Australia’s dirtiest habit is its addiction to coal. In Big Coal, Guy Pearse, David McKnight and Bob Burton ask if our dependence on it is a road to prosperity or a dead end. Are we hooked for life? And who is profiting from our addiction? Ian Dunlop's foreword to the book, extracted here, introduces the issues.

 ‘At last a book that demonstrates the coal industry’s bogus claims of environmental and economic responsibility.’
– David Suzuki

‘If the power of argument and facts counts for anything, Big Coal will wholly transform how we see the coal industry. Yet, as this book also shows, nowadays truth can be defeated by money.’
Clive Hamilton, author and academic

‘Kicking Australia’s coal habit is the greatest gift Australians could give to everybody’s children, future generations, and other life on our planet.’
– James Hansen, climate scientist and former director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies

‘If Australia ramps up its coal exports, there’s no way the planet can forestall climate change. This book helps explain that simple truth and shows the country has other paths to take.’
Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist

The following is an extract from Ian Dunlop's foreword to Big Coal: Australia's dirtiest habit, by Guy Pearse, David McKnight and Bob Burton. 

Australia is teetering on the brink of the greatest strategic blunder in its history. If planned expansion of the coal industry proceeds, Australia will find itself ‘beautifully equipped for a world which no longer exists’, with extensive stranded assets in mines, ports and railways, as key trading partners like China and India rapidly abandon a high-carbon future in favour of low-carbon alternatives.

Coal has a long and turbulent history. It was the mainspring of the Industrial Revolution. Its cheap energy subsequently leveraged the creation of phenomenal wealth in the developed world, as well as much of the wealth being created today in the developing world. Along the way, it has been the crucible for some of the most profound social conflict and reform in history, in the perennial confrontation between capital and labour. The harshness of working conditions, and mutual dependency in underground mining between both miners themselves, and between miners and management, bred an incredibly socially cohesive industry, with a strong sense of justice, which could be hugely constructive when pursuing common goals, or hugely destructive otherwise.

In the four decades after the Second World War, coal, along with other mining development, was at the forefront of Australia’s growth, guided by industry leaders who were statesmen in the true sense of the word, intent upon creating not just profitable enterprises, but a long-term bedrock for national prosperity. As Japan restructured and other Asian economies began to move up the growth escalator, Australia benefited greatly from establishing long-term relationships and industries to meet their demands.

The coal industry itself became ever more professional and technically proficient, to the point that today, at an operational level, it is without doubt the world leader in coal mining and development.

Sadly, the same cannot be said for the industry’s leaders who, in recent times, have lost their way. Over the last two decades, the accumulation of excessive economic and political power, combined with performance-related remuneration for senior executives, has led to the dominance of short-term thinking and decision making. Statesmanship has disappeared, along with any thoughts of sustainable nation-building, and it has been replaced with an overriding emphasis on immediate financial gain.

Simultaneously, coal’s great nemesis, climate change, has become a reality. The industry has been well aware that carbon emissions from coal consumption would, at some stage, become a major constraint on its future, having researched the issue in depth since the 1980s. Every major coal company, in its corporate responsibility and sustainability policies, acknowledges that climate change is a serious issue that needs to be urgently addressed. In reality, those same companies, via proxies such as the national and state Minerals Councils and the Australian Coal Association, have fought tooth and nail to prevent the introduction of sensible climate change policy in Australia.

John Maynard Keynes asked: ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, Sir?’ The facts for the coal industry have now changed, and yet there are no coal industry leaders prepared to change their minds, publicly acknowledge that the industry is no longer sustainable and that it has to be phased out.

Unless this happens rapidly, irreversible, catastrophic outcomes will become locked in. The proponents of expansion are largely individuals with no experience of coal, its social history or the development of major mining projects. They are in total denial of climate change and such implications, oblivious to the fact that every new fossil-fuel project represents death and destruction for communities somewhere in the world, Australia included. Given that our political and business leaders are well aware of the extreme climatic risks we now run, in promoting coal they are wilfully perpetuating nothing less than a crime against humanity.

We have solutions to climate change. Australia has enormous ingenuity, low-carbon resources and opportunities, but only if we are honest about the real challenge and take emergency action to change our current unsustainable direction.

In their book Big Coal, Guy Pearse, David McKnight and Bob Burton have done great service in clearly and objectively explaining how coal has come to dominate policy formulation in Australia, why it has become such a danger to our democracy, and how that domination is being broken. It is essential reading to anyone interested in practical solutions to break the climate change impasse and create a genuinely sustainable future for Australia. I commend it to you.

Ian Dunlop is a former international oil, gas and coal industry executive. He is now a Director of Australia21, Chairman of Safe Climate Australia, a Fellow of the Centre for Policy Development and a Member of the Club of Rome.