Concerns don’t really come into it, since people will do the least required of them by local legislation. If foreign companies can damage land and water without penalty, local companies can do so, which means our regulations haven’t caught up yet with latest practices. I agree we must better protect our surroundings, but lobbying the government with a well-constructed case for environmental protection around mining could be more productive than simply expressing your xenophobia.

How do you know that China’s coal consumption has peaked? It’s only been a two-year decline of 3.5%. Sounds like wishful thinking.

Consider why you want our use to decline: to fight climate change. By eliminating our entire annual consumption of coal (if you could) you wouldn’t make any difference to the climate, you’d just raise the price of electricity even more than before the ETS. Why put our economically disadvantaged citizens deeper into poverty for a literally useless gesture?

the coal industry in China has been in decline in recent years

This is nothing to get excited about. Let’s put it into context: according to Statista, coal production in China declined slightly in each of the last two years, so production in 2015 was 3.6% lower than 2013. Hardly earth-shaking, and two years hardly sets a trend. But note this: the decline amounts to 96.6 million tonnes of coal—about 24 times what New Zealand produced in 2014.

This suggests perhaps the pointlessness of campaigning against our minuscule coal industry. The two countries stand in stark contrast: China produced 2610 million tonnes of coal in 2015. That means it produced what takes us a year in about 14 hours. About half a day. Does the word ‘hubris’ occur to anyone? What about ‘futile’? Never mind the virtuous example we’d like to set (not that anyone will notice), China is escaping poverty.

China is the rabbit and we are the lion. When the rabbit was asked how he managed to escape the lion, he explained he was running for his life; the lion was only running for his lunch.