Truth about Australia's coal industry and climate policy | The Saturday Paper

If Malcolm Turnbull or freshly appointed Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg stood on Queensland’s coast and saw a coal-fired power station float past, they’d notice, right? If more than half a million new cars drove past, they’d surely raise an eyebrow. Or would they? Each day, more than a million tonnes of Australian coal sails up that coast, past the Great Barrier Reef, to power stations or steel mills elsewhere, quietly fuelling climate change and bleaching the reef. Once used, the coal exported daily generates about as much carbon pollution as a 500-megawatt coal-fired power station, or 570,000 cars, in a year.