MELBOURNE—Global regulators, banks, and investors are making ideological rather than market-based investment decisions around coal, which will still have solid demand in the coming decades, Australia’s Resources Minister Keith Pitt told Reuters on Thursday. Pitt’s National Party, a junior member of Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s governing coalition that represents many Australians in coal-producing districts, has refused to support a net-zero carbon emissions target by 2050 for the country, the world’s biggest coal exporter. The National’s position has held Morrison back from committing to attend the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow next month, where global leaders will meet to set further climate goals to follow on from the landmark 2015 Paris accord. Pitt said that record high prices for the fuel show that Australia’s second-most lucrative export should be supported and financiers and insurers that are divesting from the industry are not making decisions based on the economics. “The [financial] market …