Michael Brissenden reported this story on Friday, November 27, 2015 08:06:36

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: A collection of some of the world's leading scientists and economists will today publish an open letter calling for a global moratorium on new coal mines.



The letter, published later today in the New Scientist magazine and the Guardian newspaper, will argue it makes economic and scientific sense to stop building new coal mines.



The signatories include some Nobel Prize-winning economists, scientists and former business leaders.



One of them is Ian Dunlop, the former Shell executive and former chair of the Australian Coal Association.



I spoke to him earlier this morning.



Now, as I said, it's a collection of scientists, economists, experts and executives like yourself. Why have you decided to put your name to it?



IAN DUNLOP: It's really quite straightforward. The world has now reached the point where it is collectively agreeing that we have to limit temperature increase to certainly below two degrees C.



The leaders, political leaders are going to Paris next week to try and reach an agreement on this. But what we're still seeing is a lot of fog and confusion, I think, around the questions of: what does all that mean? I mean, how do we actually limit temperature to two degrees C and so on?



This is just trying to cut through all of that and say: Look, if you want to stay below two degrees C, there is no option but to stop - as one of the elements, a very important one - the development of new coal mines and the expansion of existing coal mines.



MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: And is that a view, you think, that a majority of the world's leaders share?



IAN DUNLOP: Well, I don't think a lot of the world leaders have really focused on this as yet. But the fact is that unless you do it, we have no way of staying below two degrees C. It's just not possible.



And that's borne out by organisations like the International Energy Agency which, if you look at what they're saying about the ability and how we actually get to two degrees C, it shows that coal demand is actually going to drop from now on by something like 36 per cent by 2040.



Now, in that world there is no space for no new coal mines. So that the proposals we have basically in Australia for, for example, the Adani mine in the Galilee Basin, Shenhua mine in the Liverpool Plains, the KEPCO mines in the Bylong Valley, the Hume Coal mines down in the Southern Highlands: all of these proposals do not fit with a world where you have to limit temperature below two degrees C.



MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: As I'm sure you're aware, Australia argues there's a strong moral case for new coal mines. You know the coal industry well. Isn't it true that coal, for the moment at least, is required to help to pull millions of people in developing countries out of poverty?



IAN DUNLOP: No, it's not true at all: in fact, quite the reverse. There is no moral case for further use of coal, because the use of coal in the way we've been doing it is, quite frankly, going to create enormous poverty.



If you look at a country like India: India is already experiencing climate extremes, as indeed Australia is; only it's been a bit worse there in terms of extreme heat, extreme rainfall and so on.



If we keep on pouring money into coal mines, what we're doing is just going to exacerbate poverty and create an enormous problem.



The real moral case is actually to help countries like India to avoid the high-carbon coal development path and move directly onto low-carbon alternatives: you know, renewables, gas, nuclear and so on.



Unless you stop coal development, the problem is just going to get compounded. And the world just has to face up to the fact that we have no choice but to do that.



MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: Malcolm Turnbull said recently that if Australia were to stop all its coal exports, it wouldn't reduce coal emissions - global emissions - one iota. In fact, he said, "arguably it would increase them because our coal, by and large, is cleaner than the coal in many other countries." Is that true?



IAN DUNLOP: Well, unfortunately that actually doesn't get borne out by the facts.



I mean, the sort of coal we're talking about exporting: in fact, the coal quality is dropping. It doesn't actually end up being very much better than a lot of coal you find in the countries we're talking of exporting it to.



And the solutions that people are talking about in terms of justifying the continuing use of coal - like the expansion of carbon capture and storage, for example - are not happening at anywhere near the scale or to the speed that we're going to require them.



So we actually don't have solutions to the enormous increase in emissions that these developments would actually represent.



But the point - I mean, the real point about this is that Australia has enormous potential to prosper in a low-carbon world and to help the developing world in terms of the export of our technologies.



MICHAEL BRISSENDEN: Ian Dunlop, former chair of the Australian Coal Association.