OPINION: It’s getting hot in here, so take off all your coal!

One of the biggest coal port is going to be built at only a few dozen kilometres from the Great Barrier Reef but the fact that most people in Queensland think there is no climate crisis is quite shocking.

This enormous “Carmichael coal mines project” was shown in a two-hour- documentary called Sur le Front des Océans, presented by Hugo Clément, which aired last week on the French public television. It focused on the environmental impact that plastic pollution, overfishing and coal mining has on oceans, exploring three different areas of the world: the Gulf of California, the Mediterranean Sea and the Great Barrier Reef.

This huge port is Abbot Point, specialised in the exportation of coal and owned by the private Indian coal magnate Adani. It can already stock up to two million tonnes of coal simultaneously and export up to 50 million tonnes per year. But if this project is completed, creating a mega coal mine, Abbot Point will have to be extended, becoming the biggest coal port in the world at only a few dozen kilometres from the Great Barrier Reef.

Clermont is the nearest city to the Adani mine and is also the capital of Queensland’s miners. Nearly everybody in this city works in coal mines and depends on that industry which brings a substantial amount of jobs and a huge amount of money for the country. As a consequence, most inhabitants support the Adani project and coal mining in general.

Hugo Clément asked some locals what they thought about the climate crisis and the state of corals. Most didn’t believe a crisis is happening right now. One replied: “No don’t listen to the greenies, they just want to tear this country apart.”

Another said: “But the coral reef is doing great! The corals are wonderful.” He also said that he didn’t believe in climate change, that scientists were lying and compared that to glaciers in the North Pole. He said: “It’s just like this story of North Pole glaciers, some are growing and some are melting.”

Hearing his story about glaciers growing made my blood boil. These people genuinely think that the climate is doing great, that global warming is not happening and if it ever happens, well an increase of 1.5°C or 2°C is not too bad, right? It could even be pleasant.

This project, if achieved, will create six open-cut pits and five underground mines and will aim to produce around 66 million tonnes of coal per year. If this project comes into existence, 1,500 jobs will be created in the region, as promised by Adani. This is the main argument that politicians and people living in this region are using to defend this huge unecological project.As a matter of fact, the government even claims that this project is needed as coal mining is a job creator, especially in Queensland, which is a region where jobs are needed.

But what these fools don’t know is that if this project is completed, it will have a gargantuan impact on the Great Barrier Reef. Coal freighters will have to go through these reefs which represent a major shipping lane. Apart from the CO2 emissions that shipping this coal to Asia will create, any accident would provoke a huge ecological disaster in this already fragile ecosystem.

In the third part of the documentary, you could see the Great Barrier Reef and how corals were deeply impacted by bleaching. Corals start to bleach and then die, having a major impact on the species living near them. Plastic pollution but also shipping and global warming are at the source of the bleaching process.

This whole issue around the Adani project highlights Australia’s battle between fighting climate crisis and bringing jobs to regional communities through fossil fuel projects. But the government and people have to understand that our earth is at stake and if we don’t do anything to stop this climate crisis, making a lot of money will be pointless.

The 500,000-year-old Great Barrier Reef is one of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World and is dying because of climate change. Its existence is not only threatened by global warming and pollution but also by sceptics’ stupidity because they prefer to have a healthy economy rather than protecting their home.