Once you grasp the significance of users queuing up to buy coal to power their industries and light their homes it’s a simple step to a number of other conclusions, such as:

• Why do anti-coal protestors only target coal miners and not coal consumers in Asia?

• If Australia didn’t supply its coal would another country fill the gap? And,

• In any legal dispute involving a disputed substance who is the guiltier, the user or the provider?

There is actually a fourth issue to consider and that’s the legal position of a prostitute and her/his client. Is the provider of the service guiltier than the buyer of the service?

Leaving prostitution aside because a discussion about the rights and wrongs of that thorny issue might cloud the debate which boils down to this: why attack only the vendor and not the customer in any business arrangement.

What sent The Hog down this philosophical pathway where two recent events involving an Australian business leader and an Australian political leader.

The businessman was the chairman of BHP Billiton, Jacques Nasser, a formidable chap who appears to be an ultra-suave gentleman but one who also seems always willing to mix it, bare-knuckle style, with the roughest opponent.

The politician was the new Prime Minister of Australia, Malcolm Turnbull, who not only surprised some people with his remarkably common-sense comments on coal but staked out a position which is of great comfort to the coal-mining industry.

What Nasser said was in response to questions at the London leg of BHP Billiton’s annual meeting when asked why the company was developing the Haju coalmine in Indonesia.

Simple, said Nasser: “The Indonesia Government wants the resource developed and if we were to leave, our leases would be handed to another company.”

Bingo! If it isn’t to be BHP Billiton mining Haju it would indeed be someone else and while The Hog doesn’t want to sound judgmental he reckons that BHP Billiton would be a more careful miner, with greater consideration for the environment of Indonesia than just about any other company.

What Nasser did not say, but could have, is if the coal protestors have a problem with mining at Haju take it up with the government of Indonesia – which they might, and would certainly cop a lecture on how an emerging country has a right to develop its economy in the same way the western world developed, or is it a case of one rule for the west and another for the east?

Turnbull, who is proving to be as slick as the original silver budgie, the unforgettable Bob Hawke, took a similar tack as Nasser pointing out that if Australia stopped delivering its annual 250 million tonnes of coal there would be considerable repercussions.

Not only would Australia suffer accusations of being a risk to investors but it would also be branded an unreliable trading partner, and that’s before considering the impact on the price of coal which would surge, jeopardizing the economies of coal-consuming countries.

What’s worse is that in a fairly short space of time Australia’s coal would be replaced by lower grade and more heavily polluting material from somewhere else.

Both Nasser and Turnbull have come close to addressing that first question in today’s thoughts from The Hog: why don’t anti-coal protestors take their campaigns to coal-consuming countries?

It’s a pity that both men stopped short of nailing the issue because what the protestors need to understand is that coal is playing a crucial role in lifting the living standards of poor countries which cannot afford alternative sources of power.

Whether there is a moral question in the coal debate is another issue though there is an obligation on Australia to remain a cost-effective supplier of fuel because any replacement would not only be more polluting it would be more expansive.

The real issue in what’s going on today is the question of every business relationship having two sides; the buyer and the supplier, and while it might be convenient to blame the supplier there is a second aspect to the situation and that’s the demand of the buyer.

If that sounds like a chicken and egg scenario and worrying about which came first then that’s because it is.

Quite simply the world would not have a coal industry if coal was not wanted – which it is.