eliminating entire coal industry have on anything though?

In the US, the coal industry employs fewer people than Arby’s. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/03/31/8-sur...

Coal is bad enough that we can justify getting rid of it without disingenuous comparisons of decently compensated mining jobs to min-wage sandwich assembly.

The US is a country of 330M people. Coal employs about 60k here.

There’s no reason to keep acting like it’s a key aspect of the economy.

Nobody is saying coal is a key aspect of the economy but thanks for the straw-man.

I'm saying you can justify getting rid of coal without borderline lying by comparing the jobs to burger flippers. These are respectable heavy industry jobs that pay respectable salaries and they are a large enough fraction of the economy in a couple states that you can't just hand wave it away as a non-issue. A good point of comparison is the logging/timber industry which employs similar numbers and is also geographically concentrated. We need to be honest about the fact that there will be regional economies that are hurt badly if we artificially get rid of coal faster than the market forces are doing.

Not sure I’m the one “borderline lying” here.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/02/climate/coal-jobs-prove-l...

The comparison is useful to demonstrate how small the industry is. No one thinks the loss of Arby’s would collapse the economy, but politicians act like coal would.

Arbys does not underpin the economy of west virginia or any other state. If it did underpin a state economy you can bet your ass they'd fight for it and politicians looking to curry favor with those politicians would also fight for it.

I can't believe I'm arguing for f*king coal here.

Coal doesn’t underpin WV’s economy, it simply doesn’t employ that many people. In 2019 it was at 13,988 in a state with 1,767,859 people. If anything it’s the federal government that’s underpinning WV’s economy.

For all the jokes WV isn’t like what most people picture. For example people think of poverty, yet while far below CA median household income is significantly higher in WV than the UK, Germany, or France.

$64bn exports…

Why handicap yourself if it’s not necessary.

> if it’s not necessary

That's a big "if".

Eliminating our dependency on coal is a necessary but not sufficient condition in solving climate change issues. It's silly to suggest we shouldn't take a necessary step because it's not sufficient on it own.

It’s always framed like there is no cost to eliminating coal. For techies, no. For rural folk, big time. Techies lack empathy but naturally buy into the “save/change the world” narrative.

It’s 64bn worth of exports.

Of course there's a cost, but there's a cost to climate change too. The barrier reef is one of those costs. So if you're not paying the cost of reducing climate change, then you can't claim you're looking after the reef.

Australia has very sunny weather plus significant deposits of lithium. They could very well invest in PV + storage technology if they wanted to. Instead they have been actively protectionist of the coal industry.

I'm from the UK, we had our own shutdown of the mines in the 70's, and it's still scarred into the collective psyche of the working class. But it doesn't have to be like that. If the jobs had been replaced and investment had been put into alternative industry then it would be a very different story. That's what should be happening.

The federal opposition could one-up them and carry in a PV panel and battery cell claiming it and the light reflecting from Minister Dutton's head is the key to our future (the latter part only if they want to channel Paul Keating's spite).

Chris Bowen brought a solar panel into parliament just a few days ago: https://twitter.com/MichaelM_ACT/status/1405035688681111554

Scott Morrison has always been pro coal.

Just a quick note, that this was a surprising move by China which leads the World Heritage Committee as of now. A kind of reprisal that Australia had the guts to say NO to the negative Chinese influence in Australia. In the end of the day, Oz is paying dearly for its non-conformity with China.

What is more, Australia does not exist in vacuum and China is responsible for 28% of global emissions (compared to AU's less than 1%). Of course, the stats per capita are different, yet, the problem can't be solved unless the big players decrease their emissions - China, US, India & Russia.

well don't forget China also holds 19% of the worlds population compared to 0.33% in Australia.

Most of the "big players" you mention are similar so it is not just the "big players" who need to decrease emissions. You should see the per-capita numbers for fair comparision.

Here are the per-capita numbers btw : India 1.91 United States 15.52 China 7.38 Australia 17.10

Please stop blaming India and China without much research.

Exactly!

Is it fair to extrapolate like that? Does "reasonable" pollution scale linearly with population, or can we expect large countries to be more efficient because of economies of scale?

Genuinely curious

If you compare the US to any European country you’ll see that really is not the case.

Most things don't have significant economies of scale beyond a fairly small country (maybe the size of England). The 3 biggest polluters are electricity&heat, agriculture and transport.

