Wallaby David Pocock and author Richard Flanagan among 61 signatories to open letter calling for the future of coal to be on the agenda at Paris climate talks

Sixty-one prominent Australians, from Wallaby David Pocock to the Anglican bishop of Canberra George Browning, have signed an open letter calling on world leaders to discuss a ban on new coalmines and coalmine expansions at the United Nations climate change meeting in Paris in December.

The signatories are backing a call by the president of Kiribati, Anote Tong, and other leaders of Pacific Island nations in the recent Suva Declaration on climate change from the Pacific Island Development Forum.

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The message from the signatories, who also include nobel laureate Professor Peter Doherty, former Australian of the year professor Fiona Stanley, author Richard Flanagan, former chair of the Australian Coal Association Ian Dunlop and former Reserve Bank governor and Climate Change Authority chair Bernie Fraser, runs starkly counter to the Australian government’s endorsement of new coal mega-mines like Adani’s proposed $16bn Carmichael project in Queensland’s Galilee Basin or Shenhua’s $1.2bn Watermark mine on NSW’s Liverpool Plains.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Wallaby David Pocock is one of the high-profile signatories to an open letter calling on world leaders to consider a ban on new coalmines. Photograph: Dave Hunt/AAP

New prime minister Malcolm Turnbull has not repeated his predecessor Tony Abbott’s claim that “coal is good for humanity” and coal use should go “up and up and up in the years and decades to come”.

But when the Turnbull government gave final approval to the Carmichael mine last week, Turnbull’s resources minister Josh Frydenberg used the same reasoning as the former prime minister for the claim that there is a “strong moral case” for coal exports because coal lifts the poor in countries like India out of “energy poverty”. Analysts dispute the rationale given that a large proportion of the poorest Indians are not on the electricity grid and could be provided with solar or other off-grid renewables more cheaply than electric power. And economists say the future of the mines is highly uncertain without any government action because of the falling price of coal.

The Labor leader, Bill Shorten, will tour Pacific Islands, including Kiribati, next week and wants to debate climate change with Turnbull, who is constrained by his promise to conservative Liberals and the National party to stick with Abbott’s Direct Action policy.

Shorten has pledged to reintroduce an emissions trading scheme and has said Labor would back a tougher greenhouse target, but he has shied away from endorsing the idea that coal – Australia’s second-largest export earner – will have to be phased out in the longer term to meet global climate goals.

The Queensland state Labor government strongly backs the Adani mine and has been lobbying the federal government to help with infrastructure subsidies, although it said during last year’s state election campaign it would not provide direct state government funding.

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Fraser, who resigned in frustration as Climate Change Authority chair shortly before Turnbull became prime minister, conceded the open letter was unlikely to change the Paris deliberations, which have been negotiated and disputed at preparatory meetings over years.

But he said he hoped the statement would cause leaders in Australia and overseas to think about the future of coal.

“I don’t know how far it will get in terms of the agenda for Paris. I’m sure the French don’t want surprises at this late stage,” Fraser told Guardian Australia.

“But it is worth flagging so that the idea is out there and considered, because the writing is on the wall for coal. Markets are starting to factor this in but governments have been a bit slower to see it,” he said.

“Everything points to the fact that we are already burning too much coal.”

Fraser said he was “sure Malcolm Turnbull ‘gets it’ whereas the previous prime minister didn’t” but said as far as he could see to date “only the atmospherics have changed, rather than any policy”.

“We, the undersigned, urge you to put coal exports on the agenda at the 2015 Paris COP21 climate summit and to help the worlds’ governments negotiate a global moratorium on new coalmines and coalmine expansions, as called for by President Anote Tong of the Republic of Kiribati, and Pacific Island nations,” the open letter reads. It will be published in newspapers on Tuesday.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pita Meanke of Betio village on Kiribati watches as the king tide crashes through a sea wall and on to his family property on Kiribati. Photograph: jeremy Sutton-Hibbert/Alamy

The letter was published with the support of GetUp!, Greenpeace, Australian Conservation Foundation, Seed, Australian Youth Climate Coalition, 350.org, Doctors for the Environment Australia, Friends of the Earth, Market Forces, and the Wilderness Society.

While the draft declaration to be discussed at the Paris meeting does not directly call for a phase-out of new coalmines, a still-contested passage inserted at the insistence of the United States does call for the eventual “decarbonisation” of the world economy.