Greg Hunt's approval of Adani's Queensland mine upheld by federal court

(Climate change is both a global and wicked problem. It has been unequivocally demonstrated that fossil fuels, wherever they are from, and their subsequent burning is having a disastrous impact of the world’s climate system and so each country that extracts a fossil fuel, whatever it might be, has a moral and ethical responsibility to halt that extraction and restructure their economies to deal with the necessary and ultimately unavoidable changes. Carbon pollution and the damage it brings to the Great Barrier Reef is most certainly not “speculative” whatever former Environment Minster, Greg Hunt, might say – Robert McLean.)

The federal court has upheld the commonwealth approval of Adani’s Queensland mine, ruling that former environment minister Greg Hunt was entitled to find any assessment of resulting carbon pollution on the Great Barrier Reef was “speculative”.

The court on Monday dismissed a challenge by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), which claimed Hunt failed to consider the impacts of the mine’s 4.6bn tonnes of emissions on the world heritage values of the reef.

The ruling prompted the ACF to call for tougher national environment laws to tackle carbon pollution from coalmines, while flagging hopes that Hunt’s successor, Josh Frydenberg, would take a “fresh look” at the Carmichael mine.

The Queensland resources council accused the ACF of running a “nonsense case” that was akin to holding the Saudi Arabian government responsible for emissions from Australian cars running on their oil.

After the decision the head of the Queensland Conservation Council, Tim Seelig, said it was time for Australia to “stop exporting climate change”.

ACF

Read The Guardian story - “Greg Hunt's approval of Adani's Queensland mine upheld by federal court.”