- Electricity and heat benefit from a bigger electricity network (e.g. to get more reliable solar and wind), but electrical grids don't necessarily follow borders. The US has about 3 grids, continental Europe has a grid spanning 24 countries. (in fact, there's almost no grids that span exactly one country [1])

- Agriculture doesn't hugely benefit from economies of scale beyond the regional level

- Transport benefits mostly from rail networks, which aren't really bound to borders

You can make a case that population density helps (most obvious in the case of transport, but it is really helpful for lots of things), and being an island makes electricity harder. But in the case of Australia, it has to be noted that the negative effect on electricity from being an island is somewhat lessened by their vast area, and the negative effect of low population density on transport emissions is somewhat lessened by most Australians actually living in pretty high density.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wide_area_synchronous_gri...

Some further numbers: EU avg. 7.0 UK 5.3

Does that include fact that Australia is the biggest net exporter of coal, or do the get free pass for that?

Net exports contribute 3% global CO2 emissions.

A lot for country with 0.3% of global population.

> Please stop blaming India and China without much research.

When sea levels rise and poor Indians who live near the sea are affected, is the Indian govt going to help them or will the rich countries need to step in like they did during Covid?

You can talk about per capita all you want but in the end who is going to support the affected Indians?

So your point is that since (you think) rich countries are going to help India, they are allowed to have higher emissions ?

>in the end who is going to support the affected Indians? nobody, but that is besides the point

Unfortunately per capita doesn’t matter regarding effects of climate change. It’s the absolute numbers.

The marginal effect of removing Australia’s emissions is like a rounding error in the climate equation.

> It’s the absolute numbers.

Yes, for the world, and not per country. Otherwise it'd be "better" for the world if larger countries just split into many smaller ones.

Reefs don't care about per capita numbers, nor "fair" comparisons.

Ok so if we slice China in half with a border, we have halved their total emissions. If we add another line we can quarter their emissions. I'm sure the reefs feel much better about accounting based on totals.

Or, put, another way, anthropogenic global warming, and ocean acidification, is caused by the totality of human activity.

All AGW divided by total human population equals one.

So, naturally, The Great Barrier Reef is very concerned with totals.

It's beside the point but

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heihe%E2%80%93Tengchong_Line

True. So western countries that have extremely high per capita numbers need to reduce their emissions by consuming less and supporting renewable tech research.

https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$data$fi...

"Blame China" seems too simplistic, how much of their CO2 is because the rest of the world outsourced their production to China. So your shiny smartphone, or your kids' Nerf guns, how much CO2 did their production cost, and to which nation's balance is it added to?

If China started charging their factories to offset CO2, Apple and Nerf (or their suppliers) would just find the next country willing to host their polluting factories for a bit less money.

I agree, all countries should stop outsourcing to China.

That doesn't appear to be the parent comment's point at all. In fact they made almost exactly the opposite point: if we stopped outsourcing things to China then it wouldn't have an effect on overall carbon emissions.

Yup, consumption CO2 per capita is what matters:

https://www.gapminder.org/tools/#$model$markers$line$data$fi...

That is literally the opposite of what matters. Pollution only matters in absolute terms.

The only reason per capita measures even enter the conversation is because we're all looking for a low pollution path to high energy consumption.

We're talking about different things here. I said per capita matters because it helps us blame the correct people, and we certainly need to do that because there are >1B people in rich western countries that have an unfairly high CO2 footprint.

It doesn't help you blame the right people. The majority of the problem is caused by people who are not them.

Bullshit.

Can clearly see your bias here. Why are you ignoring the emissions by the rich 1B people, they are the ones that can actually do something about it (reduce consumption and invest in research) thanks to their relatively luxurious lives. The others are just trying to survive - for them, consequences of climate change are still much better than the current state of poverty.

The rest of the world has a very low carbon footprint per person, just that the population is much higher. How do you propose reducing the population, birth rates have already been dropping drastically across the globe and human population will peak at ~10B. Do you want to kill them off? Do you feel your life is more important than theirs?

I am very biased. But in this case, if the 1 billion "rich people" drop their emissions down to below average then the majority of the problem will still be here. And now there will be 1 billion less wealthy people for no particular net gain.

