13 PAYING FOR THE PAST

Far back in my family tree were people who introduced coking coal to Australia. My first real job was in the Australian steel industry, which depends on coal. I appreciate my ancestors and the marvels coal has given the world, but it is time to stop using it—for both economic and environmental reasons. Incidentally, I have ancestors on my other parent's side who helped build all of the lighthouses in Ireland, another technology that gave us the modern world, but one that is largely unnecessary now that we have GPS and better maps. The future is here, and the cheapest generation sources are renewables. I have a lot to thank my ancestors for, but we can't afford nostalgia as we figure out how to address climate change.