This week Australians face an emergency so catastrophic that we have not yet imagined a name for it. It is so unprecedented that the Bureau of Meteorology has had to invent a new category for it. The 50 to 52 degrees air mass over Australia is the hottest on record, and worldwide, 2013 is predicted to be the hottest recorded.
With bushfires raging and lives and property lost, you might think that people who seek to put the prevention of such environmental catastrophes on the public agenda would be applauded. Instead, they are criminalised.
But to charge him (Moylan) with a criminal offence would be utterly immoral.
On Tuesday activist Jonathan Moylan was spectacularly successful in getting the issue of prevention on our newspapers' front pages. Moylan pulled off an elegant hoax. By issuing a fake media release saying ANZ had pulled its $1.2 billion loan from Whitehaven Coal mines on ethical grounds, he disrupted markets and invited public scrutiny of an industry that is driving the climate change that has led to a new category of emergency.
Photo Damian Kelly
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Also by Bob Brown :
ReplyDeleteIt's coalminers, not Moylan, who are costing us the Earth
''CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.''
That was not me nor Christine Milne speaking in the Senate. It is a quote from the testimony of James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies in New York, to the US Congress in 2008. Hansen was speaking on the 20th anniversary of his speech to Congress in 1988 when he warned about the economic, social and environmental catastrophe threatened by coal-fuelled global warming.
It is in Hansen's context that I see the former National Party leader Mark Vaile's bellowing about the sharemarket upset resulting from Jonathan Moylan's false news release last week. But it is Moylan, not Vaile, who faces public ostracism and legal action and, speculation has it, may end up in jail.
History is full of this. Gandhi and Mandela went to jail. Martin Luther King was assassinated. Jesus Christ turned up at the businessmen's tables and look what happened to him. Anti-slavery campaigner John Brown's ''body lies mouldering in the grave'' and suffragette Emily Davidson was killed when she ran in front of the horses at the 1913 Epsom Derby.
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Where do we draw the line? It is drawn in our consciences. If the draw is beyond the law, we have to pay for it or default on our own beings. As the dictum says, all that evil needs to flourish is for good people to do nothing.
So it was that Christine Milne, David Bellamy and I and nearly 1500 others were jailed in Tasmania 30 years ago for getting in the way of premier Robin Gray's legal bulldozers. He used parliamentary numbers to abolish centuries of common law permitting trespass, making it illegal for citizens to ''lurk, loiter, or secrete'' in the Gordon and Franklin rivers rainforests. Another Liberal MP called for the army to come in. It took national outrage and a national election to save the wild rivers, flowing from that illegal protest.
Through Australia's long, proud history of environmental activism runs a common thread - it has been led by women and men committed to non-violence. There is no such commitment on the other side. Just read Miranda Devine's advocacy of violence against environmentalists
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more at : http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/its-coalminers-not-moylan-who-are-costing-us-the-earth-20130110-2cix6.html
And when they have all the "Boom money" they waste it...http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/hey-big-spender-howard-the-king-of-the-loose-purse-strings-20130110-2cj32.html
ReplyDeleteA bit like Royalties for Regions,porkbarreling the wheatbelt,and in the south west all they could think of was fibreglass cows.
Something "bright and shiney",no one wants to get their hands dirty with some real work like the neglected First Australians or Mental Health services.Oh no.
Then there's the NSW EDO being scrapped to please the Minerals Council.
Waste and Corruption.
And the biggest bank heist in history,the GFC bailouts,trillions gone ,and not one arrest.
What about Voelte?
He issued on a quite a few occasions hoax reports on the Pluto progress."Pluto is on budget and on schedule."
Woodside shares go up.
There would be letters to the papers saying,"Bullshit!Pluto is a dogs breakfast."
Sure enough a few weeks later another announcement,"Pluto is another billion over budget and another 6 months late."
Woodside shares go back to where they were.
Not a word said.
5 Reasons Natural Gas Won’t Be an Environmental and Economic Saviour
ReplyDeleteWe aren’t going to be able to drill our way out of the climate crisis without creating an even bigger mess in the process
1. Methane
Natural gas may release less pollution when burned, but it still may be a significant contributor to global warming pollution after all because we must take into account what happens during extraction, too. “Scientists are once again reporting alarmingly high methane emissions from an oil and gas field, - (some reports as high as 9% of total production)
2. Water Pollution
.EPA’s analysis of samples taken from the Agency’s deep monitoring wells in the aquifer indicates detection of synthetic chemicals, like glycols and alcohols consistent with gas production and hydraulic fracturing fluids, benzene concentrations well above Safe Drinking Water Act standards and high methane levels.
3. Water Consumption
Fracking is water intensive. It can take anywhere from 2 million to 13 million gallons of water to frack a single well and more water is needed to drill the well. Additionally wells are often fracked multiple times, some times as many as 18 times. Where does all that water come from?Water for hydraulic fracturing is typically withdrawn from one location or watershed over several days. Additionally, in some cases, the water is taken from “remote, often environmentally sensitive headwater areas”, where even small withdrawals can have a significant impact on the flow regime.Already states like Texas and Pennsylvania have run into conflicts with fracking due to water shortages. And things are likely to get worse, as the Pacific Institute states, “In many basins, the application of fracking is still in its infancy and continued development could dramatically increase future water requirements and further intensify conflicts with other uses.”
4. Trucks
How does all the water water and chemicals get to drilling sites? Trucks, trucks and more trucks. In Pennsylvania it was estimated that drilling and fracking a single well can result in 1,000 truck trips. For residents in rural areas, this means a constant stream of trucks barreling along small roads, some unpaved. Residents have complained of pollution from idling diesel trucks, roads that aren’t big enough for the vehicles, dust pollution on unpaved roads, and excessive wear and tear on bridges and pavement. The results have been accidents galore and big bills for taxpayers.
5. Economic Fallout
Jersey Shore Hospital president and CEO Carey Plummer told the Sun-Gazette of Williamsport that many subcontractors attracted to the area’s Marcellus Shale drilling boom do not cover employees.
That has brought a growing number of uninsured people to the community-owned, nonprofit hospital, Plummer said.
“We had a loss,” Plummer said. “I don’t think it’s a sign of the economy. I think it’s the influx of the gas, industry and those who lack insurance.”
Homeowners may also stand to lose. The Huffington Post reported, “Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. has become the first major insurance company to say it won't cover damage related to a gas drilling process that blasts chemical-laden water deep into the ground.”
After months of research and discussion, we have determined that the exposures presented by hydraulic fracturing are too great to ignore. Risks involved with hydraulic fracturing are now prohibited for General Liability, Commercial Auto, Motor Truck Cargo, Auto Physical Damage and Public Auto (insurance) coverage.
Tish O’Dell, co-founder of the Cleveland-area group Mothers Against Drilling in Our Neighborhoods, wonder about what jobs will be lost from impacts to farming, tourism and dairies. She told Midwest Energy News, “If you were going to do a really serious study you would look at these things,” she said. “If water is contaminated and fish die, what are the fishermen going to do? If you have parks where people go for peace and quiet, what happens when you turn it into an industrial landscape? If you have an organic dairy and the soil is polluted.
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