THURSDAY'S Federal Court win by eight teenagers and a nun against the Vickery coal mine at Gunnedah pits the authority of climate science against an industry that has dominated the Hunter Valley and which remains one of our biggest export earners and is presently experiencing something of a boom.
In that verdict, Justice Mordecai Bromberg made a "declaration" that Environment Minister Sussan Ley had a "duty to take reasonable care" when exercising her duties under federal environmental law "to avoid causing personal injury or death" to Australian residents under the age of 18 when the case began last year "arising from emissions of carbon dioxide into the Earth's atmosphere".
The verdict led to jubilation on one side of things and consternation on the other. Yesterday morning, the minister announced she had formed the view there were grounds for appeal and had instructed her department to lodge notice of that intention.
One of the students, Anjali Sharma, 17, said from Melbourne that she found the appeal "funny and honestly pretty embarrassing", and said that rather than acting "for the young people of Australia", Ms Ley was "fighting for her right to make climate change worse, harm the environment and risk the injury and death of Australian children".
Not so long ago, that would have been a very long bow to draw, especially given Justice Mordecai Bromberg's acknowledgement of Vickery's "tiny" contribution to global warming. Not any more, it seems.
The Australian Financial Review yesterday quoted a partner from top-end lawyers King & Wood Mallesons as saying the decision had implications even beyond coal, and could apply to any project with "a significant emissions footprint" that needed approval under the federal Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act.
That's a significant development, especially given the ongoing debate about the workings of the Act, which was recently reviewed for the government by former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Graeme Samuel.
States and territories traditionally held responsibility for environmental matters, including the general operating approval for coal mines, including Vickery, last year. Environmentalists were outraged at the time.
But the review called for a strengthening and overhaul of the federal Act, saying that with climate change included, the "current environmental trajectory is unsustainable".
The Vickery verdict, of course, is just one weapon in an increasing arsenal being deployed against the Austrlalian coal industry.
Maybe it's my age - 61 - and my pre-journalistic work as a fitter and machinist in the power stations with the old electricity commission, but I am finding aspects of this war sometimes hard to accept.
I used to consider my power station experience a strength. I had a practical understanding of the way power was generated, and an understanding of just how much electricity it took to run a modern society.
But now it's become a handicap, a bias I have to consciously try to eliminate in writing about this subject.
At the same time, I can put a hand on my heart and say I welcome the advance of renewable energy.
But as I do that, I look at the graphs that accompany this article that show the huge reliance we still have on coal, at a time when we still don't have sufficient technology to store enough power for the night times, when solar doesn't work, and which come around as regularly as, well, night and day.
And that's without the huge extra demand from electric cars.
Right now Australia has almost 20 million registered vehicles, including some 20,000 electric cars. Federal Labor wants half the cars sold in 2030 to be electric.
These and other essentially laudable innovations might be wonderful ideas, but putting them into practice is something else entirely.
So, as I see it, we have a real world where governments and the private sector are spending heavily - and I don't disagree, correctly - on innovation and infrastructure to maximise the use of renewables where possible.
At the same time, the coal industry, which along with gas still produces roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of our power on average, and almost all of it at night, is being hemmed in by a series of court verdicts that have profound implications for Australia as a whole, and for the Hunter Region, as a major coal producer, in particular.
Of course an increasingly empowered environmental movement says it has been warning of such social dislocation for years, and that the only thing that matters is to combat the looming climate catastrophe.
Others, who perhaps give less weight in risk analysis to predicted future climate events, argue that the social, judicial and finance world war against coal is walking us over the edge of a different cliff.
Either way, as Georgina Woods of Lock The Gate Alliance, and Rising Tide before that, reminded me yesterday, we've had plenty of warning.
She pointed to a 2006 Land and Environment Court case brought by activist Peter Gray, in which the judge said: "I consider there is a sufficiently proximate link between the mining of . . . coal . . . and climate change/global warming".
But the mine in question, Anvil Hill, went ahead as Mangoola.
Other verdicts, particularly Rocky Hill two years ago, drew far stronger correlations.
The question now is what impact will the Vickery verdict have on the mine and on the industry more broadly?
