Shift to zero-carbon electricity needed by 2018
The approval of a giant new coal mine for Queensland is likely to deliver only short-term economic benefits and may carry a hidden cost if its demise triggers a bailout for miners needing new jobs, a leading US investor says. 
The Palaszczuk Labor government on Sunday announced the approval of three mining licences for the $20 billion-plus Carmichael coal mine and rail project planned for the Galilee Basin. Its supporters, including India-based owner Adani, say the mine will generate thousands of new mining jobs.
But Stephen Heintz, president of the $US860 million ($1.1 billion) Rockefeller Brothers Fund, predicts the world will move rapidly away from fossil fuels to avoid dangerous climate change. Approval of a mine that may produce 4.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide - eight times Australia's annual output - is not going to help.
"Some 60-80 per cent of known fossil fuels in the world are going to have to stay in the ground if we are to have any chance to keep to less than 2 degrees" of warming, Mr Heintz said. "In the short term, [Carmichael] may look like a good idea." 
The cost of the needed shift to renewable energy will be hefty enough. Approving big new mines means governments, such as Queensland's, will need to find additional funds to pay for the transition of those coal miners out of the industry when it's inevitably curbed, he said.
Mr Heintz is in Australia as a guest of the United States Studies Centre and will speak at the Divest Invest Conference in Sydney on Tuesday about the opportunities and risks following last year's Paris climate summit at which almost 200 nations agreed to step up efforts to curb global warming.
The falling price of fossil fuels over the past year or so has hindered the development of alternatives, such as solar energy, by making competition "more acute". On the other hand, it has also made investments in coal and oil less valuable, he said.
While some investors would move faster than others to exit carbon-based fuels, the shift would come even if government policies were subject to change.
"The direction of travel has now been set," Mr Heintz said. "As a long-term investor, that's what you're looking at."
By coincidence, Mr Heintz arrived in Sydney after a short holiday on Lizard Island, one of the sites on the Great Barrier Reef hit by one of the worst coral bleaching episodes in history.
"You can see the world's most specular maritime life, whether the corals or the fishes, and you can also see the effects of the bleaching," he said. "It's heart-breaking."
Marine scientists, such as Professor Terry Hughes of James Cook University, had blamed climate change for the bleaching, noting that waters off northern Australia - and many other reef locations - are at record levels. They have also been critical of the Adani approval.