Adani was always going to be a significant issue in the forthcoming Queensland state election. It is a divisive issue and one where the major players have sought to play excessive, short-term, politics in recent years.
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| Protestors against the Adani coal mine rally outside Adani's headquarters in Brisbane. |
With an urgent global challenge to transition to a low carbon society, Paris Agreement and well beyond, any sensible carbon budget to achieve net zero emissions by mid-century would suggest that 70-plus percent of known coal reserves should never be mined. Nor burned for electricity generation. At just this level, it is impossible to justify a new coal mine, let alone one that aspires to be among the world's largest.
Of course, some simply reject the climate challenge, let alone its severity and urgency, while others suggest it can be "delayed" to "better economic times", as if we could wait to (say) 2049, to make the necessary "adjustments" in one big bang.
Clearly, the latter view completely ignores the significant shifts required in government, business, social and individual behaviour, and the time it would require to restructure the industrial, power and transport base of society away from dependence on fossil fuels.
Read the comment by John Hewson in today’s Melbourne Age - “Why the Adani project should be rejected.”
