As most of Australia shivers through the first weeks of a chilly winter, it is hard to fathom coming home at the end of the day to cook a meal in an open stove powered by plants or dung collected from outside, with no household heating or clean drinking water.
According to the World Health Organisation, more than three billion people still cook and heat their homes with materials such as these and more than four million people per year die from resulting illnesses.
In India alone at least 300 million people have no access to electricity and some 815 million people still rely on wood, dung and crop waste for cooking.
It is for these reasons that we should look critically at the Greens and their fellow travellers, who are attempting to impose their selfish world view on the rest of us through the current divestment campaign and their vendetta against coal mining and coal-fired power stations.
New research released today demonstrates how increasing Australian coal exports from the Galilee Basin by up to 120 million tonnes annually could allow at least 82 million Indian people to access a regular and reliable source of electricity each year. Coal is the world's cheapest and most reliable source of electricity. It powered the Industrial Revolution and, together with oil and gas, has allowed billions of people throughout the world to achieve a better quality of life over the past 200 years.
Affordable electricity has powered the increased production and safe storage of food, clean drinking water, the mass manufacture of clothing, the ability to heat and cool our homes, better housing, access to and safe storage of medicine, and a choice of transport options. About 830 million people around the world gained access to electricity for the first time between 1990 and 2012 because of coal.
As more people in the developing world demand access to cheap and reliable electricity, and with the UN predicting last year that the world's urban population will increase from 3.9 billion people to 6.4 billion people by 2050, coal-fired power stations are not going to disappear any time soon.
India alone is expected to have an extra 404 million city dwellers in 2050, which is equivalent to 11.2 million people per year, or 30,745 people per day. India has historically been plagued by insufficient electricity capacity, poor infrastructure planning and delivery and significant transmission losses, which has led to limited or zero electricity and regular blackouts.
Just last month a serious heatwave caused more than 2000 deaths, and electricity shortages in some places due to extra load on the power system.
New Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi set out a vision last year to connect all Indian villages to the electricity grid and the International Energy Agency has predicted that India will add another 342 gigawatts of coal-fired generation capacity before 2040.
It is clearly just as important to people in India and the developing world as it is to people in Australia that their electricity system is reliable and affordable. Yet while the Indian government is pursuing policies to provide a higher standard of living for its people, Australian coal activists want to deny them that choice.
The morality of seeking to deny people in other countries the privileges that we enjoy here, when we have to ability to help out, is deeply suspect.
While solar and wind power may very well have a place in future world energy supply, not even the most earnest activist can change the laws of physics and force solar power to work at night or in cloudy weather, wind power to work in calm conditions, or hydro-electric power to work in times of drought or in areas without large rivers or mountains.
Increasing the supply of Australian coal to India would permanently improve the lives of millions of people — a goal worthy of strong public and policymaker support.
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