If Australia and Indonesia agreed to end new thermal coal mines, it could drive the green transition.

by bpckle | Feb 6, 2026 | In the Media

In the 1960s, major oil-producing nations formed a cartel to drive up the price of oil. It worked. For decades, nations in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) have agreed to manage supply and raise prices.

Economists have long recognised cartel market power can bring accidental environmental benefits. By driving up prices, demand for polluting products drops. One recent analysis found OPEC’s actions had avoided 67 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions between 1971 and 2021 – equivalent to around three years of global oil consumption.

There’s no OPEC for thermal coal. However, Australia and Indonesia together account for around two thirds of seaborne thermal coal exports. If these two nations began acting in tandem to end the approval of new mines, falling future supply would gradually increase prices.

Our recent research points out that a formal treaty to phase out new thermal coal mine approvals would not only bring climate benefits, but could also benefit national budgets, state royalties and regional jobs.

What we’re proposing blends climate action and self-interest. If restricting coal supply boosted prices, producer states would benefit from increased royalties. Owners and workers at existing mines would benefit from stabilising prices. Finally, the green energy transition would be protected from being undermined by a race to consume ultra-cheap coal.

In the 1970s, OPEC’s engineering of higher oil prices drove a shift to more fuel-efficient cars and triggered intense interest in alternative energy sources such as solar. In our time, solar, wind and energy storage have come of age. A treaty to end new coal mines would make the shift even more appealing.

What would this look like?

If Australia, Indonesia and others formed a new “Organisation for Coal Transition”, the environmental motivation wouldn’t be the only difference with OPEC. For a start, a much high share of oil is traded internationally than coal, as more countries have their own coal supplies.

But major coal importers such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan now depend on seaborne coal. These nations are committed to accelerating climate action overall and have shown signs of structural demand decline already. Stronger coal prices would spur on the change.

The limited number of major coal exporters also creates potential for cooperation. In 2024, Indonesia controlled almost half of global exports, while Australia’s share was nearly 20%. Projections. If South Africa and Colombia joined a treaty alongside Australia and Indonesia, they would together account for 80% of seaborne exports.

What’s more, a thermal coal export treaty would not be easy to undermine. It takes years to get new mines producing, and deepwater ports able to take coal carriers are limited.

Coal importers could reinforce this treaty, pledging to buy from treaty members alone. Japan and South Korea (which account for 20% of global coal imports) are both seeking a predictable energy transition. These countries have shown willingness to pay a green premium and are investors in existing mines.

Australia has no exit strategy

Despite efforts to close domestic coal plants, Australian policymakers have done nothing to limit coal mining and exports.

New South Wales and Queensland state governments still benefit significantly through royalties and regional jobs. Australia’s coal exports, mine expansion approvals and new applications show little sign of slowing.

This is an increasingly risky strategy. With profit margins falling from recent highs and shifting demand in key markets, the thermal coal industry risks a chaotic future for mining towns.

While policymakers are beginning to focus on transition challenges for a small number of coal mines slated to close, they have largely avoided active intervention. After the NSW Productivity Commission and Net Zero Commission recommended limiting new coal mine approvals, Premier Chris Minns described the idea as “irresponsible”.

A ban backed by industry?

For operators of existing mines, agreeing to limit expansion opportunities is a challenging proposition. But the longer-term benefits would be much clearer if it was coordinated with international competitors and supported by buyers.

The coal export sector is showing signs of shifting to a buyers’ market, as long-term demand plateaus and then declines. This puts exporters such as Australia, Colombia, Indonesia and South Africa at a clear disadvantage.

We’ve already seen the fallout of coal’s market-driven decline in the United States’ Appalachian region Repeating the same mistake would undermine regional communities.

If, however, the shift was well managed, it would be a crucial step towards a coordinated just transition.

Japanese, Chinese, South Korean, Indian and Singaporean firms hold major stakes in Australian and Indonesian coal projects. These investors would benefit if existing assets are safeguarded from oversupply. These same investors would likely rally against more forceful interventions to close existing mines or raise mining taxes.

Climate action for pragmatists

Thermal coal is still mined in almost 60 countries. But only 11 have new mines seeking approval. At the same time, key international importers such as China, India, the European Union, Japan and South Korea are actively aiming to cut coal imports. A no-new-mines treaty would meet countries where they are.

What we are proposing is a pragmatic way to advance climate action. Rather than shuttering existing mines and risking blowback, the treaty and its cartel logic would align Australia’s economic self-interest and its climate goals.

At the United Nations climate talks last year, federal Minister for Climate and Energy Chris Bowen supported efforts to map a fossil fuel phase-out. To date, there’s no clarity on how Australia, a fossil fuel export giant, could do that.

Firmly closing the door to new mines alongside other exporters could offer a way to do this while giving policymakers agency.

The approach we’re proposing wouldn’t end coal use. But it would solve several problems at a stroke – and take a big step forward in the energy transition.

Jonathan Symons is an ordinary member of WePlanet NGO.

Chris Wright is the Principal Analyst at CarbonBridge, a small consulting group aiming to bridge critical decarbonisation challenges. He has been involved in work around the UN climate negotiations for over a decade.

