Thinking creatively about phasing out coal

At the landmark Paris climate change conference just three years ago, countries agreed to phase out global greenhouse gas emissions by the second half of this century. Despite that noble aspiration, two recent UN-level events have highlighted the mounting urgency of the challenge and underscored the need for new thinking.

It isn’t so much the global climate negotiations that
 immediately threaten coal workers in the Hunter Valley.
 It’s the opening of mega-coalmines in Queensland’s Galilee basin.

First, in October, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a special report on the effects and feasibility of holding warming to within 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. 

That figure was enshrined as an aspiration in the Paris Agreement, and the report shows why it is a better benchmark for mitigating catastrophic climate change than the 2°C goal that has long been the focal point of international negotiations. To meet the 1.5°C goal, says the IPCC, net global greenhouse gas emissions need to be phased out by around 2050.

Read the story from The Monthly by Fergus Green and Richard Denniss - “Thinking creatively about phasing out coal.”