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OT: Moorabal/Lal Lal wind farm 2-Jul-2009 At 9:09:05 AM evanbb

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The other thing I've seen today is a well argued, albeit depressing article on why Australia should continue exporting coal. I can't find it online, but it was written by Robert Merkel in the most recent Quarterly Essay.
(The current essay is written by the lovely Annabel Crabb on the life and times of Malcolm Turnbull, which is very interesting for political nerds who have been following the Grech email thingy. This argument is included in the correspondence regarding the previous essay, which was on coal exports, written by Guy Pearse.)

So, the argument goes like this. Even though Australia exports 30% of the worlds coal, this is more a result of our infrastructure investment and favourable economic climate than the fact we've got a butt load of it; our reserves represent a very small proportion of total reserves. Most of the collieries are run by big, multi-national companies, and they operate here because it is currently the cheapest way forward. If we banned coal mining and export, they'll just ship their machinery to another country and continue pumping it out. China still have 400 (or what ever it actualy is) coal plants, and they're not going to be decommissioned in a hurry. The depressing reality is that we might as well continue making a profit from it because if we don't someone else will. It means that, really to stop coal exports, we need to shift away from a paradigm where money is important. Sounds Utopian and extroardinarily unlikely to me.

This makes the push for Clean Coal (Smart coal or Green coal) a bit more urgent. Again, sad thing is, it's not going to get there fast enough to make a difference. A lot of people don't realise, but the Green paper (Garnaut's CPRS paper) actually outlines how we'll reduce our emissions, and susprisingly, we won't. We'll just offset them by protecting SE Asian rainforest. Which I see as a cop out, but at least the Orangutan hasa better chance of surviving, obtusely because Australia has so much coal.