Sixty-one prominent Australians including Wallaby David Pocock, three former Australians of the Year and eminent scientists and economists have pressed Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to stop any new coal mines and to put an international moratorium on coal on the agenda of the Paris climate talks. 
The push represents the new front in the climate change wars, with the group arguing Australia's relatively small domestic share of global greenhouse emissions obscures the vast environmental damage of burning Australian coal in places such as China and India.
Backed by green and social action organisations, the 61 have signed an open letter featured in full-page advertisements in Fairfax Media newspapers, calling on the host of the   December talks, French President Francois Hollande, and Mr Turnbull to oppose new coal developments - including the Carmichael mine in Queensland's Galilee Basin.
The Paris climate change meeting is the largest global gathering on the environment since the Copenhagen summit in 2009, which ended in disappointment.
The signatories, which include erstwhile Australians of the Year Professors Fiona Stanley, Peter Doherty and Tim Flannery as well as one time Reserve Bank governor Bernie Fraser, current Wallabies flanker David Pocock and Anglican churchman Bishop George Browning, have called on Mr Turnbull and other world leaders to recognise that it is not just the fossil fuels a country burns for its own energy that matters, but those dug up for export to others.
"We, the undersigned, urge you to put coal exports on the agenda at the 2015 Paris COP21 climate summit and to help the world's governments negotiate a global moratorium on new coal mines and coal mine expansions, as called for by President Anote Tong of the Republic of Kiribati, and Pacific Island nations," the 61 said.
The low-lying Pacific Island nation of Kiribati is one of many micronations in danger of serious damage and even inundation from rising sea levels caused by melting polar ice and increasingly turbulent global weather.
"Australia has a larger share of the seaborne coal market than Saudi Arabia has of the world oil market," the open letter states.
"While world leaders discuss emission reduction targets, a small number of countries with large coal reserves, including Australia, are planning to massively expand their coal exports. These plans are incompatible with the world's objective of limiting global warming below dangerous levels.
"Over the next 10 years Australia plans to double its coal exports. If it goes ahead, the Carmichael mine in Queensland's Galilee Basin would export more than 2 billion tonnes of coal over its lifetime.
"And that's just one mine. Australia has dozens of coal projects on the drawing board."
Labor leader Bill Shorten plans to travel to Kiribati next week.