The Carmichael project has commanded such wide attention over its initial planned scale, which could’ve created Australia’s largest coal mine, the fact it’ll boost global supply just as nations including the U.S. urge consumers to rapidly phase out the fuel’s use, and over opposition from some Indigenous landowners.
There have also been enduring concerns that the development, which includes a 200-kilometer (124 mile) railroad, could help enable a series of mines in Queensland’s previously untouched Galilee Basin, a coal-rich region about the same size as the U.K.
Though other proposals have made little recent progress, the Galilee Basin could potentially produce as much as 200 million tons a year — about the same as Australia’s existing thermal coal exports. Campaigners describe the prospect of new mines producing those volumes as “an unconscionable carbon bomb.”
