High court blocks new Cumbria coalmine
Posted: 13th September 2024
Happy Friday everyone, this is Lucy Jordan with some of this week’s environmental news.
Scientists warned that methane emissions are rising more rapidly than ever before, risking climate goals. The AP reported that the study found that in 2020, the last year data was available, 608 million metric tonnes of methane were released, an increase of 12% from 2000.
The High Court ruled today to block the UK’s first new planned coalmine in 30 years.
The decision comes in the wake of a crucial supreme court decision in June against a new oil well in Surrey, which ruled that climate impacts must be taken into account when considering whether new fossil fuel projects may proceed.
West Cumbria Mining (WCM) had claimed it could build a “unique” net zero mine in Whitehaven, by relying on overseas offsets. The previous Conservative government had approved the plan in December 2022. But Friends of the Earth had argued that permission for the mine did not consider the environmental impact of burning coal.
In his judgement, Mr Justice Holgate said: “The assumption that the proposed mine would not produce a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions, or would be a net zero mine, is legally flawed.”
Investigation of the week
The huge US toxic fire shrouded in secrecy
The Guardian has an excellent investigation into the health impacts of an accident at a Marathon refinery in Louisiana. The facility is located on a stretch of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge dubbed “Cancer Alley” due to the elevated rates of disease linked to its many industrial sites.
When a resident saw plumes of smoke billowing from the refinery – the third largest in the US – last August, she was initially told not to worry, and that there was no need to evacuate. But by this point, the facility had been leaking for more than 13 hours. A tank of naphtha, a flammable hydrocarbon liquid, had been on fire for over an hour and a state official had recorded alarmingly high amounts of toxic air pollutants at the refinery’s perimeter.
Marathon and the local government said that there were “no offsite impacts” detected during the four-day episode. With research group Forensic Architecture, the Guardian meticulously interrogated this claim, pitting it against the experiences of residents and evidence pieced together from 911 calls, air quality data, photos and videos, 3D simulations, medical records and internal emails. Residents told the Guardian that the incident speaks to an entrenched culture of secrecy around industry’s impacts in the region, and the impotence they feel in the face of industry’s political clout.
This week we loved
Over the next month those of you in London or Leicester will have the opportunity to catch the Underwater Photographer of the Year exhibition. From orcas and seals to gobis and brittlestars, this exhibition reminds us of the spectacular, other-worldly beauty below the waves, and its vulnerability to human impacts.
I also enjoyed this Bill McKibben piece (£) on addressing climate change and biodiversity collapse at the same time, by sowing spare land on solar farms with wildflowers to encourage pollinators.