> The rest of the world has a very low carbon footprint per person, just that the population is much higher. How do you propose reducing the population, birth rates have already been dropping drastically across the globe and human population will peak at ~10B. Do you want to kill them off? Do you feel your life is more important than theirs?

I advocate the radical approach of encouraging people to have less children. If poor people had 0.5 children on average, then poverty would be eradicated quite quickly. An ever increasing population isn't necessary to have a comfortable life. And we could all emit more pollution per capita while living in a cleaner world.

> if the 1 billion "rich people" drop their emissions down to below average then the majority of the problem will still be here.

True. But the "majority" is not as big as you think.

> there will be 1 billion less wealthy people

Just wrong. There are lots of ways to reduce emissions without any effect in wealth. Eating less meat is one example.

> for no particular net gain.

Very wrong, there are huge gains: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/sep/21/worlds-r...

> I advocate the radical approach of encouraging people to have less children.

I knew you would say this, I was just waiting for it. Global birth rates have been in freefall for decades now, it's tragic that people don't know about it. You'd assume that supposedly "better" education in western countries would make people more aware, but western governments are only concerned with maintaining global western hegemony which requires falsely accusing the rest of the world and keeping their citizens ignorant. Also, you can't force people to have less children, that's inhumane. I suggest you go through the following links.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBT5EQt348

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FACK2knC08E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVimVzgtD6w

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34890015-factfulness

> True. But the "majority" is not as big as you think.

Are you suggesting the majority of a problem is smaller than half?

Eating less meat is pretty stupid as strategies go, it doesn't tackle the root cause (which is too many people).

I'm not clear on what your point is about birth rates trend down in wealthy countries, but that is actually a well known fact. Quite an encouraging one.

Why would you include India and not the EU? They are obviously a bigger player as a bloc in terms of emissions.

This is bullshit. The actual decision will be an open vote.

Writing this down to China is stupid.

UNESCO currently has "significant concern" for the World Heritage of the Great Barrier Reef - and this classification has been held for years now, well before any current tensions with China.

Do not be distracted by nationalism - this natural asset is being immeasurably degraded in our lifetime.

> China which leads the World Heritage Committee as of now

What are you basing this on? The World Heritage Sites are run by UNESCO, and China is not on the current Executive board https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNESCO#Executive_Board

edit China is on the World Heritage Committee, but so is Australia with every member having an equal ballot.

I’ve seen this spin a lot in the Australian media but it seems like a distraction.

The Great Barrier Reef is endangered and will likely disappear for the most part.

And yes our own management of it has been problematic in many ways.

Time for another message from the Australien Government about their S*** F***ery [0]! This is already a nice example on the subject: [1]. Every country should have their own "the Juice Media". We have something similar in the Netherlands but it's only in Dutch (zondag met Lubach). Here is nice one where our government is destroyed regarding its policy around data centers that use our wind energy. Wind energy that was promised to the people that have to live with the mills in "their backyard". Also nice to learn that the windmills are build from our own tax money but will mainly serve data centers hosting data for other countries! [2]. That show did a good job getting people's awareness, let's hope things will change.

[0] https://www.thejuicemedia.com/

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92t8np88fEI

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiPoR9OvD0Y (YouTube disabled the community provided subtitles?!)

The reefs are not "in danger", they're pretty much already lost. We most likely emitted enough CO2 already to cause enough warming to kill them off almost completely. Pollution and overfishing don't help either.

> the decision sent "a poor signal" to countries that are doing even less than Australia to protect their natural environments.

Thinking about Brasil and Amazon forest

As a general comment, if you'd like to know more about what's happening and has happened to the Great Barrier Reef over the last few hundred years, I can highly recommend Iain McCalman's[1] book "The Reef: A Passionate History: the Great Barrier Reef from Captain Cook to climate change."[1]

[1] https://iainmccalman.com.au/

[2] https://geographical.co.uk/reviews/books/item/141-the-reef

Just yesterday I watched "Seaspiracy" on Netflix and there someone stated a main cause of reef extinction is fish extinction, since reefs feed on fish excretes.

The reefs are being bleached by higher sea temperatures. It is well known and has been observed for a while now.

Also, acidification makes them weaker and grow more slowly.

Most reefs culture its own food. Other eat alive animals. They typically discard any sand, faeces, algae or garbage pushing it away towards the periphery of the oral disc.

