When future generations — assuming they exist — look back at how Australia’s government approached its responsibility to respond to climate change, what they will see is vandalism.
The ancient Vandals gave their tribal name to posterity because of their supposed penchant for pointless destruction. It goes beyond incompetence, negligence, recklessness. It is wrecking as an ideology, the antithesis of the conservative philosophy to which this government pays sarcastic obeisance.
A recent and excellent example is the decision of Environment Minister Sussan Ley to approve the extension of the Vickery coalmine in New South Wales — a “fuck you” to the Federal Court and the children to whom the court had ruled she owes a duty of care to protect them from the climate crisis.
For the past decade or so, since outright denial of climate change became unfashionable outside of News Corp, successive environment ministers have been in the habit of approving fossil-fuel mining operations using simple sophistry: not disputing that climate change is real, nor that digging up and burning more fossil fuels might contribute to that, but finding that the particular impact of any particular coalmine, gas field or whatever is too uncertain and speculative to be allowed as a sufficiently concrete factor militating against approval.
Call it the Barnaby Joyce school of wilful ignorance.
Nobody’s had much joy in challenging such decisions in the courts. The only legal basis for challenging a minister’s determination is on narrow administrative law grounds, trying to convince the court that the minister made an error of law; that is, they misdirected themselves in terms of their own discretion. The remedy, if an error is found, is to send the question back to the same minister to get it right this time. As long as they make it look like they’ve properly considered everything they should, the decision is theirs to make, not the court’s.
Eight schoolkids, represented by the enterprising lawyer David Barnden, had a crack at pre-empting this regular farce by going to the Federal Court before the minister had made a decision on the Vickery mine expansion. They sought an injunction to prevent her from giving approval on the novel and clever basis that there was a clear threat that she was going to approve the mine and, in doing so, would cause them direct harm.
Justice Mordecai Bromberg made a massive judicial splash with his decisions in May and July, finding that the principal argument the children had raised was right:
The [minister] has a duty to take reasonable care, in the exercise of her powers … to avoid causing personal injury of death to persons who were under 18 years of age and ordinarily resident in Australia at the time of the commencement of this proceeding arising from emissions of carbon dioxide into the earth’s atmosphere.
It is conventional that the government owes a duty of care to its citizens to take reasonable measures to protect them from foreseeable harm. This decision says that harm from climate change is foreseeable, triggering the duty to not make it worse for the sake of future generations.
Having considered the piles of evidence before him, Bromberg had positively found that devastation of the earth from climate change is inevitable, taking quality of life with it. “None of this,” he said, “will be the fault of nature itself. It will largely be inflicted by the inaction of this generation of adults, in what might fairly be described as the greatest intergenerational injustice ever inflicted by one generation of humans upon the next.”
He refused to give an injunction, because he wasn’t satisfied that the minister would in fact breach her duty of care once she had considered the implications of his judgment.
Ley immediately appealed the decision, of course, and that is yet to be heard. It’s inevitably bound for the High Court.
In the meantime she has decided not to wait for the ultimate outcome of the case, and has approved the Vickery extension going ahead. Did she do what Bromberg hoped, and take his ruling into account? Yes. In her 62-page statement of reasons for her decision, Ley said that although she is appealing the judgment, she applied its reasoning to her decision.
There are many, many words in the rationale, but the only ones that matter are these:
I accepted the department’s recommendation that I find that the available evidence indicates that a decision to approve the proposed action would be unlikely to lead to an increase in global average surface temperatures. This is because the proposed action is not likely to cause more coal to be consumed globally.
Have we heard that logic before? Yes, we have — every time a member of the government opens their mouth on the subject of climate change. It’s reductive logic of the most pathetic kind: sure, climate change is real and we accept that all this burning of fossil fuels causes it, but this one extra coalmine? It won’t make a measurable difference.
Schoolchildren could point to the flaw in the logic (and have), but the government goes merrily on, approving project after project because each one considered in isolation has insufficient significance.
It’s not wilful ignorance. It’s knowing disregard for truth and consequences. Vandalism.
Bradley paraphrases the government’s argument as “climate change is real and we accept that all this burning of fossil fuels causes it, but this one extra coalmine? It won’t make a measurable difference.”
But Ley actually said “… the proposed action is not likely to cause more coal to be consumed globally.”
