Last week a friend of mine called me from Indonesia. He was over there for work and was gobsmacked at their determination to mine more coal and to increase the efficiency of their coal mining industry.
About the time I was on the phone to Indonesia, the Energy Institute released its annual Statistical Review of World Energy, the most respected database of how different countries fill their energy needs.
That data proved that my friend was right. In just two years Indonesia has increased its use of coal by 57 per cent! Indonesia was already the world’s third largest producer of coal so this an amazing growth rate off a large base.
What is more remarkable is that just two years ago Indonesia signed up to net zero emissions by 2050 at the Glasgow climate conference. So after telling the world (with a “pinkie-promise”) that it was really serious about cutting its emissions, Indonesia then went ahead and increased its coal mining output by 161 million tonnes in just two years.
To put that figure in context, the Adani Carmichael mine, for which so many Greens and Labor MPs spent years whingeing to us all about, produces just 10 million tonnes a year. Indonesia has built the equivalent of 16 Adanis in just two years. Why aren’t the climate activists gluing themselves to the gates of the Indonesian embassy in Canberra? Why isn’t Bob Brown calling for a boycott of Bali?
The reason is because the agenda of these activists is not to reduce global carbon emissions, it is to reduce economic activity in the western, industrial world.
Their real objective is to take western countries down a peg because their agenda is fuelled by grievance and shame about the historical success of our societies.
The climate movement is not trying to change the temperature of the globe, they are trying to change the relative pecking order of different countries.
It is not just Indonesia getting a free pass from the activists. China has increased its mining of coal by 584 million tonnes, India by 199 million tonnes and Mongolia by 51 million tonnes.
Across China, India, Indonesia and Mongolia coal mining has increased by 1000 million tonnes a year in the two years since the “world” signed up to net zero. This is the equivalent of 100 Adani coal mines being built in our region. And there has not been a single student here going on strike about this outrage.
The real world consequence of this is that Australian jobs are being lost to the coal powered countries of Asia. A big part of the increase in coal use in Indonesia has gone towards the expansion of the Indonesian nickel industry.
Through their use of cheap coal power, Indonesia has been rapidly taking market share in nickel off Australia by producing nickel for a cheaper price. Already 1000 Australian nickel jobs have been lost and thousands more are at risk.
Most of these are in Western Australia but the threat to Australian mining jobs is real because the new Indonesian President says that he wants to repeat their nickel success in copper and bauxite, which are big employers in Queensland.
Australia needs to stop paying so much attention to climate agreements signed in Paris and Glasgow and start paying a lot more attention to what is happening in our own region.