When lots of the reef have been destroyed and bleached by warmer waters, it's being deliberately obtuse to state that the Reef is 'not in danger'.

The conservative government is too beholden to the mining and coal corporations to state the real truth.

I live in Cairns, it's whole tourism sector is soon to collapse as tourists who once came for the sights of the Reef will soon have no reason to arrive.

> Australian Environmental Minister Sussan Ley: "I agree that global climate change is the single biggest threat to the world's reefs but it is wrong, in our view, to single out the best-managed reef in the world for an 'in danger' listing,"

> warming waters led to the loss of half of its corals since 1995.

Australia seems to be deeply corrupt. Last week a 21 year old YouTube editor for the Friendlyjordies channel was arrested by some sort of special anti terror unit after approaching the New South Wales Deputy Premier on the street, this was recorded and it’s shameful that a politician would have anyone arrested for simply approaching them. [1] [2]

Just so happens that Friendlyjordies have been exposing potential corruption links between the New South Wales Deputy Premier and corporations and donors with link to his political party. [3] [4]

> “MFS is a farming research cooperative that was established by Richard Taylor, who is the brother of the federal energy minister, Angus Taylor, and the brother-in-law of the NSW Nationals MP Bronwyn Taylor. Until 2019 Richard was the chair of MFS...MFS has been the recipient of numerous state and federal grants, totalling well over $800,000.”

> “An estimates inquiry was told earlier this year that documents supporting another $200m community grants program had been shredded.”

> “...Barilaro pushed the Department of Industry to support another Taylor family project, the Country Universities Centre, even though it failed a cost-benefit analysis. The CUC is chaired by Duncan Taylor, the husband of Bronnie Taylor. The organisation received two grants of $8m from the state government plus $5.1m from the federal government.”

> “In the federal parliament the Senate has asked questions about an $80m water buyback from Eastern Australian Agriculture, which was co-founded by Angus Taylor prior to entering parliament.”

How does this relates to coral reefs? [5] [6]

> “John Barilaro says the NSW government is ‘firmly committed’ to the coal industry”

> NSW deputy premier says ‘there will be no moratorium on coal in the Upper Hunter or anywhere else in the state’

> John Barilaro wants NSW coalmine expansion to proceed despite water safety fears for Sydney

> Deputy premier to seek legal advice on overturning an independent decision to reject coalmine expansion

[1] - https://youtu.be/OXtq4a8829g

[2] - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jun/18/frien...

[3] - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jun/10/this-...

[4] - https://youtu.be/ihoirTYqf2c

[5] - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/31/john-...

[6] - https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/feb/15/john-...

Look up Juice Media on YouTube.

As an Australian who has dived the reef I can tell you it's dying. Consecutive Govts have done little to help and some have actively let it deteriorate because under the reef is the world's biggest oil and gas reserve.. Australia wants to mine it and being a 'wonder of the world' is an inconvenient problem

I don't think Australia can reasonably claim to be managing their reef well while they still support their coal industry so heavily.

What has coal got to do with reefs?

Direct pollution at coal loading sites. Indirect pollution from coal waste, run-off and AGW effects

This coal is shipped abroad so they build deep water ports near the reefs [1]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/aug/01/-sp-grea...

One of the largest coal ports (Abbott Point Port) is right in the middle of the coast bordered by the reef, which is currently approved for expansion.

Coal ship grounding on Great Barrier Reef blamed on fatigue

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/apr/14/coal-shi...

From what I understand: Coal produces lots of CO2. CO2 is part of the global warming. Global warming also raises the temperature in the Great Barrier Reef. The GBR cannot handle the sudden temperature increase and dies off.

Or it is the massive tourism with all the boats and people touching and contaminating the reef.

Also CO2 absorbs into the oceans and makes them more acidic. This prevents corals from growing properly.

https://www.whoi.edu/press-room/news-release/scientists-iden...

If it's as responsibly managed as Australia claims, I guess a sizable part of the reef is off limits to tourists, so it should be easy to find out if there is significantly more damage in areas where diving is allowed?

Typically there is less damage in the areas where tourists dive. As the reef experiences more bleaching events and dies, the tourism operators cherry pick the parts that aren't bleached.

