Australian Coal in Ukraine Good, Australian Coal in Australia Bad
Why is it all right to provide Australian coal for Ukrainian consumption, but terrible if we burn it for domestic energy production? Environmental activism has produced some puzzling double standards.
Australia has gifted Ukraine 70,000 tonnes of coal to provide electricity to the war-torn nation.
Thank goodness our coal is helping someone, since we are being denied the opportunity to help ourselves by soy-latte sipping Greenies who don’t seem to understand that a real world exists outside their inner-city cafes.
Imagine how conflicted Adam Bandt would be by this news! Surely it would be better to die than to live with coal?
Double Standards
I don’t hear anything from the Greens about this donation. They switch off when it suits them.
Or maybe the Greens have their own plan to send 70,000 containers of sunshine to Ukraine. (They’d send bags of wind, but their MPs are required here in Australia.)
Or perhaps burning coal in Australia harms the atmosphere, but burning coal in Ukraine does not.
Scott Morrison gifted the $30m in coal from Whitehaven Coal in New South Wales as part of a humanitarian and military aid package. The shipment arrived in Poland last week.
(There’s a phrase I bet you thought you’d never read… coal and humanitarian in the same sentence!)
So we are giving coal away, but God help us if we burn it ourselves!
Is it just me, or is it maddeningly ironic that we are shipping coal to Ukraine while passing climate legislation to ban future coal mines? Our country is led by buffoons.
What I don’t understand is why the Ukraine government requested coal rather than, say, solar panels or wind turbines.
Responsibility
All of this raises an awkward question. Are we responsible for the carbon emissions when the 70,000 tonnes of coal is burnt?
And since it is burnt in Ukraine, do we pay a fee to the European Union? Or will the EU slap sanctions on us for excessive pollution?
Australia’s assistance to Ukraine should not stop here.
When the war is over, we could gift them some Greens and Teals to help the rebuilding effort. No need to thank us.
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Originally published at The James Macpherson Report.
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