At the beginning of last week, as a Palerang Councillor, I attended the National General Assembly of Local Government conference in Canberra. One of the themes for this year was climate change and the consequences for local government of its effects.

Many seaside shire delegates spoke up about their experience with rising sea levels and increasingly severe storm events. The predictions for ever-increasing high tides have their rate-payers understandably frightened.

Professor Will Steffen from the ANU Climate Change Institute made it quite clear to delegates that climate change is happening and is anthropogenic, that is, the result of ‘human induced activities’. This, of course, is polite-speak meaning we’re burning too much fossil fuel.

As many commentators have pointed out, Australia's contribution to these ‘activities’, although hefty per capita, is quite small compared to the rest of the world. That is why there is little we can do to at the local government level to address the challenge of rising sea levels on our coastal communities.

The damage to the environment is mostly occurring overseas. Australia’s main responsibility for climate change lies with the amount of coal we export. We are one of the world’s largest exporters of coal and the biggest exporter to China.

Our best course of action then, is to demand that the Federal government apply the same conditioning safeguards to the export of coal as it applies to uranium. We have always accepted that waste from the nuclear fuel cycle is hazardous to the environment and must be safely stored.

The coal industry is resisting all calls for any reduction in the use of its product for electricity generation with the claim that carbon capture and storage will enable it to safely store its waste and thereby make coal a ‘clean’ fuel. Australia could have a leading role in containing, then hopefully reversing, the disastrous effects of climate change by insisting that the end users of our coal have updated their infrastructure to include modern, demonstrably workable carbon capture and storage technology.

As a contribution to the health of the planet this will have a far greater beneficial effect than the eventual reduction we make in our own emissions.

Most of the world's electricity is made from burning coal so the industry is in no danger of sudden economic hardship or loss of jobs. But we must reduce carbon emissions and the coal industry has to prove that carbon capture and storage is more than just a pipe dream.

If Australia plans to export ever more coal each year, as the multi-national coal companies are lobbying governments to allow, our best scientific advice tells us that the atmosphere is doomed. Hopefully, sensible people will insist of their elected representatives at all levels of government that we stop this selfish pandering to profit.

If they don't, coastal councils around Australia may as well advise their rate-payers to give up the beaches and move to higher ground.