Readers of media reports on the Queensland government’s go-ahead late last week for the Caval Ridge coal mine in Queensland could be forgiven for thinking that the BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA) project will be carbon free.
BMA’s plan is to mine and export at least 165 million tonnes of coal over the next 30 years from the $4 billion project. When the Queensland Treasurer, Andrew Fraser, and the Infrastructure and Planning Minister, Stirling Hinchliffe, announced the government’s decision, it was not surprising that their media release didn’t mention the prodigious carbon dioxide emissions from producing and burning Caval Ridge coal.
Of the five main online Australian media reports — on NineMSN, an AAP story run by The Sydney Morning Herald, one by an SMH staff reporter and two by the ABC (one a short online story and another on the evening TV news — none even suggested that there was an issue with the mine’s carbon emissions. Instead, the reporting was largely confined to reporting the themes raised in the government’s media release: jobs, earnings and the imposition of some conditions on the project approval. Only one included comments from anyone else and even then it was a BHP Billiton spokeswoman.
However, a minute’s search on the BHP Billiton website reveals that the company has calculated (see page 18) that over the mine’s 30-year lifespan the project will add add 466 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent to the global atmosphere. Of that, only a little over 19 million tonnes will be emitted directly or indirectly in Australia.
The remaining 446.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent, representing 95% of total emissions from the project and its products, will spew into the atmosphere from steel plants scattered around the world. (For the sake of comparison, Australia’s total carbon emissions in 2009 amounted to 537 million tonnes, excluding those from land use and forestry activities.)
It is unsurprising that the Queensland government have given the Caval Ridge project the thumbs up, but the final approval for the project will rest with the next federal government.
While Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott have pledged to cut emissions by a meagre 5% by 2020, they have studiously avoided discussing the obvious fact that the crucial first step to decarbonising the global economy will be to curtail the current coal burning binge.
While the odds are that whichever major party forms government will approve the project, supporting new coal mines and powered stations is fast becoming as popular as being seen defending the tobacco or asbestos industries. And at last count, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (ABARE) identified another 69 coal projects wending their way down the corporate and government decision making pipeline. As the coal boom rolls on there is every likelihood that whichever party forms government after Saturday’s election will be dogged by controversy over their support for the coal industry.
The question remains though, whether the carbon-free reporting on the Caval Ridge Project will be the norm or the exception. After all, the export coal boom currently under way represent Australia’s greatest contribution to global warming and one that many in the community expect to be fully informed about.
Bob Burton is a freelance journalist based in Hobart and the author of Inside Spin: the dark underbelly of the PR industry (Allen & Unwin, 2007).
Why let looming global climate catastrophe get in the way of a multi national corporation’s profit. How short the memories of Victoria’s Bush Fire disaster seem.
Exported carbon is a separate issue to local emissions. As an opium farmer might say, it’s okay to export it, as long as we don’t smoke it ourselves.
We should be attending to the 19 Mt CO2 emitted in Australia, by answering the miner’s question, “okay, what are we going to burn instead?”
Big mine trucks are currently diesel-electric, that is, with an electric motor on each wheel, so could be converted to tramwires and compressed hydrogen.
The question then becomes more interesting to answer:
“Now, how are we going to supply approx 50 MW of electricity and hydrogen to each mine?”
The question the media is not asking is “which party will implement a greenhouse trigger under the Env Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC)?”
The EPBC is one of the strongest pieces of environmental legislation in Australia which was ironically passed by the previous Liberal Govt when Robert Hill was Minister for the Environment. Certain threatening processes trigger the need to have a project’s environmental impact reviewed under the EPBC and the Federal Minister can stop a project despite it having State Govt approval.
Climate change is clearly as much a threatening process as those that are already “triggers” under the EPBC. Last year’s review into the Act recommended that it should include a trigger for projects that are expected to emit over 500,000 tonnes CO2-e until an CPRS/ ETS comes into effect.
This was one of only two recommendations from the entire review to be rejected (the other was to review Regional Forest Agreements). The reason for rejecting it was the imminent start of the CPRS – this was delayed for 2 or 3 years (forever?) I think about a month later.
No one (not even the greens) have mentioned this again – it is time the media asked
Well there’s no stopping state governments on ecological rampage while we mutter obscenities about the federal government’s failure to mitigate CO2. In addition this recent proposal will also emit arsenic, chlorine, cadmium, chromium, cobalt, copper, benzene (CO2?), fluroride, formaldehyde, hexane (CO2?), lead, nickel, SO2, xylene (CO2?), dioxins etc including the dreaded transboundary particulate matter (PM or ‘aerosols’) – millions of tonnes of it over the life of the project.
Then there’s the mountains of contaminated fly ash which will be flogged off to the farming industry as a ‘soil improver.’ So much for the pollution prevention control technologies of which the mining industry boasts and the regulators parrot the same crap.
The most recent Queensland ‘State of the Environment’ report advised:
1. The recent resources boom has seen an increase in the total area covered by exploration and mining tenements for minerals and petroleum in Queensland from 41.7 million hectares in 2003 to 65.9 million hectares in 2006 – a 58% increase.
2. The current annual rate of mine disturbance, 5619 hectares, is almost 30% higher than the annual rate in the period from 1999 to 2002. Most of the increase has resulted from the opening of more than 20 new coal mines and increased production from many existing coal mines. The rate of rehabilitation has risen slightly since 2002 but has not kept up with the increased rate of disturbance.
3. Abandoned mine sites are recognised as major safety and environmental issues in Queensland. Although most of the 15 000 abandoned sites are small, there are a number of large, complex sites with major environmental issues, such as Mount Morgan. Several of the large sites will cost the state tens of millions dollars to rehabilitate. This rehabilitation work is undertaken by the Abandoned Mine Lands Program (AMLP) through the Department of Mines and Energy (DME).
(Last update – February 2009)
Spare a thought too for the state of WA where one junior miner has recently acquired a total tenement area of 2,370,240 hectares through state forests, private and farming lands and some 23 shires, to get at bauxite to feed the alumina industry. Naturally you have to dig up the forests, build another pollutant smelter for this project and then dispose of the toxic waste:
http://www.bauxiteresources.com.au/download/March%202010%20Quarterly%20Report.pdf (cursor down to the map on tenement holdings)
I’m not sure either party realises how widespread the fury and boiling resentment over climate change inaction has become. Their focus groups are probably not asking about this and so it doesn’t come up as strong issue.
Kids at school know about the real threat that climate change is, and people read about it from many sources around the globe – they’re not fools, as has been said before, and know how terrified both major parties are about bringing climate change up.
As for the pathetic population debate, I watched Bob Katter and Tony Windsor on ABC Lateline on Monday and what a refreshing change. No hidden agendas, no avoiding answering questions and a very illuminating opinion from Bob about what population possibilities there are. Most obviously, there was no fear from either man.