Rocky Hill mine plans quashed in Land and Environment Court

A new coal mine near Gloucester on the NSW mid-north coast has been refused by the Chief Justice of the Land and Environment Court, who ruled the development would increase greenhouse gas emissions at time when they urgently need to be cut.

Members of the community group Gloucester Groundswell attended the hearing.

Gloucester Resources Limited took the NSW Planning Minister to court over the matter after his delegate, the Independent Planning Commission, rejected the company's application for the Rocky Hill mine in late 2017.

The company argued the development would have created 170 jobs, with the mine expected to produce 21 million tonnes of coal over 16 years.

Read the ABC News story by Meredith Griffiths - “Rocky Hill mine plans quashed in Land and Environment Court.”

Supreme Court refuses to block young people’s climate lawsuit against U.S. government

The Supreme Court on Friday night refused to halt a novel lawsuit filed by young Americans that attempts to force the federal government to take action on climate change, turning down a request from the Trump administration to stop it before trial.

Willamette University student Arabella Wood, right,
rallies with others in Eugene, Ore., on Oct. 29, 2018,
to support a climate change lawsuit brought by 21
young people against the federal government in 2015.
On Nov. 2, the U.S. Supreme Court refused a federal
government request to disallow the lawsuit.

The suit, filed in 2015 by 21 young people who argue that the failure of government leaders to combat climate change violates their constitutional right to a clean environment, is before a federal judge in Oregon. It had been delayed while the Supreme Court considered the emergency request from the government.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch would have stopped the suit. The other justices did not indicate how they voted on the government’s request.

Read The Washington Post story by Robert Barnes and Brady Dennis - “Supreme Court refuses to block young people’s climate lawsuit against U.S. government.”

Leaked documents show reef charity directors 'unavailable' for Senate scrutiny

Nicole Hasham.

Three directors of a Great Barrier Reef charity entrusted with almost half a billion dollars in public money have refused to give evidence to a Senate inquiry scrutinising the controversial deal, raising the prospect they will be forced to appear.

Confidential Senate committee documents seen by Fairfax Media show that despite being offered five dates at which to attend the inquiry, the directors of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation say they are unavailable for questioning, variously citing overseas travel commitments, medical appointments, board meetings and other unspecified engagements.

The inquiry was launched following the Turnbull government’s decision to grant the small, business-focused charity $443 million to help rescue the reef.  The foundation has previously said it would “fully co-operate” with the probe.

Read Nicole Hasham’s story from The Age - “Leaked documents show reef charity directors 'unavailable' for Senate scrutiny.”

She Tried To Report On Climate Change. Sinclair Told Her To Be More ‘Balanced'

Sinclair Broadcast Group executives reprimanded and ultimately ousted a local news reporter who refused to seed doubt about man-made climate change and “balance” her stories in a more conservative direction.

Suri Crowe in Virginia on Thursday, April 19, 2018.

Her account, detailed in company documents she provided to BuzzFeed News, offers a glimpse at the inner workings of a media giant that has sought to both ingratiate itself to President Donald Trump and cast itself as an apolitical local news provider — a position the documents undermine.

In one 2015 instance, the former news director of WSET-TV in Lynchburg, Virginia, Len Stevens, criticized reporter Suri Crowe because she “clearly laid out the argument that human activities cause global warming, but had nothing from the side that questions the science behind such claims and points to more natural causes for such warming.”

Read the BuzzFeed News story - “She Tried To Report On Climate Change. Sinclair Told Her To Be More ‘Balanced’.”