The Bowen Basin in Central Queensland is one of the most active coal mining regions in Australia. Coal mining is highly lucrative and a major contributor to the Australian economy. However, that industry is also responsible for many social and environmental impacts, including air and water pollution, soil erosion, destruction of biodiversity, health-related issues and reduced community cohesion in mining areas. With pressing issues like climate change requiring an energy transition and the danger posed to the Australian economy by an over-reliance on coal exports, the decision to support that industry becomes increasingly questionable. In this study, we compare coal mining, livestock grazing and nature conservation expansion scenarios in the Bowen Basin over a 31-year period. We conduct a hybrid cost-benefit analysis, combining primary data and semi-quantitative weightings constructed from a social impact risk matrix. We estimate the net public benefits of each land use option, and the externalities that they may generate. When solely considering the economic benefits of each scenario, coal mining is by far the better option, generating 10 to 14 times more benefits than grazing and 800 to 3000 times more benefits than nature conservation. However, when including the costs of negative externalities, we find that the net present value of coal mining becomes negative (-$538 to -$690 billion on average), while grazing ($2.84 to $2.85 billion) and nature conservation ($16.35 to $79.29 million) remain positive. Therefore, this study contributes to the much-needed literature that can help demonstrate the many impacts of coal mining and the long-term risks that industry may pose to local communities in regional areas of Australia.

昆士兰中部的鲍文盆地是澳大利亚最活跃的煤矿开采区之一。煤炭开采利润丰厚，是澳大利亚经济的主要贡献者。但是，该行业还造成许多社会和环境影响，包括空气和水污染，土壤侵蚀，生物多样性遭到破坏，与健康有关的问题以及矿区社区凝聚力的下降。随着诸如气候变化等紧迫的问题需要能源转换，以及过度依赖煤炭出口给澳大利亚经济带来的危险，支持该行业的决定变得越来越成问题。在这项研究中，我们比较了博恩盆地31年的采煤，放牧和自然保护扩展情景。我们进行混合成本效益分析，结合原始数据和根据社会影响风险矩阵构建的半定量权重。我们估计每种土地使用方案的净公共利益，以及它们可能产生的外部性。仅考虑每种情况的经济效益，到目前为止，煤矿开采是更好的选择，其收益是放牧的10到14倍，自然保护的收益是800到3000倍。但是，如果将负外部性的成本包括在内，我们发现煤炭开采的净现值为负（平均为538美元至-6900亿美元），而放牧（2.84美元至28.5亿美元）和自然保护（16.35美元至7929万美元）。保持积极。所以，