This year, the Australian government rejected Clive Palmer’s coal mine proposal – but approved three others. Over 100 more fossil fuel projects are in the decision pipeline.
Why are coal projects still approved, amid climate-impacts?
There is, as the International Energy Agency has pointed out, no place for new fossil fuels if we have a chance of holding global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. One of the key reasons they gave for this was that the emissions from burning the coal from a single mine will, they claim, have a “very small” impact on warming – just 0.00024 degrees Celsius over the lifetime of the mine.
New mine is same as millions of nuclear bombs of heat
Right now, Plibersek and her department are weighing up final approval for the expansion of the Mount Pleasant coal mine in New South Wales’ Hunter Valley. If approved, it would let the mine’s owners MACH Energy Australia double its extraction rate to 21 million tonnes of coal per year.
So far, the project has breezed through environmental approvals. But how can Australia’s environment minister reason that new coal mines won’t do too much damage to the climate?
Burning fossil fuels is responsible behind this
Our planet is now warming at a rate of 0.018 degrees Celsius per year.If we compare that to the department’s figure of 0.00024 degrees Celsius, we see the total warming effect from the Mount Pleasant mine would be about 1.3 per cent of one year’s global warming.
Ignorance on climate change
New fossil fuel project approvals at a time when global heating is accelerating seem like a remarkable
disconnect.
It’s for this reason we’re seeing a spike in climate lawsuits. The Environment Council of Central Queensland is taking Plibersek to court, aided by Environmental Justice Australia.
Central to their case will be the claim the minister acted unlawfully when she “refused to accept the climate harm these projects are likely to cause, as outlined in thousands of scientific reports, including from the IPCC and her own department”.
We can’t predict the outcome of the case – it could go either way. But we can predict the outcome of new fossil fuel projects.