Oh, Brah-Fucking-Vo: 3rd New Coal Mine In 1 Month Approved in Australia; 52 Million Tons' Worth
The Morrison government has been accused of demonstrating it is not taking the climate crisis seriously after approving a third new coalmine development in a month shortly before a major international conference on the issue. With global climate talks in Glasgow less than four weeks away, the environment minister, Sussan Ley, has given a subsidiary of the mining giant Glencore the green light to expand the Mangoola mine near Muswellbrook.
It means the company can create a new coal pit north of an existing mine to extract of an additional 52m tonnes of the fossil fuel over eight years. The mine had been approved by the NSW Independent Planning Commission in April, less than a month before a state byelection in the Upper Hunter in which the future of the coal industry was a prominent issue.
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In a published statement of reasons for her decision, Ley said she had considered the findings of a federal court case – known as the Sharma case – which found she had a duty of care to protect young people from the climate crisis. She repeated an explanation she gave for her approval of the Vickery mine extension near Gunnedah and the expansion of underground mining at the Russell Vale Colliery near Wollongong.
Ley wrote that she had accepted advice from her department that the Mangoola development was “not likely to cause harm to human safety because, if the proposed action is not approved, there is no reason to believe that a comparable amount of coal would not be consumed in substitution of the proposed action’s coal”. “Therefore, I considered that the proposed action will not necessarily result in an increase to global GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions,” she said.
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Ed. - Yeah, sure Susan, whatfuckingever.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/oct/05/new-coalmine-mangoola-nsw-muswellbrook-approved-australia-environment-minister-sussan-ley
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