The best way to improve the health of Australians is for the country to rapidly reduce its reliance on coal. So why are governments doing exactly the opposite and encouraging a multi-million-dollar company to build the world’s biggest coal mine in our backyard? Scientists are constantly presenting evidence that more coal mines will intensify climate change which in turn drives extreme weather events, making it harder for humans to grow food and source fresh water. The health impacts are infinite. There are clear parallels between the coal industry and the tobacco industry.

Tobacco companies promoted their products as glamourous and desirable. The evidence that smoking was a health hazard was irrefutable, yet these multi-billlion dollar companies continued to profit.​ Now consider coal. Coal mines are a health risk for miners, workers and the communities that surround them. Pollution from the mines cause childhood asthma, heart and lung disease, and some cancers. There has also been a resurgence in black lung disease. 

Now, the fossil fuel industry is using many of the same tactics as the tobacco industry to keep us hooked. Indeed, in some cases the same PR firms used by the tobacco companies are now involved in climate denial.

Subsidising the Adani coal mine is akin to a government building a factory for a tobacco company, then providing a railway to transport the goods to market. Eventually all of us will pay – with our health.

Dr Marianne Cannon is an emergency physician.