Poor BHP! Bushfire Smoke Is So Bad It's Slowing Their Australian Coal Production
Awwwwwwwwwww!!!!!!!!!
SYDNEY, Australia — Australia’s biggest mining company, BHP, announced on Tuesday that coal output was down at one of its large mines. The reason? Smoke from the country’s ferocious wildfires — a crisis fed by climate change, which is caused in no small part by the burning of coal. The reduced air quality in New South Wales, the country’s most populous state, has helped slow the company’s production of electricity-generating coal by 11 percent there, BHP said in a review of its midyear financial results.
“We are monitoring the situation, and if air quality continues to deteriorate, then operations could be constrained further in the second half of the year,” said the company, which ends its fiscal year on June 30.
The irony was not lost on many in Australia. The country, which just endured its hottest and driest year on record, has been dealing for months with bush fires that have killed at least 29 people, ravaged tens of millions of acres, and left residents in its largest cities wheezing from the most polluted air in the world.
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A BHP spokesman said that smoke from the bush fires had reduced visibility and made equipment harder to operate at the Mount Arthur coal site 150 miles north of Sydney. In addition, some employees have taken leave from work to protect their properties from fires or to serve as volunteer firefighters.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/21/business/coal-company-bhp-smoke.html
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Darn the luck......
