It's interesting to watch both sides in this debate about coal, it's time someone actually started talking about the reality for example what happens to the coal industry if we close all of our coal fired power stations presuming of course we have replacement power generators, well it might well be a slightly damaging move but the reality is we actually use only a very small percentage of our mined coal for electricity generation the fact is an oversupply of coal causing significant price drops would do far more damage so whilst closing power stations would not be wanted it's a situation that can be overcome at least here in OZ the fact is we export most of our coal, it's needed for steel production so no coal no steel so whilst I don't really want to see more coal mines the fact is as long as we need steel we will also need coal and it's got to come from somewhere so we might as well create jobs here rather than somewhere else, the real point here is we must have coal if we are going to continue to use steel there are no other options and for this reason I cannot understand the fight against renewable energy and the adoption of new technologies to generate power coal will continue to be an important industry in Australia for a long time to come unless someone, anyone has a better option so let's get on with making Australia great and perhaps looking for ways to transport this coal so that it doesn't do any environmental damage perhaps a rail line going to a deepwater port at the top end might be a better option than transporting it through the reef, I don't know I am just asking the question and looking for better ways to do things rather than getting bogged down in the semantics of things that don't really matter all that much when you look at the overall picture.
