The Galilee Basin in Australia is about to be transformed into a gigantic open-cut coal mine, with its coal destined to be burned in India and Asia.
With the green light from Australian Environment Minister Greg Hunt, Indian mining company Adani and steelmaker Carmichael can begin gutting the Galilee Basin in Queensland, Australia. It will become the largest coal mine – certainly in Australia, but perhaps in the world.
The coal will travel on cargo ships across the Great Barrier Reef, already dying, to be burned in India's and Asia's filthiest power stations.
This horror story is written into the $16.5 billion mining project, which envisages the excavation and opening of six open-cut basins and five underground mines, covering an area of land seven times the size of the capital Sydney. Added to this landscape and environmental impact are 189 km of railway networks to be built to carry 60 million tonnes of coal per year to ports on Australia's east coast. From there, aboard cargo ships, the coal will pass over the Great Barrier Reef towards the dirty, polluting power stations in India and across Asia. Burning it will generate electricity for 100 million Indian homes.
The environmental impacts are incalculable. According to Greenpeace, the operations will cause an increase of 128 million tonnes of CO2 per year in the atmosphere. The mining company itself estimates that direct emissions from "fugitive emissions" will amount to around 3 billion tonnes of CO2 over the mine's projected 60-year lifespan. This calculation excludes those resulting from the subsequent combustion of the coal in ageing Asian thermal power stations. The Great Barrier Reef is also at risk; situated directly off the Queensland coast, it is already in worse health than ever before and has already been put under severe strain by Australia's current mining activities.
The Great Barrier Reef is threatened by all industrial activities along the coast, such as the expansion of Abbot Point port, agricultural run-off, poor water quality, and now the intensification of tanker and coal-ship traffic. Peter Mumby, president of the Australian Coral Reef Society, the world's oldest organisation dedicated to the study of coral reefs, has reported that coral cover has halved since the area was included on the World Heritage List in the 1980s. By 2050 there will be fewer fish and vast expanses of algae where complex coral structures once thrived. According to Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland, current efforts to help the Reef are inadequate.