United Nations Special Adviser on Climate Change Selwin Hart’s threats that climate change bankers would inflict dramatic damage on Australia’s economy should it not stop using and producing coal, did not produce the hoped-for cowed response. Addressing an Australian National University forum on Sunday, Hart delivered UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’s message that “phasing out coal is the single most important step the world must take in the global climate fight…. Market forces alone show coal’s days are numbered, as many investors increasingly abandon it in favor of renewables…. The growing expectation of stranded coal assets is hastening coal’s decline.”
Australia’s Resources and Water Minister Keith Pitt responded the next day with a statement titled: “Coal industry has a strong future in Australia.” The latest export figures “show the reports of coal’s impending death are greatly exaggerated and its future is assured well beyond 2030,” it confidently replied, arguing that the Asian nations need coal to meet their energy needs, so they will use it, and we will export it to them.
Pitt is quoted:
“The future of this crucial industry will be decided by the Australian Government, not a foreign body that wants to shut it down, costing thousands of jobs and billions of export dollars for our economy…
