A new International Energy Agency report finds methane emissions from Australian coalmines are more than double official government estimates.

The working family in Australia will notice this in the price of their bread, though they may not yet know why. That is where the analysis begins. When the air itself is poisoned by the greed of men who do not work with their hands, the cost of living rises, not because the wheat has grown scarce, but because the ledger has been lied to. The International Energy Agency has looked into the dark holes of the Australian earth and found that the methane coming out of them is twice as great as the government claims. This is not a matter of scientific debate. It is a matter of theft. The government has stolen the truth from the people, and in doing so, it has stolen the future from the children who will have to pay for the damage.

Let us strip away the fancy words. The officials speak of “estimates” and “projections.” These are soft words, like wool, designed to cushion the blow of a lie. In plain English, an estimate that is half the size of the truth is a fraud. The coalmining industry, which profits from digging up the earth and selling it to the highest bidder, has allowed the government to undercount the poison they release. Methane is a heavy gas. It traps heat. It warms the world. When the world warms, the rains come too hard or not at all. The crops fail. The bread costs more. The labourer’s wage, which is already stretched thin, must now buy less food. This is the chain of cause and effect that the politicians ignore. They look at the balance sheet of the mine and see profit. They do not look at the balance sheet of the farmer, whose fields are drying up, or the labourer, whose loaf is shrinking.

I have ridden through many lands, and I have seen how the powerful fence off the common good for their own use. In England, they fenced the land. In Australia, they are fencing the air. They claim the right to pollute without counting the cost, just as the landlord claimed the right to the pasture without paying for the grass. The International Energy Agency has done what the government refuses to do: it has gone and looked. It has counted the emissions. And it has found that the official story is a fiction. The government says the emissions are small. The evidence says they are large. The government serves the miners. The Agency serves the truth.

Who profits from this lie? The coalmining industry profits. They sell their product at a price that does not include the cost of the damage they cause. If the true cost of the methane were included in the price of coal, the fuel would be too expensive to burn. The mines would close. The workers would lose their jobs, yes, but they would lose them to a cleaner world, not to a poisoned one. But the government does not want the mines to close. The government wants the votes of the men who work in the mines, and the money of the men who own them. So they lie. They say the emissions are small, so that the mines can stay open, so that the profits can flow, so that the politicians can keep their seats.

This is the same old story. The rich man says, “Let me dig up the earth and sell it, and I will give you a job.” The poor man says, “Thank you, sir.” But the rich man does not tell you that the digging poisons the air, and that the poison will make your bread cost more than your wages can buy. He does not tell you that the “job” is a trap. It is a trap that feeds you today so that you can starve tomorrow. The government is the gatekeeper of this trap. It holds the key, but it refuses to turn it. It prefers the comfort of the present to the safety of the future.

The stakes are not abstract. They are not about “climate targets” or “international agreements.” They are about the table. When the climate breaks, the harvest fails. When the harvest fails, the price of bread rises. When the price of bread rises, the labourer goes hungry. The government’s lie is not just a mistake. It is a weapon. It is a weapon used against the poor, who have no voice in the mines and no power in the parliament. They are told to wait, to hope, to trust the estimates. But the estimates are wrong. The air is thick with the lies of the powerful.

We must go and look. We must not trust the report. We must trust the eyes. The eyes see the smoke. The eyes see the dry fields. The eyes see the empty pockets of the working man. The government sees only the gold in the mine. And so the government is blind. It is blind to the suffering of the people it claims to serve. It is blind to the truth of the world it claims to protect. The International Energy Agency has opened its eyes. It has seen the double portion of poison. Now it is up to the people to see it too. They must demand that the government tell the truth. They must demand that the cost of the poison be paid by those who make it, not by those who breathe it.

The image is clear. The mine is a mouth, wide open, swallowing the earth and spitting out poison. The government is the hand that covers the mouth, pretending it is silent. The working family is the child standing nearby, breathing the air, wondering why the bread is so dear. The child does not need a lecture on economics. The child needs clean air and cheap bread. The government has failed to provide either. It has chosen the mine over the child. And in that choice, it has shown its true character. It is not a servant of the people. It is a servant of the profit. And profit, when it is built on a lie, is a house built on sand. The tide is coming in. The sand is washing away. The house will fall. And the child will be left standing in the water, with nothing but the truth to hold onto.