Prominent Australians sign letter to Paris climate talks - stop new coal mines

Turnbull's lame assed love affair with coal is just not good enough. His attempts to push forward a new biggest coal mine in the southern hemisphere transporting it through the Great Barrier Reef just before the Paris climate talks are stupid in the extreme.

Yet the market's aren't listening to the ideologues any more. The writing is on the wall for coal, and those who want to invest in big new coal ventures will find themselves investing in useless stranded assets.

Now 61 prominent Australians have written to the Paris climate talks to get the Turnbull gov on the agenda there and pressure it to stop building these stupid coal mines.

Backed by green and social action organisations, the 61 eminent persons have signed an open letter featured in full-page advertisements in Fairfax Media newspapers, calling on the host of the December talks, French President Francois Hollande, and Mr Turnbull to oppose new coal developments - including the Carmichael mine in Queensland's Galilee Basin. ​

The Paris climate change meeting is the largest global gathering on the environment since the Copenhagen summit in 2009, which ended in widespread disappointment. 

The signatories, which include erstwhile Australians of the year Professors Fiona Stanley, Peter Doherty and Tim Flannery as well as one time Reserve Bank Governor Bernie Fraser, current Wallabies flanker Pocock and Anglican churchman Bishop George Browning, have called on Mr Turnbull and other world leaders to recognise that it is not just the fossil fuels a country burns for its own energy that matters, but those dug up for export to others. 

"We, the undersigned, urge you to put coal exports on the agenda at the 2015 Paris COP21 climate summit and to help the world's governments negotiate a global moratorium on new coal mines and coal mine expansions, as called for by President Anote Tong of the Republic of Kiribati, and Pacific Island nations," the 61 say. CanberraTimes