Judge orders US officials to weigh coal mine's climate costs

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press


MATTHEW BROWN,
Associated Press
Feb. 4, 2021
Updated: Feb. 4, 2021 5:50 p.m.

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A judge says U.S officials downplayed climate change impacts and other environmental costs from the expansion of a massive coal mine near the Montana-Wyoming border, in a case that could test how far the Biden administration is willing to go to unwind its predecessors' decisions.

The lawsuit over Montana's Spring Creek mine hinges in part on an issue central to President Joe Biden's climate change agenda: Making decisions based on the full costs of fossil fuel extraction, including impacts on a warming planet that are being felt across society.

U.S. District Judge Susan Watters said that under former President Donald Trump, the Interior Department played up the economic benefits of the 2-square-mile (5-square-kilometer) expansion of Spring Creek, which opened up development of 85 million tons of coal.

But Watters said in her ruling Wednesday that officials failed to fully consider how burning the coal would contribute to climate change, known as the “social cost of carbon," a concept that places a dollar value on every ton of greenhouse gasses emitted.

Read more: https://www.chron.com/news/article/Judge-orders-US-officials-to-weigh-coal-mines-15924982.php

[Magoo48]

1. Leave coal and other fossil fuels in the ground!

[Ford_Prefect]

2. Judge Watters has seemed rather informed in her rulings. Imagine...

[bucolic_frolic]

3. Yup cost benefit analyses can be tweaked any way you want, just change the assumptions & data inputs

[Nitram]

5. The problem in the past is that we have not factored in the full cost to the environment caused by

mining and other conversation of land caused by development.

[Nitram]

4. "Making decisions based on the full costs of fossil fuel extraction"