Australia’s coal industry is on borrowed time. In general, renewables are becoming more efficient and major coal projects are being cancelled and scaled back. This is perhaps why have heard so much from the Coalition recently about the superior moral qualities of the “little black rock”.

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Around this time last year, former prime minister Tony Abbott (Remember him? The one who used to pal around with Stephen Harper?) gave us the memorable line “coal is good for humanity”.

He was speaking in support of the Caval Ridge mine in Queensland. This week, the energy minister, Josh Frydenberg, responded to critics of the recently-approved Carmichael mine:

There is a strong moral case here. Over a billion people don’t have access to electricity. That means that more 2 billion people today are using wood and dung for their cooking.

It may seem odd to hear a politician, in 2015, arguing not only that burning coal will lead to cleaner air, but that it helps the global poor – the same group who are likely to be most affected by the climate change being driven by fossil fuel emissions.

We’ve reached this point because mines can no longer be easily defended on the basis of their creation of jobs or broad economic benefits. So they have to be sold as a species of foreign aid.

This is on the basis of the dubious proposition that coal will provide the best and cheapest way of generating energy to “lift the poor out of poverty”, with particular reference to India. Given the advantages of new generation renewables, this is in serious doubt.

But rushing in to debunk the “moral case for coal” is largely fruitless, because it’s a snowjob. The main game, as always, is to shield the industry from the criticisms of environmentalists and others who might be wondering why Australia is squandering its natural amenities on a dying industry.

Even as spin, though, it’s pretty lame. The electorate doesn’t place much faith in the coal industry and (less creditably) is leery of foreign aid. It’s also a regression from an earlier mining industry campaign, It’s Our Story, which situated the industry’s moral good in the contribution it makes to the diverse lives of its workers. That didn’t wash, so now it’s about the wonderful black stuff itself.

The reason the big extractors have been reduced to this is that Australia’s rightwing intellectual milieu is a collection of branch office mediocrities. The arguments that Abbott and Frydenberg have tried to make about the goodness of fossil fuels have been transposed directly from the US, without much thought as to whether they’re particularly adaptable to local conditions.

The main vector for this line of argument is a book-length piece of sophistry, The Moral Case For Fossil Fuels, authored by Alex Epstein. Epstein is a full-time advocate for burning of oil, coal, and petroleum gas. He’s sponsored by the now-infamous petrochemical billionaires the Koch brothers.

He claims to be an energy policy expert, but his pedigree is that of an ideologue. After graduating in philosophy, Epstein spent 7 years at the Ayn Rand Insitute in California, before founding his own Center for Industrial Progress (CIP), which provides a superficially appealing spin on the beliefs of the most regressive quarters of the energy industry.

He has placed plenty of op-eds arguing for the civilisational benefits of fossil fuels, and apart from his book he hosts a lively Facebook page, I Love Fossil Fuels. Last year, he offered a free lump of coal to Facebook followers who bought his book.

Abbott and Frydenberg echo Epstein’s core argument: not only have fossil fuels historically transformed humanity’s capacity to grow, but we must allow them to do so in the future so more can be lifted out of poverty – a “new industrial revolution”.

Environmentalists elevate nature over human flourishing; fossil fuel use has become more efficient over time, and will continue to do so, they say. With carbon capture and storage – so-called clean coal – it could even be environmentally sustainable (except it probably won’t).



Unfortunately for everyone concerned, the “moral case for coal” doesn’t track with what trained climate scientists and reputable energy experts tell us. If we continue to emit carbon, the climate change which is already in train will become catastrophically worse, and the only way out is to transition as quickly as possible to renewables.

It’s perfectly possible to recognise the technological progress that fossil fuels have allowed and also the looming costs of reckless consumption of those fuels. Again: the cost burden will fall disproportionately on the world’s poor, those least able to insulate themselves from the consequences of climate change.

Epstein’s work has been popular and influential on the right because it is a particularly fluent, elaborate form of climate denialism. The CIP prides itself on being able to train corporate leaders to “successfully out­message ‘environmentalists’.” As a testimonial for their consulting services claims:

It would be an understatement to say that Alex Epstein has completely and absolutely changed how I think about energy. No longer do I feel guilt for enjoying the use of products powered by fossil fuels, in fact, I now embrace them.

The vacuity of the “moral case for coal” have not prevented the third-division hacks at local thinktanks producing copycat work. Take another example: the plastic bag.

Epstein’s centre published a blog post “In defence of plastic bags” back in 2013. “I believe that it’s moral for human beings to use our minds to create new things like plastic bags, which promote human life, health, comfort, convenience, efficiency, wealth and productivity,” its author wrote.



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Reason magazine, the house journal of the libertarian right, has a cover story on the same issue this month that celebrates the plastic bag as “a miracle of materials science”. Simon Breheny and others at the Institute of Public Affairs have returned to this talking point for a few years now, making the plastic bag an organising issue.

In a blog post last week, “In defence of the plastic bag”, Breheny congratulates WA Liberal MLC and IPA member Peter Katsambanis for helping to knock over a City of Fremantle local law banning non-biodegradable single-use plastic bags. Breheny applauds those “who stood firm on polyethylene polymer”, which, he choruses, is “actually good for us”.



But in the same way as the moral case for coal, the arguments really collapse down into something very simple, as Katsambanis said in WA parliament:

[W]e do not want to create a society in which retailers fear reprisals from powerful local government – or any other form of government for that matter – for supposedly not toeing the line or following through with the politically correct line of the day.

As the 2013 Centre for Industrial Progress blogpost complained, “local government is making the store experience worse for everyone”. Essentially, they’re devoted to a last-ditch defence of any and every toxic industry, and have no qualms about poisoning public debate in the process.

There’s no doubt that the left is also attracted to contrarianism and lost causes. But underneath the sombre “moral case” observations about poverty, you’ve got phenomena like NSW MLC Peter Phelps’s brainchild: the Friends of Coal group. You quickly realise that overgrown Young Liberals are a far more pressing concern.

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This behaviour amounts to adolescent nihilism, reminiscent of the shallow end of student politics, where the main aim is to advocate what you’re sure your opponents will hate. The Liberal party, and the broader right, is lousy with thinking like this.

When it comes to the most pressing moral, ecological, and economic issue of the century, they can say what they like but don’t deserve a hearing. For the sake of the planet, and humanity, we must work cooperatively to ensure that as much coal as possible is left in the ground.