Once, they chained themselves to trees. Now, environmental groups are increasingly taking their battles to the courtroom in a bid to take down mining and fracking projects.
This is creating a headache for governments and the fossil fuel industry. For example, in 2014 taken by WildEarth Guardians, Earthjustice and the Sierra Club blocked the expansion of a coal mine in Colorado, and Arch Coal, the company behind it, later filed for bankruptcy.
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In the Netherlands, the Urgenda Foundation forced the government to commit to a 25 per cent reduction in emissions in a landmark court case won in June last year.
And in Australia, the approval of a coal mega-mine in Queensland has faced ongoing hold-ups since 2010, because of legal challenges mounted by the Mackay Conservation Group and the Australian Conservation Foundation.
In each of these cases, the environmental organisation has accused the government of neglecting its duty to protect the public from the climate-altering effects of the fossil fuel industry. Now, in a worrying move for climate campaigners worldwide, the Australian government has proposed stripping environmental groups of their right to challenge its decisions.
Australian law currently states that any citizens who have engaged in environmental research or activities in the last two years can challenge new resource projects. But on Tuesday, environment minister Josh Frydenberg said his party would seek to modify the law so that only people with a “direct interest” – local farmers and landowners – would have this right. The aim is to clamp down on what the government calls “”, or “”.
Aside from being an insult to democracy, this ignores the fact that every single person in the world has a legitimate interest in fossil fuel mining, regardless of where it takes place.
Queensland’s Carmichael mine – proposed by Indian company Adani – will be the largest coal mine in Australia and one of the biggest in the world. When its coal is burnt in Indian power stations, it will produce up to 128 million tonnes of carbon emissions per year.
A concern for everyone
This will, of course, affect everyone. A recent study found that building any new mines, let alone new mega-mines, will tip us over the aspirational 2 °C limit for global warming set by the Paris climate agreement. Rising sea levels, droughts, floods and extreme heat waves around the world are predicted to follow should this happen.
A key motivation of the Australian government is to stop foreign interests from halting new developments. This is on the back of revelations that the Sunrise Project – an Australian organisation campaigning against the Carmichael mine – is partly funded by the Sandler Foundation, a US charity.
Emails revealing the funding arrangement were forwarded from the foundation to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, and published by WikiLeaks.
Writing in , Brendan Pearson, a coal lobbyist and chief executive at the Minerals Council of Australia, said in response: “It is now clear that the green activists were not defending the rights of central Queenslanders but those in the leafy, air-conditioned suburbs of San Francisco.”
But why shouldn’t people in San Francisco care about mining in Queensland when they are equally threatened by its carbon emissions?
In the climate change era, it is more important than ever that environmental organisations have legal rights that allow them to hold their governments to account. It is also reasonable for them to play an active part in doing the same with other governments.
If Australia goes ahead with its plan to gag green groups that stand in the way of new coal mines, it will set a dangerous precedent for the rest of the world. Now is the time to work together, not lock people out.
