The former Commonwealth Chief Scientist and the former NSW Fire and Rescue Commissioner have asked the Independent Planning Commission (IPC) not to approve the Narrabri Gas Project.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
In the project's fourth day of public hearings a series of experts condemned the proposed $3.6 billion mining project as a threat to the planet's climate and a bushfire risk.
Former Commissioner Greg Mullins, representing Emergency Leaders for Climate Action, said the proposed mine is "far too risky to proceed", describing the region as fire-prone.
Among other bushfire risks of mining in the area, Mr Mullins said gas flaring could even ignite a new bushfire, and said the project would be upwind of the highway, cutting off the only escape.
READ MORE:
- Narrabri Gas Project an 'uninsurable' threat to farming, IPC hears in day two of public hearing
- "Wonderful opportunity" or "Nature's Melanoma": debate rages at the Independent Planning Commission
- Narrabri Gas Project an 'uninsurable' threat to farming, IPC hears in day two of public hearing
- Academic says Narrabri Gas Project waste solution should be taken with a grain of salt
"On the bass of escalating fire risk alone this project should not proceed," he said.
Under questioning by the IPC he admitted that it was possible to develop a safe procedure to do methane flaring - but that doing so would require clearing an enormous amount of bush.
"It could be done, but at massive environmental cost, and again I just can't see how any of that could be justified."
Some 49 people were slated to speak on project on Thursday, the halfway point for the exhausting seven-day list of 404 speakers registered to have their say on the plan to construct 850 coal-seam-gas wells in and around the Pilliga forest.
On Wednesday supporters of the project said the mine would have local economic benefits. Former Liberal politician Scot MacDonald told the IPC the gas scheme would actually have climate benefits, saying it would help act as a transition fuel away from coal.
But former Australian Chief Scientist Penny Sackett completely rejected that argument in her testimony to the commissioners, saying the project would create an unsustainable amount of methane, which is a far more intense greenhouse gas than carbon.
"All new fossil fuel production basically has to stop in order to meet the two-degree target," she said
She said Australia could not meet its "climate budget" without beginning the transition to renewable energy immediately, without any transitional shock-absorber. The country has run out of time, she said.
"Quite frankly we don't have the time to transition from 100 per cent of coal to something that looks like 50 per cent of coal.
"The time for gas to be a transition fuel was probably 20 or 30 years ago.
"Right now in order to meet these targets we have to transition from coal to something with literally no or very, very few emissions."
Robert White of community legal centre the Environmental Defender's Office started the day's testimony by invoking an earlier decision by the NSW Land and Environment Court to reject the approval of the Rocky Hill coal mine in the Gloucester Valley.
Mr White told the IPC that case showed a resource project's effect on climate change was sufficient legal reason to refuse a resource project like the Narrabri Gas Project.