Australia's Labor government clears first new coal mine

Australia's center-left Labor government on Friday said it will approve a new coal mine for the first time since it took power approximately a year ago. 

The Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water notified a proposed approval of the Bowen Coking Coal's Isaac River mine project in Queensland to extract metallurgical coal for a period of five years. 

Despite being a relatively small scale mine, the Albanese government's first such approval comes after the party campaigned, among other things, as the more climate-friendly alternative to the center-right Liberal Party. 

"The Albanese government has to make decisions in accordance with the facts and the national environment law — that's what happens on every project, and that's what's happened here," a spokesperson for Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said.

They said the government would continue to weigh projects on a case-by-base basis and also said, "since the election we've doubled renewable energy approvals to a record high."

In March, the government passed a breakthrough climate law that targets greenhouse gas emissions, after what it called "10 years of denial and delay and inaction."

Critics disappointed

Bowen Coking Coal welcomed the decision. "We're here to meet the growing demand for energy and steelmaking coal," said executive chairman Nick Jorss.

NGO Human Rights Watch's Senior Australian Researcher Sophie McNeill called the news "deeply disappointing" and said that Plibersek had "failed to uphold her human rights obligations to stop new fossil fuel projects. " 

The Australian Conservation Foundation said green-lighting the project ignored climate science. "The world's climate scientists have all been crystal clear for years that we must immediately stop digging up and burning coal if we want a safe climate," said Gavan McFadzean, a member of the foundation.

"Wherever in the world our coal and gas is burnt, it makes climate damage in Australia worse. More flooding, longer heatwaves, worse bushfires."

Metals, minerals, fuels dominate Australian exports

Labor had never pledged to stop Australia's coal or mining industries and even the notion that it could seems fanciful.

The industries are a core component of resource-rich Australia's economy, particularly its exports, with its nearest giant trading partner China largely uninterested in Australia's English-speaking services sector but most keen on its metals, fuels and food. 

Australia led the world in coal exports in 2021, with much of it bound for China. Trade Minister Don Farrell was visiting Beijing on Friday. 

According to recent Foreign Ministry figures, seven of Australia's 10 top export products are either metals or fossil fuels — iron ore, coal, natural gas, gold, aluminium, copper, and crude petroleum, in that order. Only beef, wheat and "education-related travel services" break into the top 10 along with them. 

The country is usually ranked as having the some of the highest per capita CO2 emissions on the planet, partly because mineral extraction can be energy intensive, as can agriculture, its other main export industry. 

But it's also at the forefront of some of the effects of climate change. Heavy storms and bushfires have beset the country in the recent years. In July 2022, more than 30,000 Sydney residents had to leave their homes amid floods. A few months before that, severe storms along Australia's east coast devastated the region and killed at least 20.

Dubbed the "Black Summer" bushfires, flames raged in Australia from late 2019 and continued into 2020, killing at least 33 people, over 500 million animals, and burning through 12 million hectares of land.

mk/msh (AFP, AP)