The reef has pretty well had it due to climate change. It's only a matter of time, so better management of local effects such as runoff from land will delay the death, not avoid it. [1]

Apart from the climate change denying Federal Government [2], the opposition is being driven by tourist operators, who are afraid that people will write the reef off as not worth seeing [3]. Maybe they should be running a huge "Last Chance to See" campaign?

[1] https://ecos.csiro.au/coral-reefs-need-cooler-water/

[2] https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/barnaby-joyce-sets-u...

[3] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-22/great-barrier-reef-to...

How does [2] evidence “climate denying”. They just want to protect rural jobs.

Australia is not a leader. They represent a tiny fraction of CO2 emissions and it doesn’t make sense to tank the economy if the big emitters like China don’t actually take action.

And how do you convince china, being on average way poorer than australia - to abolish coal, when rich australia is not?

And as far as I know, china is big on reneawbles. Australia is not, despite having top conditions for it.

Australia is a much bigger emitter than China on a per-capita basis and is much wealthier. I don't see how we can convince China that they should cut emissions if places like Australia and the USA won't.

Yes, coal is one of the biggest CO2 problems globally, and it has been for decades. Unfortunately, globally we are increasing its usage, well, because more people still need electricity

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions#/me...

Our politicians support coal because political "donations" are legal. Fully fund political parties out of general revenue and fully fund ICAC and we'll be in a better position.

Coal is dying faster than the Great Barrier Reef. The fat bastards in charge of coal have more money to fight it.

What good would Australia moving away from coal do anyone? If Aus stopped all coal activities, absolutely nothing changes about climate change.

Lower supply means higher prices which increases the attractiveness of renewable energy?

It would mean fewer stories like this one, for one thing.

How does burning less coal do "absolutely nothing about climate change"? If you state something like that you have to at least give a convincing argument.

fruityrudy is arguing in other comment replies that the Australian coal is "only 3%" of CO2 emissions so he probably thinks that's so close to zero it's basically zero and negligible..

I wonder how he'd feel about a 3% pay cut.

Climate change is not directly proportional to co2 in the atmosphere. To reverse it requires large reductions. China, India, US. Australia’s production and usage is a rounding error at the moment.

Economics 101 is killing coal, nothing else.

Digging rock out of the ground, lugging it across the world in massive quantities and then burning it is an expensive activity. There are cheaper alternatives, the most obvious one is natural gas, and that's similar to comparing terminal lung cancer to terminal stomach cancer. Terminal being the key word.

Forget about climate change, health issues (have you been to a country where your eyes hurt?), pro-unionism/anti-unionism and whatever else you like or dislike, coal is not economically viable. Just ask British coal miners. Oh wait, you can't thanks to Margret Thatcher (love her or hate her, she did invent soft-serve ice cream. Seriously). She saw it coming 40 years ago.

Coal is an energy source, absolutely. It works. It's just economically stupid compared to cheaper alternatives.

Just like farriers, blacksmiths, priests and who-knows-what professions are useless, coal miners are too.

Economics 101. And you don't even need to mention climate change. Coal is dead dead dead. Get used to it.

If Australia stopped all coal activities what would change about the reef?

Coal exports represent 3% of global CO2 emissions.

You just have a decrease in GDP for nothing in return.

That’s what many are saying about climate change.

“If we reduce our emissions, nothing changes”.

That’s basically the comment many Americans make in the Wall Street Journal almost daily.

Well for Americans it actually matters at 15%. And China at 28%.

But for Australia it’s a joke.

> Coal exports represent 3% of global CO2 emissions.

3% is HUGE.

Not really. Plus that’s exports - so it’s other countries buying it.

On the global scale, being able to tackle 3% of emissions would be massive news. only 3% is a lot.

They just need to move the Great Barrier Reef 'beyond the environment'

https://youtu.be/3m5qxZm_JqM

Opposes by legalism around "how it was done" not actually able to confront the embedded science behind why it's at risk.

We really really should think about building new (with technology from 2000's and not 1960) Nuclear Power-plants.

There's a bunch of marginal coal industry seats that the government is in danger of loosing, which is why they're doing stupid things like this.

It's not the only thing, they recently decided to subsidize a new gas power plant with taxpayers money.

The Australian government is stupid, that's true (that statement is timeless).

However, conflating coal and tourism is... well, I don't see how you can win that argument except after 26 beers.

This

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