BHP’s green-aligned sabotage of the Mineral Council of Australia’s battle to save the Australian coal industry cannot be explained simply by the self-serving ‘virtue signalling’ that has infected so many Australian company directors. At least AGL stood to benefit from the higher energy prices generated by its anti-coal actions. But BHP struggles to find a sound commercial reason for promoting climate change policies that are strongly negative for its $US10 billion of coal assets and damaging to the national interest.