Brown backs eventual coal export ban

February 09, 2007
From News.com.

GREENS leader Bob Brown today backed a ban on coal exports and coal-fired power generation in Australia to be adopted over a three-year period.

Senator Brown agreed the move would cause massive disruption but said extreme measures were needed to respond to climate change.

The proposal follows comments by Australian of the Year Professor Tim Flannery, who said the social licence of coal was rapidly being withdrawn globally because of its contribution to greenhouse gas emissions.

Senator Brown said Australia had to move in that direction.

"To suddenly ban coal exports would be massively dislocating but we have got to do it and we have to do it within a period of a government. That should be the sort of aim we are looking at," he said on ABC radio.

"This is where politicians will panic. But we are exporting to the rest of the world what is effectively a deadly threat to the whole planet and our children."

Coal is Australia's largest export, earning more than $25 billion a year.

Senator Brown said the Greens saw it as politically unacceptable to have a phase-out over 30 years which would wipe out the lifestyle, economy and jobs of future generations.

He said clean coal technology was still at least a decade away and the challenge to the big parties was whether they would wait up to three decades before taking proper action.

"The Greens are talking about intervening on the market. The big parties won't and so are therefore saying let this country and the rest of the planet go to perdition because we won't take action," he said.

"We are a rich and wealthy country. We can look after the coal miners and we can replace their fortunes with a much more job-productive industry."

Senator Brown said he was proposing a reduction of coal exports and replacing them with exports of renewable energy.

He said Australia had fantastic solar energy research which could save the planet but which was being purchased by foreign companies.

"I am talking about having a plan with one term of government for the phasing-out of coal," he said.
"We do need extreme measures, compared to what has happened in the past."

"This Government has let the country down. This Government has become a menace to the future of our children."

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