CANBERRA, Australia — Australia has for the primary time rejected a coal mining utility primarily based on environmental regulation.
The federal government is underneath strain to curb local weather change by blocking all new coal and gasoline extraction tasks. Australia is among the world’s largest exporters of each fossil fuels, that are main sources of the nation’s wealth. However Setting Minister Tanya Plibersek mentioned Thursday she would determine particular person tasks on their deserves.
“I will make each decision that comes before me on a case-by-case basis according to the law and according to the science that is available,” Plibersek advised Parliament.
On Wednesday, she introduced her choice to stop the Central Queensland Coal Venture from being excavated northwest of the Queensland state city of Rockhampton and fewer than 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the Nice Barrier Reef off the northeast Australian coast.
The mission would have had unacceptable impacts on recent water within the space and probably on fragile seagrass meadows that feed dugongs and supply fish breeding grounds, she mentioned.
The open-pit mine has an estimated excavation capability of 10 million metric tons (11 million U.S. tons) of coal yearly for 25 years.
Plibersek mentioned the danger of “pollution and irreversible damage to the reef is very real.”
“The Great Barrier Reef is responsible for about 6 billion Australian dollars’ ($4.2 billion) worth of economic activity every year, about 64,000 jobs,” Plibersek mentioned. “Given the science before me, it became apparent that the risks were simply too great.”
The mine was proposed by mining magnate Clive Palmer, who based and funds the minor conservative United Australia Get together.
Central Queensland Coal, a subsidiary of Palmer’s Mineralogy, didn’t instantly reply Thursday to a request for remark.
A United Nations-backed mission beneficial in November that the Nice Barrier Reef be added to the listing of endangered World Heritage websites, warning that with out “ambitious, rapid and sustained” local weather motion, the world’s largest coral reef was in peril.
Whereas warming oceans was the best menace to the community of greater than 2,500 reefs overlaying 348,000 sq. kilometers (134,000 sq. miles), water high quality and runoff from the Queensland coast had been additionally dangers.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor Get together authorities has elevated Australia’s ambition for decreasing the nation’s greenhouse gasoline emissions because it was elected final 12 months.
The Parliament enshrined in regulation Labor’s election pledge to scale back Australia’s greenhouse gasoline emissions by 43% beneath 2005 ranges by 2030. The earlier conservative authorities had a extra modest goal to scale back emissions by between 26% and 28% by the top of the last decade.
Labor has relied on the minor Greens get together’s 12 senators to get laws by means of the higher chamber.
The Greens, who misplaced a senator this week when Sen. Lidia Thorpe grew to become an unbiased, need Australia to slash emissions by 75% by 2030 and are pressuring the federal government to ban any additional coal and gasoline tasks.
The federal government faces one other contentious vitality business choice when it considers extending an offshore gasoline exploration license off Sydney’s northern seashores.
In late 2021, the earlier conservative authorities rejected a two-year extension of the PEP-11 drilling license within the face of fierce neighborhood opposition solely months earlier than an election. The mission proponent Asset Vitality took the federal government to courtroom. However that courtroom motion has ended final week with Albanese’s authorities agreeing to reassess the earlier authorities’s choice.
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