The moral high ground is, they believe, exclusively the preserve of environmental activists in their war against fossil fuels. This they enthusiastically occupied last week in their attack on the decision by the Turnbull coalition government (supported by Gary Gray, Labor’s resources spokesman) to grant, once again, after a legal hiccup, conditional environmental approval to the massive Carmichael steaming coal development in Queensland’s Galillee basin. ‘Knowing what we do about the imperatives of climate change, approving a vast new coal plant on the eve of the Paris climate change talks, in complete disregard of its significant greenhouse gas implications, is unethical and, at a global level, indefensible’ was Deakin University’s Professor Samantha Hepburn’s comment from on high. Words like irresponsible, disgraceful and predictable flowed through social media. Moral outrage was the overwhelming atmospheric from the usual suspects rounded up by some sections of the media, like the ABC and Fairfax, to criticise this India-designated export coalmining project.

So three cheers for Josh Frydenberg, who has dared to challenge this moral certitude. Recently appointed Minister for Resources and Energy after an impressive spell as Abbott’s Assistant Treasurer, last week he hit self-righteous anti-mining activists where it hurts most – on their claimed moral superiority. Fossil fuel activists who seek to sabotage coal developments, for example, by the ‘lawfare’ of perpetual legal actions as delaying tactics that add to costs and uncertainty, have no concept of the consequences of depriving consumers of Australian coal. Frydenberg demonstrated that morality is, in reality, on the side of the miners. Not only is there ‘a strong moral case for our energy exports’, we have a duty to help meet the forecast doubling of demand over the next 15 years, on which the region’s economic prosperity (and improving health, education and living standards) depends.

Frydenberg pointed to Australia’s moral obligation to provide energy – including our ‘cleaner’ coal – to the 600 million in the Asia/Pacific region living without sustainable power and suffering from energy poverty. As the commendable (but unattainable) green objective of 100 per cent renewable energy cannot go anywhere near meeting more than a fraction of this demand, greenies are effectively trying to prevent energy-deprived human beings overseas from achieving the energy security the greenies themselves enjoy. As India seeks its fair share of cheap power (evidenced by the Carmichael project which is aimed at providing coal for Indian power generators) Energy Minister Piyush Goyal’s prelude to next month’s Paris climate summit was, as Miranda Devine wrote in the Telegraph, to hit out at the hypocrisy of rich Western countries (and their greenies) which had ‘enjoyed the fruits of low-cost affordable thermal power for the last 150 years’, and are now lecturing poorer countries about carbon emissions. And coal will remain ‘the staple power source for India’. So blocking Australian higher-grade steaming coal exports to India would do nothing to support the battle against CO2 and would simply force India to use higher polluting coal from other sources, like Indonesia. As another learned professor in Queensland noted, ‘The greenhouse emissions from developing Carmichael are a zero sum given India would otherwise source coal from somewhere else’.

The moral imperative to improve access to energy for the more than one billion people in the world without electricity was one of the key issues at the APEC energy ministers meeting held last week in the Philippines. On his return from this meeting, Frydenberg said: ‘Australia, with its globally dominant position in the energy market – be it gas, coal or uranium – has a vitally important role to play in lifting hundreds of millions of people out of energy poverty. In the absence of electricity supplies, 2.9 billion people use wood and dung for their cooking, which the WHO estimates leads to 4.3 million premature deaths a year – more than from malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS combined. In our Asia-Pacific region, 50 per cent of vaccines perish due to a lack of energy for cold storage’. So it’s not just the revenue and jobs that make coal exports good for Australia – it’s the morality.