What a record of greed, corruption, half-truths and untruths the Australian coal industry has set.
Australian politics and business have historically flourished in what Australians call a ''robust'' environment but others describe as ''unrestrained''.
This book by a lobbyist and two journalists does not pretend to be non-partisan. The nay-sayers in Australia do not operate on a level playing field.
The authors swoop from anger to irony to disgust to scorn. But even at that level of emotion, this is not an easy read. In fact, this is a tract. It is like reading the religious tracts of Europe's religious wars.
The fervour of those involved with coal matches the hellfire and damnation of those times. So the reader is left with their personal belief for and against global warming and climate change caused by the aptly named ''Big Coal''.
There was a time until quite recently when the balance of logic seemed to lie with the non-believers, especially in Australia.
Coal was seen as their saviour. While the rest of the developed world was floundering in the economic mire, the Chinese and Indian economies were booming and the vast Australian coalfields were benefiting.
Big Coal created coal billionaires among its Australian suppliers. Like their neoliberal but ever so much smaller New Zealand counterparts, they promoted the ''trickle-down'' theory of economic prosperity.
Australian federal and state governments were not necessarily venal in their response but they were very unguarded, when caution might have served their reputations better, in retrospect.
The first law in politics is to get elected. Getting elected in Australia has meant climbing on the Big Coal bandwagon. Big Coal used every lobbying and PR device at its command to secure political support. Doubters were drowned out by the tide of money available.
This book is very good on who paid whom to disparage the doubters. Vast amounts of money were poured into campaigns to secure political support at the macro level, while no local project for a resurfaced bowling green or a school playground was too trivial at the micro level.
Politicians and small communities, equally, felt and were helpless against the tide.
But now the tide is turning. For a variety of reasons, the price paid by China and India - mainly but not solely - for coal is falling.
The sums needed to sustain the level of promotion and production of coal in Australia are declining. Much-trumpeted projects are being delayed or even abandoned. It is these very real threats rather than the logic and fact of global warming/climate change that are beginning to hurt Big Coal.
This is most evident in the cooling of the charge for CCS (carbon capture and storage). This was the widely touted panacea against the threat of climate change from coal-based carbon emissions.
It was gladly and unthinkingly accepted by everyone who saw coal as the future. There was virtually no challenge to it for a decade; now it is increasingly seen as prohibitively expensive, probably physically impossible, and eventually not able to deliver.
Meantime, the damage being done to Australian agriculture and tourism may be irreversible. The authors make their case persuasively. So Australia has these huge coalfields - often actually owned by foreign rather than Australian investors - poised to service what is increasingly seen (especially in the United States) as a sunset industry. Watch this space.
• Oliver Riddell is a retired journalist. He lives in Wellington
