Newcastle grasps what Tony Abbott cannot – coal's time has passed | Bill McKibben

It may once have been a coal town, but Newcastle's fossil fuel divestment could come to be seen as the turning point towards a low-carbon future

The news last week that the Newcastle city council had voted to divest from fossil fuel stocks was one of those signposts that historians will some day cite to mark the greatest economic transition in human history.

A young councillor, Declan Clausen, was able to grasp the truth that eludes the Australian federal government, and indeed so many world leaders: coal - and oil and gas - are not the future, and they're barely the present. We're suddenly, and decisively, in a one-way transition to a renewable future, and the only question - perhaps the most important question humans have ever faced - is whether we can make that transition fast enough to save the planet.