14 DAY TRIAL // Only recently, the chief executive of BHP Billion's coal division sat down for a chat with investors and analysts and drew their attention towards the fact that, all things considered, coal power only has a few “breaths” left in it.
What is interesting is that, according to Marcus Randolph, the biggest problem coal power is presently facing is by no means ones having to do with how the general public feels about this industry or with how many green-oriented groups plan on shutting it down.
Quite the contrary: BHP Billiton, one of the world's largest mining companies, is itself experiencing the negative consequences brought forth by climate change and global warming, Think Progress reports.
Thus, the company's Hay Point Services Coal Terminal, a facility that is part and parcel of the world's biggest coal port, is presently threatened by ever more frequent extreme weather manifestations.
Naturally, similar facilities that are in the business of keeping the coal industry up and running face the same risks.
Commenting on this situation, Marcus Randolph made a case of how, "As we see more cyclone-related events, the vulnerability of one of these facilities to a cyclone is quite high."
"If cyclone Yasi [a cyclone which hit Queensland in February 2011] had hit Hay Point, we would have lost that facility. So it is a recognition that as these cyclones become more severe, we need to have facilities that are more able to withstand them."
One can only assume that the irony is obvious: the coal industry fosters global warming, and global warming ends up threatening the security and the economic stability of the coal industry.
"In a carbon constrained world where energy coal is the biggest contributor to a carbon problem, how do you think this is going to evolve over a 30- to 40-year time horizon? You’d have to look at that and say on balance, I suspect, the usage of thermal coal is going to decline. And frankly it should," Marcus Randolph argued.