This is slightly different. She is using the other Coalition nonsense argument: if Australia does not mine and sell its coal, someone else will do it instead and so nothing changes. Therefore it’s not an extra coalmine, it’s just our coalmine instead of one somewhere else.
The legal proceedings had been brought against Federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley by a group of eight Australian high school students who sought to pre-empt a decision by Ley to issue environmental approvals to the expansion of Whitehaven Coal’s Vickery Coal Mine.
The decision will compel Ley to consider the potential climate change impacts of the coal mine’s expansion when considering its approval under the federal EPBC Act and implement suitable measures that would work to mitigate the risk to young people resulting from the increased extraction of coal from the Vickery mine.
The expansion of the mine would allow for an additional 33 million tonnes of coal to be extracted from it. The additional coal production is expected to result in 100 million tonnes of additional greenhouse gas emissions.
https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/federal-court-finds-sussan-ley-owes-duty-of-care,15279
Now from who was that chaff bag of cash for the sleaze bag
Is it actually an expansion? I read that it is an application for a coal mine that had previously been proposed but not pursued or mined.
Thanks for clarifying that. I was struggling to understand, if approving the coal mine is “not likely to cause more coal to be consumed globally”, then what is the actual point of it? Clearly the point is as Richard Denniss has described – the freezers in the icecream shop have stopped working and Australia is desperately trying to offload as much of its icecream as possible, ahead of the other icecream vendors, before the whole market shuts down.
The freezers ice cream analogy is the one that I think drives their actions, and they are being directed this way by their big donors. Sell it all, it will be worthless tomorrow. Capitalism, it’s great isn’t it.
At some point in the future, Australia will be invited to join nations-of-the-willing to invade recalcitrant nations and destroy their coalmines and oil-and-gas wells. We would be dismayed to find our own mines and wells on the target list.
We will pay for this decision. As the governments of reason and contiosenss
OOPS Pushed the wrong buttons. We will pay for this decision as governments of reason and conscience penalise us for continuing to ignore renewables and promote fossil fuels
It’s the unstated, but deeply cynical assumptions behind these arguments that are the most galling.
Ley is positing that no country, anywhere, anytime will do anything serious to decarbonise the economy. Ever. She’s tacitly asserting that the human race is locked in to making itself extinct.
The Minister is only protecting her environment. You known, the environment of coal lumps, greenhouse gases and LNP financial support. “Minister for the Environment” – what’s in a name, not much it seems, you have to specify which environment you are referring to. For the LNP there is only one, and it is not the Australian or the World environment.
…. Maybe that should be – more accurately, reflecting her actual status – “Minister for Environmental Degradation”?
The Coalition & their supporters often use the old chestnut that Australian coal is cleaner/higher grade than other coal (sometimes true, sometimes not) therefore it’s environmentally responsible to export our superior product. Indeed, we’re doing the planet a favour. Ley has likely hidden that one up her sleeve for the Appeal.
It’s a NSW coal field and therefore special exemptions apply…….right Scottie ?
Carbon dioxide released anywhere at all in the world increases the atmospheric burden – globally. Any amount of coal burnt in Australia proportionately increases global warming – permanently.
It is not just the Coalition denying science. Plenty of us on the Left desperately want to believe that a small rate of gas burning will have no effect. However, while we continue to emit anything at all, the average global temperature will continue to rise. That is why we must decarbonise completely. The later it takes to eradicate fossil fuels worldwide, the hotter the world will remain – permanently.
Totally agreed Roger. We differ on our opinions on the best way to get there, but not in our intent. Personally, if I thought your preferred nuclear power option was viable I would go there, and vote accordingly. The only reason I prefer renewable solutions is that I think them more viable.
“The Coal Miner’s Hawker”.
…. What’s that Gold Coast bolt-hole/real estate portfolio, she used our $tax to travel to buy when a previous “Minister for Health and Entitlement(?)”, worth now? … “Hinterland” – well back from the ocean of course.
…. I guess we should be thankful there wasn’t more money in asbestos?
And, looking at it from their egomaniacal perspective, it’s not as though these politicians whittling away at these mortal policies (on behalf of their fossil fuel sponsor donors) will still be around when these their grotesque, monstrous chickens come home to roost and kick the bejesus out of those that remain, but their kids probably will.
Well her upbringing was ‘entitled’ and when moving to Australia daddy dearest did end up in the then notorious (and still are) Comm Police.