Coal is part of the solution in transition to new energy sources

If activists put a clamp on coal worldwide then the outlook for poorer economies is catastrophic.

Power provides water and sanitation. Lack of clean water and sewerage are the greatest causes of mortality in the world.

Electricity also allows people to cook safely inside. If they don't have electric power, they burn wood, or dung, which emit particulates, causing pollution and ultimately deaths from lung cancer and other respiratory diseases.

There will be spin-off impacts for children, women and the environment. As countries get richer, women's status tends to improve, children are spared from work and gain education and the environment improves.

Richer societies have the resources to be able to afford to care.

CO2 also brings direct environmental benefits. Additional warmth allows more land to be cultivated and additional CO2 increases plant growth. This is a good thing with the world's population currently 7.4 billion, and heading towards something like 11 billion by 2100. People need to be fed.

Indeed, the net cost of limiting additional CO2 in the atmosphere is open to debate with recent calculations by newly minted Nobel Laureate, William Nordhaus, suggesting the cost  is impossibly high.

Then there is the damage that activists potentially do by forcing wind and solar on us. These are ancillary technologies that can't produce baseload at a reasonable cost. Apart from fossil fuels, the only fuel we know of that can is nuclear. But that has been ruled out.

Climate change is what economists call a "wicked" problem. Solutions are not simple, and unintended consequences are numerous. It won't be solved by chanting slogans, and it certainly won't be solved by stopping Adani.

Those who think it will are ethical impostors.