This, however, did not stop Tony Abbott from glossing over these costs when he declared recently that “coal is good for humanity”, nor did it stop environment minister Greg Hunt from saying that coal will lift millions in the developing world out of energy poverty.

But coal is not the solution to energy poverty. Local renewable energy is. India’s people are best served by renewable energy sources like wind, solar and small-scale hydropower. That’s why Indian giant Adani’s proposed Carmichael mine in Queensland’s Galilee Basin, one of the world’s largest, is such a backward idea – and why I have joined the fight to stop it.

scenario emphasising coal.

This difference is even starker when you take into account the costs of imported coal from Australia and Indonesia. Increases in imported Indonesian coal prices have made the massive Tata Mundra and Adani Mundra power projects in the Indian state of Gujarat uneconomical, leading to plant shutdowns.This price differential would be even greater for Australian coal. Recent analysis from the Institute of Energy Economics and Financial Analysis has shown that the cost of imported Galilee coal-fired power generation in India is double the current average wholesale cost of electricity. More than 300m Indians simply cannot afford Australian coal.

The coal from Carmichael, when burnt in Adani’s power stations in India, will damage the health of the Indian rural poor and the land and water on which they depend for their livelihoods. And they still won’t be able to afford the electricity generated.

Abbott said “coal has a big future as well as a big past.” He and the coal companies want us all to believe that coal is inevitable. Coal helped build the economies of developed countries and so it must be the right choice for the rest of us. Yet by that logic, the opium trade and slavery should also be reintroduced, since they also contributed to the enrichment of many countries.

All the pieces are in place now for developing countries to choose a clean energy path that is cheaper, faster and healthier than coal. It would be nice if the Australian government focused on this, rather than exporting dirty, outdated coal.