Coal news and updates

Third new coal project approved by Australian environment minister Sussan Ley in just one month

The Morrison government has been accused of demonstrating it is not taking the climate crisis seriously after approving a third new coalmine development in a month shortly before a major international conference on the issue.

With global climate talks in Glasgow less than four weeks away, the environment minister, Sussan Ley, has given a subsidiary of the mining giant Glencore the green light to expand the Mangoola mine near Muswellbrook.

It means the company can create a new coal pit north of an existing mine to extract of an additional 52m tonnes of the fossil fuel over eight years.

The mine had been approved by the NSW Independent Planning Commission in April, less than a month before a state byelection in the Upper Hunter in which the future of the coal industry was a prominent issue.

Conditions attached to the federal approval require the company to monitor local water and offset the destruction of habitat used by species including the critically endangered regent honeyeater and the vulnerable grey-headed flying fox.

Margot White, who runs a small beef farm with her husband Michael 2.5km from the planned pit site and is a member of the Wybong Concerned Landholders group, said she was unsurprised but bitterly disappointed by the decision.

“At some point, we need a government that is going to be brave enough to say there are not going to be thermal coalmines any more,” she said. “It’s a great shame … I just think it’s incredibly short-sighted.”