There’s a myth that Australia must choose between jobs and fixing our position as a global carbon rogue state. It’s a convenient story for the coal industry, sitting pretty as it suffocates entire, far bigger business sectors.

Thermal coal mining employs 38,000 people in Australia. Tourism employs 924,000. Climate-driven fires mean endless hotel rooms sitting empty, cafe meals not eaten, tours not taken. The business mortality rate from this non-holiday summer will be savage.

Illustration: Matt Davidson

These small-town business operators don’t have lobbyists in Canberra. They’ll be forgotten as the news cycle moves on. They’ll be letting staff go, then quietly shuttering their businesses as hope and cash run out. People below retiree age move out of town because there’s no work. Once-vibrant towns wither.

As just one example, Kangaroo Island’s globally renowned Southern Ocean Lodge is gone, taken by fire. Who would build a new hotel in bushland anywhere in the country now? When I talk to other business owners, there’s increasing anger at the back-scratching mates’ club bias toward the government's coal donors, at everyone else’s expense.

Why does the government choose coal as its article of faith, rather than, say, fax machines or Windows XP?

We taxpayers paid $15 million for tourism ads to play in Britain, then they ran next to news images of charred kangaroos. Ads promise endless blue skies which in reality have not been visible since mid-November. How many tourism dollars won’t be spent in Australia if the Great Barrier Reef dies?

The coal industry's tactics are straight from the Big Tobacco playbook, but at least non-smokers don't have to buy the product. Big Coal has us all on its pack a day of unfiltered eucalyptus smoke right through summer, at who knows what future public health cost.

AMP Capital chief economist Shane Oliver estimates the fires will wipe $20 billion from gross domestic product, a major drag on our economy, and this won’t be the last time it happens.

We all chip in to pick up Big Coal’s tab. Our heroic volunteer firefighters signed up to do the right thing by their communities. They've been working for free for months on end, putting their lives and livelihoods at risk, because we didn’t assign a cost to coal’s long-term damage. That’s too much to ask of them.

Ian Whitworth is the co-founder of a national event-staging business. He writes at ianwhitworth.net