Jesters in the court

Jesters in the court of Old King Coal

In a column titled “Green jihad a disastrous idea” in Friday's Australian, Dennis Shanahan - the well known right-wing Political Editor for the Australian, and a long-time, outspoken eulogist for the policies of John Howard and George Bush - attacked Newcastle Council’s decision to support a cap on coal exports from the Port of Newcastle. The Australian 10/11/06

Mr Shanahan’s (entirely predictable) views on this issue repeat the usual blinkered vision and scare tactics of the coal lobby. He bridles at the suggestion that society might “levy the coal industry to fund its own closure and find jobs for the displaced workers”, as though the principle of “polluter pays” is somehow a revolutionary notion, and that the mining corporations who have made such huge profits from our natural resources don’t have some obligation to help coal-dependent communities to restructure their local economies for a more sustainable future.

“Just Transition”, according to Shanahan, “is greenhouse-friendly code for sack workers.” [Those who are interested in what “Just Transition” really means can visit the Minerals Policy Institute’s website at: Just Transition.] Here is an excerpt from that site:

A Just Transition is how the Hunter can build a new economy from local skills and knowledge, with greater social equity. It protects the well-being of people and communities who are most vulnerable as we make a shift towards sustainability.

A Just Transition builds new partnerships from the bottom-up. It links communities, farmers, trade unions, businesses and governments to promote development that does not destroy. It shifts the debate from “Why change?” to “How can we change together?”

A Just Transition would guarantee:

* new secure, long-term jobs for people working in industries that are currently being threatened or displaced by the coal industry;
* new jobs in clean energy production, manufacturing, agriculture, services, tourism, arts and research to replace those being lost as the coal industry cuts its workforce;
* investment in education and training to develop the skills needed for a new economy;
* investment in infrastructure such as better health and public transport and expanded research and development so new, clean industries and skilled workers will be attracted to the Hunter;
* investment in repairing the environmental damage caused by large-scale coal mining and poor rehabilitation;
* investment in clean, decentralised energy technologies to replace the Hunter’s coal-fired power - a mix of energy efficiency, wind, solar, with gas playing only a limited transitional role.

Rejecting a Just Transition for the Hunter, Shanahan instead backs the views of Joel Fitzgibbon, Labor’s former federal Resources Spokesperson and Member for Hunter (which Mr Shanahan appears to confuse with the Federal electorate of Newcastle). Shanahan quotes Fitzgibbon’s portrayal of the Beyond Coal campaign as “extreme environmentalists” who “are launching a jihad against the industry in an attempt to close it down”.

The title of Mr Shanahan’s article clearly endorses this shallow attempt to associate local environmentalists with a term now negatively linked in many Australians’ minds with Islamic terrorism (though we would be quite happy to embrace the apparently more accurate translation of jihad as “a struggle or striving for good”).

Neither Mr Shanahan nor Mr Fitzgibbon point out that The Greens and other local environmentalists are backing a staged transition away from coal - rather than some kind sudden switch-off exactly because such a process would allow local communities to gradually restructure their local economies. Neither of them point out that jobs in Hunter mines have fallen from 10,000 in 1990 to about 6800 in 2003, according to New South Wales government figures, while production has doubled - see the facts here, or that an investment in renewable energy offers the possibility of many more jobs than coal.

Whilst Shanahan’s article is thin on substance, it’s a good example of the kind of treatment that the apologists for the climate changers will hurl at us in the coming campaign.