This person was not in the coal industry, or indeed, in any mining related industry at all but they along with many other goods and services providers were expecting a bonanza from the project.

That, I realised there and then, was what "Adani" meant.

It had little or nothing to do with coal and everything to do with some large scale construction project that would spill over into the general economy, as a rising tide lifts all boats.

It could easily be a major government-funded solar power project, or a dam or some other infrastructure that would have lasting benefits into the tens if not hundreds of years without the problematic damage the coal industry causes to our environment including the Great Artesian Basin and the Great Barrier Reef, the former which is crucial for our agriculture and the latter which Townsville and other cities along the coast are even more dependent on than mining.

In the article above, Professor Ross Garnaut articulately lays out the reasons why Australia should aggressively seek to become a carbon-free economy,

Prof Garnaut is no hippie greenie tree hugger. He is a distinguished economist who is looking at this problem almost exclusively in cold, hard economic terms.

He know the cost of inaction on climate change will far exceed the cost of action.

Of course politicians must listen to the views of those in regional Australia where the mining jobs are.

But there must be a clear-eyed honesty about the shelf life of those jobs as the use of coal contracts across the world.

And we must also be honest about the desire of those mining companies to replace humans with robots whereever possible in those jobs.

Building new coal-fired electricity plants is short-term thinking at its worst and will most likely become a white elephant even before it is commissioned.

Far better to use taxpayer money on something that will outlast us all.

There is a short-term pain in taxing carbon but that will pale into insignificance compared to the problems our descendants will face in the coming decades as our climate becomes more erratic.

We cannot bury our heads in the sand, or listen to the loud but deluded voices of self-interested deniers of what the science is telling us.

We owe it to those that follow us to act now.