Renewables offer coal comfort to rising power prices

The future of coal is shaping up to be a key issue at next month’s NSW election (“Leaders ignore us at their peril: mining giants”, 13/2). NSW’s leading coalmining companies are warning Premier Dominic Perrottet and Opposition Leader Chris Minns that unless they get off coal’s back they will face the electoral wrath of thousands of miners. The NSW coalmining industry employs a record 31,000 full-time workers. Last year, mining companies spent $2.9bn on wages and $10.5bn on goods and services purchased from 7000 NSW businesses.

But it is not only in NSW where the coal industry, its workers and their families and the businesses that depend on it are under threat. The Albanese government is on a mission to destroy coal nationwide with its $125 price cap, its mandatory code of conduct, its overhaul of the safeguard mechanism and its policy requiring 82 per cent of electricity to come from renewable sources by 2030.

Whitehaven Coal chief executive Paul Flynn says that at $141bn, coal is Australia’s most valuable export commodity. It supplies two-thirds of east coast electricity, delivers billions in state government royalties and is critical to helping power our largest Asian trading partners.

Flynn says that this year alone the world will consume more than eight billion tonnes of coal, not because no one cares about climate change but because of global demand. We simply cannot function without coal. The quicker governments accept this fact, the better off we will be.

Dale Ellis, Innisfail, Qld

Whitehaven chief executive Paul Flynn could be channelling Machiavelli when he says the world will continue to burn coal “not because no one cares about climate change but because the global economy demands vast and growing amounts”.

Machiavelli’s actual words were: “It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the inventor has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. This coolness arises partly from fear of the opponents, who have the law on their side, and partly from the incredulity of men, who do not readily believe in new things until they have a long experience of them.”

Change is hard. Humans are not good at it. And Flynn would be wise to remember that after his plotting was eventually revealed Machiavelli was tortured, jailed and banished from an active role in political life.

Lesley Walker, Northcote, Vic

I have to disagree with Mandy Macmillan (Letters, 13/2). Tony Abbott had no vision for Australia’s future. He was firmly wedded to the 1950s.

Abbott recently opined that “we need more genuine science and less groupthink in this climate debate”. Abbott’s entire position on climate change was based on the groupthink of his fellow climate deniers who think their cherrypicked data, anecdotal memories and gut feelings somehow equate to an equivalence argument against the vast weight of scientific data supporting the reality of climate change.

Dr Ross Hudson, Mount Martha, Vic

Reading Tony Abbott’s piece in The Weekend Australian crystallised the obvious. Politicians need power to stroke their egos, whereas we citizens need power to keep the lights on.

This dichotomy is not a trivial matter, with environmental agendas driven by policies grounded in some fear-based speculative future events to lure the gullible at election time. We need a modern-day reformation of sorts to separate the environment from the politicians.

Terry Walmsley, Benowa, Qld

Our Prime Minister told us at the last election that his policies would reduce power bills by $275. The fact such a promise has never been repeated says everything. The weather, the war in Ukraine etc are the alleged causes of this failure to deliver.

But the government’s deliberate interference in the energy market and having no idea what to do with energy policy seems to have been ignored.

A power price rise is now proudly portrayed as less than it could have been. Still painful but less painful.

Alasdair Cameron, Woodend, Vic