Can a bird be an illegal immigrant? How the White Australia era influenced attitudes to the bulbul

by bpckle | Feb 6, 2026 | In the Media

In early January, authorities from South Australia’s Department of Primary Industries took to the streets of Adelaide on the hunt for a suspicious individual.

This individual had been spotted several times in the preceding weeks: they had red cheeks, brown wings and a black crest. It was a red-whiskered bulbul — a non-native bird, often seen around Sydney and Wollongong but not normally present in SA. Most Australians have likely never heard of a red-whiskered bulbul, much less seen one. But these birds have been living here since the First World War.

A spokesperson for the state explained why one little bird was causing such a fuss:

the red-whiskered bulbul is a high-risk pest bird that can damage SA’s vineyards and orchards by eating soft fruit, flower buds and insects, potentially reducing yields or causing crop failure

Is this bulbul really a harbinger of catastrophe for SA’s fruitgrowers? As a historian who researches introduced species in Australia, I suspect there is more at stake here than a few grapes and cherries.

Australia is a country forged through suspicion and fear of outsiders – a theme still prevalent in politics today. The bulbul first arrived here in the heyday of the White Australia Policy, and at the time, its Asian origin influenced the way Australians reacted to it. Could this history still influence attitudes towards it today?

First bulbuls were likely escapees

The red-whiskered bulbul’s “natural range” — where it lived before humans transported it elsewhere — includes much of India, southern China and Southeast Asia. But humans have brought it to places as far apart as Mauritius, Hawaii and Florida, as well as Australia.

Many of the birds Australians see every day have been introduced since the beginning of colonisation. This is true of domesticated birds such as chickens and pigeons, brought here on the First Fleet in 1788. In the 19th century, “acclimatisers” — naturalists who made it their mission to move species of animal and plant across the globe — successfully introduced several species of wild bird, such as blackbirds and common (or “Indian”) mynas.

Bulbul populations appeared almost simultaneously in both Sydney and Melbourne in the late 1910s. The bulbul was a popular pet at the time, and it’s probable these populations arose from aviary escapees. (This seems to be how the bird became established in the wild in other regions such as Florida.)

At first, the bird prompted not much more than curiosity. Some warned its penchant for fruit would lead it to becoming a pest; others praised it for eating troublesome insects such as aphids.

Bulbul scrutinised in era of xenophobia

The bulbul arrived during the zenith of the White Australia Policy, and its Asian origin meant it received extra scrutiny. As early as 1922, commentators wrote about the bird under headlines like “Another Asiatic Menace”, “Asiatic Settler” and “Immigrant Bird”. A 1926 headline in the Melbourne Herald was even more explicit: “Mr. Bulbul: Asiatic Bird That Has Beaten the Migration Laws”. Farmers and gardeners wrote to newspapers to complain of bulbuls eating their fruit, calling the birds “undesirables” and “foreigners in feathers”.

Some people thought these responses were prejudiced, and said so. One correspondent of Sydney’s Evening News called on readers to give “the bul-bul a fair go”. There was no denying that the bird was charming and had a beautiful song, even if it did eat fruit and flowers. Some commentators argued the bulbul had become “naturalised” – that it had earned a right to belong in Australia, regardless of origin.

There is something hopeful in all this. Even at a time of intense and wide-ranging racism and xenophobia, an Asian bird could still “become Australian”.

But these voices were always a minority. As the species was never protected by law, orchardists and gardeners encouraged each other to shoot and trap bulbuls whenever possible. By 1935, an employee of the Sydney Botanic Gardens was shooting up to six bulbuls a day.

Much ado about nothing?

Today, bulbuls still thrive around Greater Sydney, their range stretching north to Newcastle and south to Nowra. But Melburnians rarely see them, according to publicly accessible data on the Birdata and Ebird platforms. Perhaps they have been muscled out by growing numbers of aggressive and adaptable native birds such as noisy miners and pied currawongs.

Like the recent visitor to Adelaide, bulbuls have been spotted occasionally in SA since the 1940s, but decades can pass without a single bulbul being seen in the state. Whether or not bulbuls someday form a viable population in SA remains to be seen. But if they did, would it really be so bad?

We know that some non-native birds, like starlings, cause immense problems for farmers and do compete with native birds for nesting sites. However, there is very little peer-reviewed research on the red-whiskered bulbul in Australia. In 2014, ecologist Matthew Mo wrote there was no evidence that competition between bulbuls and native birds is “ecologically significant”. Even the evidence for its impact on fruit crops and role in spreading weeds remains scant. At best, we have a deficiency of research. At worst, we’re getting worked up about a relatively harmless bird, just because it’s not native.

White Australians of the interwar period let their xenophobic attitudes towards Asian humans distort their view of an Asian bird. I’m not arguing those worried about the bulbul today are doing so because they are personally racist. But today’s anxieties about the bulbul do seem acute, given the lack of any hard evidence. After all, native birds can do enormous damage to fruit crops, too.

In many cases, we’re right to be concerned about the ecological and agricultural impacts of non-native wildlife — I’m not here to defend rabbits, brumbies or feral cats. But that doesn’t mean every introduced species is a catastrophe waiting to happen. The story of the bulbul in Australia should give us pause. During more than a century on this continent it has been, at worst, a minor nuisance. When the intensity of our emotions does not match the evidence, we need to ask ourselves why.

Simon Farley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.