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Comment by abrookewood | Hacker News Reader

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...

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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.

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.

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.

Yancoal, like Australia, is owned by China.

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