The federal environment minister, Greg Hunt, has said Australians “should be proud” of the government’s effort in tackling climate change despite his rubber-stamping of one of the world’s largest coalmines.
On Thursday, Hunt approved Adani’s $16.5bn Carmichael mine and rail project, which will extract up to 60m tonnes of coal a year from the Galilee Basin region of central Queensland. It is the second time Hunt has approved the mine after his previous decision was invalidated because he had not considered its impact on two vulnerable reptile species.
The decision to approve the mine has been labelled “grossly irresponsible” by environmentalists who claim its coal will accelerate climate change, threaten groundwater supplies and endanger the Great Barrier Reef through increased shipping and exacerbated ocean acidification and warming.
But Hunt has defended his approval, saying a rejection of the project due to climate concerns would have been reversed by the courts.
“The advice was clear, categorical and absolute from the department of environment,” he said. “That on the matters of national environmental significance (NES), this project, which is 300km inland, remote outback, dry, dusty, clearly meets the matters of NES.
“The law describes and absolutely sets out the terms I’m entitled and allowed to assess. Any other decision would have been invalidated by a court. The federal environment act works like a judge’s court list, you don’t get to choose what comes before you.”
Hunt dismissed the suggestion that Australia’s backing of a mine that will cause 128m tonnes of carbon dioxide to be emitted – more than the entire emissions of New Zealand and nearly three times the emissions abated by the Coalition’s Direct Action auction in April – would cause consternation overseas.
Anote Tong, the president of Kiribati, a low-lying Pacific nation vulnerable to sea-level rises, has called Australia’s embrace of coal “selfish”.
Meanwhile, the powerful G7 group of nations has committed to phasing out fossil fuels by the end of the century and BP’s chief economist admitted this week that most of the world’s oil would have to stay in the ground to avoid dangerous climate change.
Hunt would not commit to a similar phase-out and said other countries have been pleased by Australia’s efforts, including its recent pledge to cut greenhouse gases by 26%-28% by 2030, based on 2005 levels.
“All the planet knows is the total volume of emissions, it doesn’t know the source of it, the type of it,” he said. “I’ve had many frank discussions with colleagues in this space, I think they have been delighted and pleasantly surprised by the ... 26 to 28% reduction which is the highest per capita reduction in the world.
“Australians should be proud. Some of those who want to denounce our own country might want to reflect that we are one of the few countries to have met our Kyoto 1 targets. We will meet and beat our Kyoto 2 targets despite many pundits on the left having said that will never happen.
“We now take a third round of targets that are the best in the G20, the best of any comparable developed country on a per capita basis. That’s something that Australians should be proud of and the world has been pleasantly surprised and delighted by.”
Hunt said the government still backed restrictions on groups mounting legal challenges to mining projects – a practice denounced as “lawfare” under Tony Abbott’s prime ministership – but that he was “realistic that it’s unlikely to pass the Senate”. Aboriginal leaders still plan a separate challenge to the Carmichael mine.
A total of 36 conditions have been placed upon the project, including restrictions on water-level loss and compensatory habitat for the razed homes of the yakka skink and ornamental snake.
The largest of these habitat offsets is 31,000 hectares that must be found for the threatened black-throated finch, which faces losing one of its two remaining major areas of habitat.
April Reside, part of the government’s black-throated finch recovery team, said the mine was likely to push the bird towards extinction.
“Losing this rich habitat would be a major blow to the chances of this species persisting,” she said. “The offset habitat proposed by the Indian owner, Adani, is of poorer quality and cannot reliably be enhanced to provide the special food and habitat the birds require to survive.”
Hunt also announced that the government would provide $30m to the City of Melbourne to make street lights more energy efficient. About 16,000 lights will be replaced by longer-lasting, more efficient LED bulbs.
The lighting upgrade will help central Melbourne save 110,000 tones of carbon dioxide emissions over 10 years – about 0.08% of the Carmichael mine’s emissions from a single year at capacity.
Hunt said the lighting initiative was the “right thing by the planet and right thing by the residents of Melbourne”.
The funding for the lights will be provided by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation, a body the government wishes to scrap. But Hunt said that due to opposition to the abolition in the Senate, the CEFC would “be with us for a long while”.
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