Australia and Coal Energy

by Patrick Whelan

When people thinks of the worlds greatest exporter of dirty polluting coal energy, they think of the mountains of West Virgina and Kentucky or some mountain in an eastern European country. However, the worlds leading exporter of Coal is in the sunny and vast continent of Australia. The nation started mining for coal in 1797, less than a decade after the first arrivals on the continent. Today, the nation gets 83 percent of its energy from coal. The Economist online magazine published an article entitled Coal form Newcastle which discusses that there is an ongoing debate throughout the continent about the role coal should play in the future of Australia.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has recently pushed through legislation to deal with global warming, which will impact the coal industry on the continent. Prime Minister Rudd hopes to push through legislation on global warming before he heads to the Global Climate conference in Copenhagen in December of this year, but it will be difficult. The bill plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 5 percent of 2000 levels by 2020, and maybe even 25 percent depending on the world-wide response to fighting global warming. The prime minister also wants to install a cap and trade system throughout Australia's industry. The bill on global warming has received criticism from both the right and left in Australian politics.

The right call Prime Minister Rudd's bill "employment-termination scheme," while the left believe that the 25 percent cut in emissions by 2020 should be a minimum instead of a maximum cut to fight global warming. Whatever politicians argue, a poll by the Climate Institute found that 77 percent of people polled were worried about climate change. Prime Minister Rudd might risk his administration on this bill due to the commitment he made to fight global warming by calling for early election if does not pass the Senate later this month. It appears that the continent will soon decide whether to stick with the resources it has been using for over 200 hundred years or break away from tradition and attempt to combat global warming and go into a new direction for the continent.