About five years back, I was crawling in Brisbane traffic behind one of the city's ubiquitous white utility vehicles on my way to an anonymous city centre office to sit my Australian citizenship test.

Stuck to the back of this ute was a large anti-immigration sticker, peeling on one corner, declaring "Fuck off, we're full," to all literate observers.

This, from a citizen of a nation first forcibly grabbed and then reshaped by immigrants, struck me as a statement that was as lacking in compassion for and consideration as it was loaded with sheer existential dumbness.

At the time I was still getting my head around the idea of what was and wasn't meant by "un-Australian" - a rubbery cultural touchstone which seemed to mean anything an incumbent government wanted it to mean.

I'm still not sure what "un-Australian" really means, but I reckon much of it is wrapped up in ideas of what's fair and what's not. Who deserves compassion and help, and who doesn't?

Now before you double-check, you haven't stumbled onto an Aussie culture blog in a place where you might have been expecting me rambling on about the latest United Nations climate change report.

As 25 years worth of reports from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports have warned, the people to suffer earliest and hardest from the likely impacts of human-caused climate change are the poorer people on the planet.

For the most part, not really giving a toss about the impact on less developed countries of our government-endorsed fossil-fueled lifestyles is at the heart of the climate debate. It's a similarly compassionate-free zone inhabited by our xenophobic ute driver.

In Australia, current and previous governments at state and federal levels (and of both political persuasions) have pushed for further rapid exploitation and export of fossil fuels.

We are both a massive exporter of fossil fuels and one of the biggest emitters, per capita, of greenhouse gases on the planet.

But this position as a global fossil fuel dealer is coming under ever sharper ethical and moral questioning.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu has called for "people of conscience" to "break their ties with corporations financing the injustice of climate change."

Mr Tutu suggested a boycott of "events, sports teams and media programming" that were sponsored by fossil fuel energy companies.

"We can demand that the advertisements of energy companies carry health warnings," he added.

Are coal miners responsible for greenhouse gas emissions?

So what kind of companies or organisations should carry one of Mr Tutu's climate health warnings?

A court judgement in the coal-friendly state of Queensland last week will leave many scratching their heads about who might be responsible for pushing the world's emissions of greenhouse gases ever higher.

If you thought those liable might be coal mining companies, then the Queensland Land Court has some news.

The court passed judgement on a challenge to the giant Alpha coal mine project which would dig up about 30 million tonnes of coal a year from the state's Galilee Basin.

Indian energy conglomerate GVK paid Gina Rinehart-owned Hancock Coal US$1.26 billion for a controlling stake in the project, which includes a 79 per cent stake in the mine.

The court's non-binding decision was that the state government should only approve the mine if further environmental restrictions were made on the project related to the risk of major impacts on underground water resources.

So-called "make good" arrangements would also have to be made with the impacted landholders.

But the objectors to the mine had also challenged the project on the grounds that it would have an unacceptable impact on the world's climate.

Once the coal had been mined, processed, transported and burned, the court heard (and all parties accepted) that this would result in about 1.8 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide being emitted into the atmosphere over the 30 year life of the mine.

That's roughly three years worth of the greenhouse gas emissions of the United Kingdom or more than three years worth of emissions from Australia.

The bulk of the emissions would come from burning the coal abroad.

While the coal company accepted the emissions would be generated, they employed what some lawyers call the "drug dealers defence".

They argued that if they didn't mine the coal, somebody else would. Stopping the mine, they argued, would not affect the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The court's presiding member Paul Smith agreed, writing in his judgement:

I can sympathise with the position of the objectors who see [greenhouse gas] emissions rising, and the likely adverse climate change consequences that will flow should nothing be done to alter the course that the world is heading down. I have no reason to doubt the eminent expert evidence that was presented in this case to that effect. However, I must on the evidence of this case determine that it is the demand for coal-fired electricity, and not the supply of coal from coal mines, which is at the heart of the problem.

This argument takes some understanding, especially given the suggestion that liability for greenhouse gas emissions should rest with the power generators.

In India, GVK (a majority owner of the Alpha mine) also happens to be developing two coal power plants that will presumably help drive demand for coal.

"It's not our coal mine's fault, but our power plant's fault," the lawyers were not heard to say.

For all miners of thermal coal, their only customers are electricity plants. In Australia, there are several examples of energy companies who own both the coal mine and the power plant.

Watershed

The decision over the Alpha mine is now back with the Queensland Government, which last November developed a strategy to speed up the exploitation of the Galilee Basin.

In his judgement, Smith acknowledged the Alpha coal mine was a "watershed issue" for Queensland's Galilee Basin.

Once one gets the go-ahead, the area could be quickly opened up for more.

GVK also owns a majority stake in another similar size Galilee basin coal mine.

Indian-owned company Adani also wants to build a 60 million tonne per year mine at Galilee and MP Clive Palmer's China First project has plans for a 40 Mt per year coal mine.

Last weekend the IPCC released its third of three major reports on climate change, this time looking at how the world can cut emissions to avoid 2C of global warming – a figure considered by some, but not all, to be a threshold for "dangerous" climate change

Ottmar Edenhofer, a co-chair of the IPCC group that produced the report, said: "There is a clear message from science: To avoid dangerous interference with the climate system, we need to move away from business as usual."

The problem is, that Australia and Queensland appears set on business as usual.

We are driving a ute at reckless speed towards a risk-laden future with a rear bumper sticker telling the climate literate world what we think of them.

Is that un-Australian?