(Reuters) -Australia’s Environment Minister Sussan Ley approved on Thursday Whitehaven Coal’s Vickery coal mine extension project in New South Wales, eliciting “shock and dismay” from eight teenagers who had sought to prevent it due to climate concerns.
The decision sent the coal miner’s shares up 4% to A$3.160, their highest since December 2019.
The NSW Independent Planning Commission had approved the project in August 2020, but it was knocked off course in September after 8 teenagers hit the company with a class action lawsuit, arguing it would endanger their futures.
In a May ruling, the Federal Court of Australia had said that the country’s environment minister has an obligation to children to consider the harm caused by climate change as part of her decision-making in giving the approval.
The minister has turned her back on children and young people of Australia, said 18-year-old Ava Princi, one of the students who filed the case.
“When I heard that Minister Ley had approved the expansion, I was shocked and angry. The emissions from Whitehaven’s expanded Vickery coal mine will only make the climate crisis worse and (it) puts our safe future in doubt. The minister should be ashamed of her decision,” said Bella Burgemeister, 15, another plaintiff.
Australia is the world’s top coal exporter and has not signed up to a zero emissions target by 2050, unlike most other developed nations.
Whitehaven said in an exchange filing that it welcomed the decision.
(Reporting by Arundhati Dutta in Bengaluru; editing by Uttaresh.V)
