"Isn't it amazing what this little black rock can do?" was the key slogan of the Minerals Council's notorious marketing campaign about coal's "endless possibilities".
Yet one thing the coal industry and its powerful lobby can't do is stop the momentum towards net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, as Australia's key coal customers embrace clean energy and act to try to limit the threat of global warming.
On Monday, Japan, by far Australia's biggest market for the thermal coal used in electricity generation, pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
On Wednesday, South Korea's president Moon Jae-in also formally pledged in the nation's National Assembly that the country would achieve net zero by 2050, a commitment previously flagged.
This follows China — which burns half the world's coal and produces 30 per cent of the world's CO2 emissions — committing to "carbon neutrality" by 2060. According to influential Chinese academics with the ear of the nation's leaders, this will require China's electricity system to achieve net-zero C02 emissions by 2050.
To cap it off, the Philippines — regarded by the Australian coal industry as a large potential market for expansion — announced that it is banning all new coal-fired power stations as it moves to renewable energy.
It's getting harder for coal projects to gain finance, too.
On Thursday, ANZ joined well over 100 other banks around the world in refusing to fund new coal projects, following on the heels of similar announcements by major banks in Japan.
Under ANZ's policy, it will no longer provide finance to any new customers with exposure to thermal coal in their investment portfolios of more than 10 per cent, and work with existing customers to phase out their coal investments.
The accelerated targets for emissions reduction announced by Japan, Korea, and China have big implications for Australia, the world's second-biggest producer of thermal coal, 80 per cent of which is exported.
Japan's announcement was foreshadowed three months ago when the nation's powerful Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry announced plans to shut down 100 of 114 older, more polluting coal power stations.
Japan's biggest power generation company, JERA, has put meat on the bone of this commitment by announcing it will shut down all "inefficient" thermal power stations by 2030.
The finer details underline how serious Japan appears to be about reducing carbon emissions.
JERA defined as "inefficient" anything short of "ultra-supercritical" coal power stations — the gold standard — which means even relatively modern plants built within the last 15 years will be shuttered, less than halfway through their potential operating life.
For a world facing the threat of climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels, all this is great news.
But for miners of thermal coal used in power stations, it's ominous.
Australia last year exported $17 billion of thermal coal to Japan, China, and South Korea — nearly $10 billion worth to Japan alone.
If Japan, South Korea and China are serious in their commitments, Australia will face a dramatic reduction in demand for thermal coal in coming years as Asia's economic giants could shut down coal power stations and shift to renewable energy supplemented by nuclear power and hydrogen.
How soon, it's hard to say; it depends on the pace of the transition and how Australian thermal coal exports fare against exports from other coal-producing nations.
Publicly at least, the main lobby group for the thermal coal industry in Australia is still bullish about future prospects.
The Minerals Council of Australia has released a study it commissioned from consultants which projected a 270 million tonne increase in Australian thermal coal exports this decade — but the announcements from key Asian customers rendered this out of date before it was released.
That International Energy Agency has long been regarded as pro-coal.
Releasing its latest World Energy Outlook earlier this month, IEA executive director Fatih Birol declared solar power the "new king", set to replace coal as the main source of energy for the world by the middle of this decade.
On its central scenario, the IEA forecast that coal would fall from 58 per cent of electricity generation in the Asia Pacific to just 9 per cent by 2040, with a 4.5 per cent average annual decline this decade.
And those estimates were made before the announcements by Australia's major Asian customers.
Tim Buckley observes: "What Japan, China, and Korea have committed to means that we are going to see volumes [of thermal coal exports] declining by 1, 2, 3 or 4 per cent per annum."
Coal industry insiders who spoke to the ABC on the basis of anonymity did not accept that thermal coal demand would wane in the near term but acknowledged the writing was on the wall.
"We still see demand expanding in the near term, but the peak is coming," said one.
"Whether that's 2025 or 2030, it's hard to say."
Yet no-one is preparing for the coming decline.
Not the coal industry lobby group, which continues to talk up prospects, not the Federal Government or the Opposition, who are courting the votes of coal-mining workers, and not the coal-mining union.
It's a collective denial.
Although the CFMEU mining and energy division has done considerable work on a "just transition" for power industry workers facing the inevitable closure of coal power plants, it's done very little to prepare for a transition away from thermal coal mining.
Workers in the thermal coal mines of the NSW Hunter Valley and Queensland's Bowen Basin, some of whom come from families that have worked in the mines for generations, may not want to hear about it — but the end of the industry is foreseeable.
If Australia wants to create new jobs and industries for workers bound to be displaced, now is the time to start planning and acting.
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