Following my earlier thoughts on Australia’s unsustainable export composition
The ABC has reported that yet another deal has opened up for Australian coal exports, this time for brown coal which is low grade coal.
This concerns me for two reasons:
1) Australia is continuing its reliance on coal exports to prop up our enviable lifestyles and this leaves the Australian economy dangerously exposed to a volatile global economy – and in case you need a reminder (graph taken from the Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade)
2) It further increases Australia’s responsibility for global greenhouse emissions. In the rush to move Australia toward a ‘low emission’ economy, we are conveniently pushing our responsibility further out of our awareness by ignoring where our imports come from – name China – who may not yet share our growing enthusiasm for low emission economics – while we happily base over one quarter of all our national exports on the most polluting export we can dig up and ship out as fast as the ships can take it.
So we sit in our solar powered homes, with our low emission cars, and wear many proud badges declaring our achievement, while the bulk of our consumer goods are produced in high emission economies.
The net result of this is to create a bubble of blissful ignorance around Australian consumers while through our exports and overseas consumption, may in fact be the most polluting people per capita on Earth, regardless of all the wind farms and solar panels on our roofs.
Coal is an incredibly important commodity to the Australian economy, one which we must, eventually, move away from. It should be seen as a stop gap measure while Australia builds up more economically and environmentally sustainable exports for the long term, not something to be celebrated.
Otherwise, considering where our imports come from, and what we export, we may as well be honest with ourselves and stop pretending we are an environmentally sustainable nation, however low our domestic emissions fall.
