Last week a judgement in a minor NSW court banned The Rocky Hill coking coal mine which had been planned for the Hunter Valley.  

blogger Jo Nova writes that curiously, it was not the much hated thermalcoal mine, it was a coking coal mine – the stuff we use in making steel.

It takes 600 kilograms of coal to make one ton of steel & Australian coking coal is considered some of the world’s best so it follows that either the world uses a bit less steel, or it buys the coal from somewhere else.

This beggars the question of does the judge have something against steel?

Nova joins Luke Grants saying that most likely the world will buy the coal from somewhere else which will most likely be less pure and more polluting with few environmental controls or worker’s rights so effectively, an Australian court decided to increase global pollution by blocking a clean coal mine.