Australian Government 'stuck in the past' defending fossil fuels, descendant of John D Rockefeller says

Updated

A descendant of America's first billionaire John D Rockefeller, whose fortune was built on oil, has accused the Australian Government of being "stuck in the past" for continuing to defend fossil fuels like coal.

Valerie Rockefeller Wayne is the chair of the $1.1 billion Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a charity committed to social change.

The fund last year joined a growing "divestment" movement by abandoning its investments in coal companies.

"The value of coal stock in the United States has gone down 60 to 90 per cent," Ms Rockefeller told the ABC's Four Corners program.

"This is a global phenomenon and we want to get out of those because we see the fossil fuel investments as risky."

Ms Rockefeller said the numbers for coal no longer added up in Australia either.

"If you look just at the financial data in Australia ... over the past five years, the S&P500 has gone up by 76 per cent," she said.

"The value of coal stocks has gone down by 71 per cent, so you've lost a lot of money if you've been in coal."

'There certainly is no space for any new coal'

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has called divestment decisions "stupid" and been vocal in his defence of coal, which remains Australia's second largest export earner and provides two thirds of the country's electricity.

He told coal miners in NSW last October: "Coal is good for humanity, coal is good for prosperity, coal is an essential part of our economic future, here in Australia, and right around the world."

The United Nations Climate Change chief Christiana Figueres told Four Corners there was no space for new coal mines in Australia if global temperature rises were to be kept below 2 degrees Celsius.

"We do have to get to global peaking of emissions and a dramatic reduction of emissions quite soon after that to the point where we would be re-establishing an ecological balance between emissions and absorption," she said.

"So what that means is that there certainly is no space for any new coal."

Ms Rockefeller said she agreed.

"You look at Australia, which is such a fragile environment in so many ways, and you think of what's planned for the Galilee Basin," she said.

"It is just heartbreaking and I just don't understand.

"In my mind Australia's an extremely progressive country that has been an international player on so many issues.

"It is baffling to me why the current Australian Government is stuck in the past rather than looking towards the future and becoming part of the solution."

Ten days ago Norway decided one of the world's richest government pension funds, the $1.1 trillion Norwegian Sovereign Wealth fund, would divest from companies that derive more than 30 per cent of their income from coal.

Last week the G7 group of industrial nations agreed to give up fossil fuels by the end of the century.

Watch End of Coal? on Four Corners at 8.30pm tonight.

Topics: coal, oil-and-gas, abbott-tony, federal-government, australia

First posted