Coal has been back in the news recently. The ALP has committed itself to the reintroduction of carbon pricing; signs are that Adani will not proceed with its massive Queensland coal project without massive government subsidies; controversy has arisen over the conditional endorsement of the Shenhua mine in the Liverpool plains.
These developments should be seen in the wider context of the present Australian Government’s commitment to coal mining and export as a central part of economic development.
They also take place within a growing ethical debate, expressed in pressure from other nations to curb emissions, and more recently from Pope Francis. This has increased the pressure on ethical investors to withdraw from energy companies. In response both the Government and the coal industry have offered ethical arguments for mining and exporting coal and opposing disinvestment.
Their ethical argument for coal is that it is the most readily available and cheapest resource for generating electricity. Electricity is essential for the development of poorer nations, and the heat, light and power it brings to brings impoverished people in those nations improve their lot enormously. For advanced nations to deny coal to these nations is to prevent the poor from rising out of their poverty and to prevent national development.
The structure of this argument based on our duty to the poor is significant. It assumes that governments, mining companies, banks and the people who invest in them a duty to consider the effects of their actions on people both in their own nations and in other nations.
This assumption is important, perhaps even surprising, because the actions of business and government interests are so often seen as ethics-free zones, where corporations must take into account only their own self-interest. What is profitable for government and shareholders can and must be done. This argument for coal is inconsistent with this view.
In dealing with this argument I would argue that the effect of mining on poverty stricken people must also consider all the other salient effects. These include the effects on the health and welfare of people in the vicinity of the mines and electricity generating plants. These must be weighed against the damage caused by not exporting coal.
The effect of coal mining and electricity generation on the environment with its fragility, diversity and beauty must also be taken into account. Human beings and many other species can survive only in a tightly defined environment. They have a