It seems an industry that has underwritten the wealth of New South Wales and Queensland for decades and is Australia's second largest export has become persona non grata among the hoi polloi in the corridors of power.
Is Australia supposed to tug the forelock to the world's major powers and reverentially follow the climate change dogma by ditching our coal mining industry?
The United Nations climate change conference in November is shaping up as the big kahuna of climate change conferences and apparently Australia is expected to fall in line with everyone else that counts.
US President Joe Biden, the UN, and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development - these days headed by our own Mathias Cormann - wants us to follow it in dismantling coal-fired power and basically getting us to abandon our coal industry.
Are these holier-than-thou individuals and bodies going to replace the $40 billion in coal export income Australia each year?
If anyone should know its worth to Australia, it's former finance minister Cormann.
The messages from Biden and his ilk are sounding like taunts from a schoolyard bully: "Do what we say or you won't be our friend and we won't play with you".
This is despite many of these countries reaching their stage of global supremacy and wealth through burning coal and other carbon fuels.
Former resources minister Matthew Canavan told The Australian that the US move reflected "a new form for carbon imperialism … They are seeking to tell poorer countries what to do - just as they did in colonial times.
"The hypocrisy is nauseating, given all of these countries became rich through the use of coal."
Australia's sovereignty must count for something - even among our so-called "friends".
Ironically, Australia's contribution to combatting climate change would be greater if it continued to mine and export its high-quality coal.
High calorific coal from Australia - which is in high demand from developing Asian economies - is much better for the environment than coal from Indonesia, India, and elsewhere.
At least in Australia we have high environmental standards, a reasonable degree of safety, and proper governance of coal mining and the rehabilitation afterwards.
The same could not be said of many of the places where coal would be sourced if the Australian government buckled to pressure from the US, the OECD, and the UN to shutter its world class mining industry.
However, this argument would probably be too nuanced and involve too much common sense for the global potentates that run the world and don't want disagreement from a troublesome little nation in the South Pacific such as Australia.
Hogsback reckons if Australia's coal industry manages to survive and prosper despite these geopolitical and ideological based obstacles it will be nothing short of a miracle.
