When Malcolm Turnbull became Prime Minister of Australia in 2015, I had some hopes that he was conscious of the cilmate change problems facing the world, seeing as he dismissed his predecessor’s overly political approach as “bullshit.” Sadly, he seems to fall into a similar category, as noted by Alice Klein in NewScientist (22 April 2017, paywall):
The scientific consensus is clear: the increased frequency of mass bleaching events is being driven by global warming – both directly by warming water and indirectly by extreme weather that ravages corals. The only way to save the precious remains of the reef is to rein in our carbon dioxide emissions.
So it might come as a surprise that the Australian government seems hell-bent on doing the opposite. Last Monday – the same day the latest reef report card was released – Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was in India finalising a deal with multinational conglomerate Adani to build the largest coal mine in Australia – just 300 kilometres from the Great Barrier Reef. Will this seal the reef’s fate?
The emissions certainly won’t help. Coal from the A$22 billion (US$16.5 billion) Carmichael mine will go by rail to the Abbot Point coal port in the central section of the reef and shipped to power stations in India, where it will pump out more than the annual carbon dioxide output of New Zealand.
The coal will also have a more direct effect: dust blowing from shipments at Abbot Point is likely to poison nearby coral. Coal dust exposure can kill coral in as little as two weeks.
Australian citizens are against the Carmichael mine, as noted in the guardian:
Three-quarters of Australians, including most Liberal voters, oppose the government giving a $1bn loan to Adani to build a rail line between its proposed Carmichael coalmine and the Abbot Point shipping terminal.
But there may be a greater objection raised to Turnbull’s plan, as Klein reports:
Because while the Australian government has insisted that India needs coal to power the lives of 100 million impoverished people, the Indian government has plans to move away from fossil fuels. Last last year, it announced it would harvest 60 per cent of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2027. The rapidly falling price of solar energy is making it an increasingly attractive alternative to coal for India and other lower-income countries.
And all this in contrast to the coal miners’ own efforts to leave the industry in its own hole in the ground.
