If the cap Fitzgibbon

[Tannin]

I see that borderline climate denier Joel Fitzgibbon has called for Mark Butler to be moved away from the climate portfolio.

Hmmmm ....

On the whole, I'm more in favour of Fitzgibbon being expelled from the party.

Perhaps he could be booted out of Labor and join One Nation, where his Neanderthal views and serial disloyalty would be considered assets. On balance, this would be a win-win, as it would substantially increase the average intelligence of both parties.

[David]

I've barely thought about Labor once in the last 18 months, but this is great news. Maybe a sign that they're finally starting to cut off some of the dead wood and approach being a functional forward-looking party.

[watt price tully]

It’s not quite so simple though is it. I much prefer no coal mining but it could also be political suicide.

They need a plan how they’re going to assist workers and businesses that have developed secondary to the over-protected and over subsidised coal industry as a way forward.

[watt price tully]

Coal mining has to end but we need to fund a transition to more affordable and cleaner energy options.

Fitzgibbon needs to piss off

[stui magpie]

Coal is not just used for burning for energy, it's also used to make steel

[Tannin]

You are both right, although a managed transition to a coal-free economy is far from political suicide. It just needs to be done at a measured pace, letting the market make its own decisions as to timing. The role of government is simply to remove externalities from the cost base - i.e., phase out subsidies both hidden and explicit. The market will take care of the rest.

Coal is indeed a crucial part of steelmaking. Stui knows but most other people don't understand that the coal used for steel making isn't there simply to heat up and melt the iron ore (you could use any sort of energy for that - electricity, gas, solar mirrors, nuclear fusion: anything that gets hot), it is there to be burned under carefully controlled conditions such that it forms carbon monoxide, which is then used as the reducing agent to turn iron ore (essentially rust - iron oxide) into more-or-less pure iron.

Oxygen atoms like sticking to iron atoms, so to un-stick them you have to offer something even more attractive. By far the cheapest and easiest and least environmentally damaging combination is carbon monoxide and plenty of heat. The oxygen atoms in the iron ore molecules combine with the carbon monoxide to form CO2, which goes up the chimney, leaving (approximately) pure iron behind.

Now there are other ways to make iron, but none of them is practical. Yet. There are many much easier and cheaper things we can do right now to cut CO2 generation (such as not burning coal to make electricity, and stopping runaway population growth, and banning fugitive methane emissions by oil and gas producers, and doing something about agriculture) while we figure out smarter ways to make steel.