Dirty coal to dirty politics: everything is connected through a malformed political economy | David Ritter

The life of our reef is intimately linked to the health of our politics and the future of our communities. Coal has no role to play

• David Ritter is chief executive of Greenpeace Australia Pacific

Ten years ago, David Simon's iconic TV series The Wire portrayed contemporary Baltimore as wracked by illegal drug use, violent crime and failing institutions. But underneath the symptoms were the structures of political economy. As the show's tagline had it, "everything is connected". Simons explained that the show was intended to depict "a world in which capital has triumphed completely, labour has been marginalised and moneyed interests have purchased enough political infrastructure to prevent reform."

A world away and the idea that everything is connected through a malformed political economy is also central to Anna Krien's recent Quarterly Essay, The Long Goodbye. Coal, Coral and Australia's Climate Deadlock. In Krien's Australia, it is the power of the coal industry that is the fundamental problem.