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The Future of Australian Coal

Australian environmentalists believe the political climate is changing. They say that last month’s Paris climate summit signaled a shift toward a zero-carbon global economy, so Prime MinisterMalcolm Turnbull should get with the program, phasing out fossil fuels and slashing emissions further than his center-right government’s target of 26% to 28% below 2005 levels by 2030.

On the surface, the climate debate has shifted away from the skepticism of Tony Abbott, the former conservative prime minister whose opposition to the Labor Party’s carbon tax helped ensure his election victory in 2013. After all, Paris was a public-relations success for the anticarbon crowd. Stocks in fossil-fuel companies plummeted and renewables soared on the Australian stock exchange following the conclusion of the global pact.

Since toppling Mr. Abbott in a party-room coup in September, Mr. Turnbull has overturned the ban on government subsidies to wind farms. Mr. Abbott, now an outspoken parliamentary backbencher, is denounced as a Neanderthal for expressing faith in the coal industry.

But at a more fundamental level, nothing has changed. Climate sensitivity—which measures how much the climate will warm—still appears to be at the low end of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s range. There is no new cause for alarm, and the most prominent doomsayers, from American James Hansen to the Brit George Monbiot, have expressed their dismay at the toothlessness of the Paris accord.

Source: wsj.com