No anti-coal crusader is likely to wake up tomorrow and acknowledge the error of his views but in time a Great Dawning will occur because the current attacks on coal are based on two incorrect propositions.

Firstly, that the pressure being felt in the coal industry is a result of their campaigns to kill coal mining and secondly that the campaigns against coal will limit the worldwide use of coal.

The net result of those facts is that global coal production is not falling, it’s rising – with most of the increase occurring in places far beyond the reach of anti-coal campaigns and of the most polluting types of coal.

In time, as unlikely as it sounds, there might even be a push to encourage coal production in countries that produce the highest quality material, hopefully limiting the output of brown coal, which dominates production in Eastern Europe and parts of China.

At this point The Hog should explain what might seem like a bizarre flight of imagination, starting with the point about pressure on the coal industry having a little to do with government regulation and a lot to do with price.

The key problem confronting the coal industry today is that it has been too successful in discovering and developing new deposits with rising production swamping demand leading to a sharp fall in prices.

Significantly, demand itself is also rising (which totally negates the claims of coal’s critics) it is simply a case of rising supply outstripping rising demand leading to a situation of the cheapest coal winning the day which, in turn, means that the winner is often the poorest quality and most polluting coal.

The second part of this thesis, which leads to the Great Irony, or Great Delusion to give it a better name, is that opposition to coal mining in a handful of advanced western countries such as Australia, Canada and the US is going to have the slightest effect on coal production in third world countries such as India, Indonesia or Mozambique.

Quite simply, as price pressures bear down on coal producers in countries that do have strong laws in regard to coal quality and environmental protection, the slack is taken up by countries with few laws and minimal environmental protection.

Total worldwide coal output is not being affected in any way by attempts to limit production in the western world because the industry itself is migrating to places where it is more welcome.

This is the Great Delusion of the anti-coal campaigners. They are merely playing a part in slowing the production of high-quality, low-pollution coal and encouraging the output of low-quality, high-pollution coal in other countries.

Proof of The Hog’ theory can be found in a number of places including the latest statistical review by the big oil company, BP.

Widely regarded as the world’s best analysis of the global energy industry, the latest BP review found that coal’s share of the total energy market was at its highest level in 40 years in 2013 thanks to a 3% rise in consumption by industry desperate for a reliable supply of power.

Not only was coal use at a 40-year high but it surged past a 30% total energy market share for the first time since 1970.

So much for the success of the anti-coal crusaders who have not only achieved nothing for their cause, they might even have helped boost the case for coal by encouraging output in countries where there are few government controls on quality.

To more completely understand what’s happening it is interesting to look at how entire industries can migrate when pricing pressure and excess government regulation is applied.

Up until the 1970s Japan was one of the world’s major producers of aluminium, a heavy user of electricity.

High power costs and pressure from the Japanese government caused that country’s aluminium industry to mothball most of its production capacity, though the net result was not the loss of an industry, it simply moved elsewhere, to more welcoming countries such as Canada and Australia.

History is repeating with coal as it is demonised at a political level in parts of the western world with production not slowing (as BP demonstrated it is actually rising) but merely migrating to places where it can flourish.

This then is the Great Delusion, or Great Irony, of the anti-coal crusade. It is not influencing world coal production, merely playing a part in helping it to shift to places where it can flourish.