Cooking the climate: Wrecking the reef

Everything about the Galilee Basin is epic. Its name, its size and sparse beauty, the enormous amount of coal buried just under the soil and the scale of mining being proposed to dig it up. But eclipsing all of this are the epic consequences if this coal is dug up and burnt – and that remains true whether the coal is burnt in Australia or in India or China.
We have just released a new report revealing that if we mine the coal in the untapped Galilee Basin in Queensland, Australia could create more carbon pollution than the entire United Kingdom or Canada. The report, Cooking the Climate and Wrecking the Reef is the first time the greenhouse impact of the proposed Galilee Basin mines has been quantified.

And it’s not just bad news for Australia. The Galilee Basin is a ticking carbon time-bomb that will wreak havoc on our climate if the fuse is lit. The atmosphere doesn’t recognise one country from another – all the garbage thrown up there eventually hurts all of us. Nor is this just a question for the Labor government. All the major political parties in Australia have committed to the aim of keeping global warming under the critical threshold of 2 degrees. The time available to keep that promise is limited, and mining the Galilee Basin will take us a long way in the wrong direction.

Earlier this week, the Arctic ice melted to its lowest extent since records were kept. The rate of melting has accelerated in recent years, but far from acting to curb Australia’s biggest contribution to global warming, our Governments are accepting plans to massively expand it.

Australia has begun the process of approving up to nine new mega mines, five of which would be bigger than any existing coal mine in Australia. If these mines proceed, when they reach maximum production, the emissions from burning the coal would be 705 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. If the Galilee Basin was a country, it would be the seventh biggest emitter of carbon dioxide pollution from burning fossil fuels in the world.

The financial press is full of stories about the price of coal coming off the boil, we mustn’t be fooled into thinking this problem will just go away because of the slowing coal boom.

Apart from becoming a key driver in global warming, these mines will also exact a terrible cost on farms, water supplies and coastal communities and would also put one of the world’s greatest natural treasures – Australia’s Great Barrier Reef – under very serious threat. The Great Barrier Reef is vulnerable to global warming. Coral is extremely sensitive to even short periods of increased sea temperatures, resulting in coral bleaching. A rise in sea temperature of 2-3 degrees is predicted by the end of the century under some climate models if greenhouse gas emissions are not tightly controlled. Such a rise in temperature could be fatal for the Reef, and is predicted to result in the annual bleaching of over 97 percent of the Reef. In addition, the Reef stands between the Galilee Basin mine proposals and the power station of Asia: mining the Galilee means new coal ports, millions of tonnes of dredging, and thousands more coal ships making their way through the Reef every year.

That’s why we are calling for a halt to the massive expansion of coal mining and export infrastructure proposed for Queensland. How we deal with the Galilee will shape the future of our children and our grandchildren. It is not good enough for the government to hide behind the drug dealer’s defence; I just sell the stuff, what others do with it is their own business.

Check out the both the report and our great new animated video about the coal export industry.

Please join with us and take action to save the reef

Inland coal mines will transport the coal to shipping ports along the Queensland coast to be shipped through the Reef resulting in a massive increase in shipping through the World Heritage area. © Darren Jew/Greenpeace