IN an Indian parable, a group of blind men find themselves confronted with a shape they cannot identify. Each has his hands on a different part of a massive shape, which turns out - after some argument - to be an elephant.
It's an apposite image in Australia today, as the coal industry - the elephant in the room when it comes to this country's ability to meet its global climate change commitments - comes under increasing pressure from critics in a variety of corners.
Of course the climate activists would say it's the supporters of the coal industry who are the blind men, while they are as enlightened as their opponents are wilfully not wanting to see the obvious truth.
Yesterday, a senior United Nations climate adviser, assistant general secretary Selwin Hart, from Barbados, told a Canberra conference by pre-recorded speech that the world needed to "rapidly phase out coal" if it was to avoid a climate crisis.
Australia's electricity supply is adding renewable output at a globally significant rate, but as the Newcastle Herald has pointed out before, the coal industry is not stopping the world from converting to a nirvana of renewable energy. It's the limitations of the technologies themselves.
Unless the United Nations expects first-world nations to fall back to third-world status - and there are some climate activists who may well welcome such a rustic future - coal will be needed to provide the electricity to research and design and build the futuristic equipment that is needed to put the coal mines out of business.
In the meantime, the argument over coal will resemble the blind men and the elephant.
Some will target Australia because it - alongside Indonesia - is one of the world's two biggest coal exporters.
Others, in the industry and the Morrison government, will likely point out that Australia's coal exports are less than 10 per cent of China's domestic use.
And that Australia contributes less than 2 per cent of global greenhouse gases. Some see the industry as their employment lifeline.
Others as a polluter shrouding the Hunter in dust.
It is all these things, and more.
In the parable, the elephant's form was eventually found through co-operation.
The Morrison government should adopt a progressive net-zero target.
And the zealots should accept that they, too, must compromise.
ISSUE: 39,663
