Save the Arctic - Free our Activists | Greenpeace Australia Pacific

Save the Arctic - Free our Activists | Greenpeace Australia Pacific

Activists held at gunpoint in the Russian Arctic. Help set them free.

On 20 September the Russian Coast Guard illegally boarded the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise while in international waters and arrested 30 activists on board at gunpoint.  The activists were protesting Arctic oil drilling on the Gazprom platform, Prirazlomnaya, in the Pechora Sea off the Russian coast.

Alex Harris, a staff member from our Sydney office, and Colin Russell, an Australian radio operator, bravely locked themselves in the ship’s radio room to keep communications open before they were rounded up with the rest of the crew.

Right now, all around the world, hundreds of supporters are flooding the streets outside the Russian embassies in their countries, to demand the release of the people who put their bodies on the line to protect the Arctic from oil destruction.

We are demanding the urgent release of all activists, the immediate withdrawal of the Coast Guard from our ship, and an end to offshore oil drilling in the Arctic for good.

Together let’s show we are stronger than those who want to destroy the Arctic, and will not be intimidated into silence.

UPDATE: 27/9/2013

Following a preliminary court hearing in the Russian port town of Murmansk, most of our activists have been remanded in custody for two months, facing investigation for possible piracy. We are demanding the immediate release of all activists, our Arctic Sunrise ship, and an end to offshore drilling in the Arctic for good.

Over 500,000 people around the world have sent emails to Russian embassies around the world. Please send your message today then share this with everyone.

Climate change? Try catastrophic climate breakdown | Environment | The Guardian

Climate change? Try catastrophic climate breakdown | Environment | The Guardian

There are no radical departures in this report from the previous assessment, published in 2007; just more evidence demonstrating the extent of global temperature rises, the melting of ice sheets and sea ice, the retreat of the glaciers, the rising and acidification of the oceans and the changes in weather patterns. The message is familiar and shattering: "It's as bad as we thought it was."

What the report describes, in its dry, meticulous language, is the collapse of the benign climate in which humans evolved and have prospered, and the loss of the conditions upon which many other lifeforms depend. Climate change and global warming are inadequate terms for what it reveals. The story it tells is of climate breakdown.

This is a catastrophe we are capable of foreseeing but incapable of imagining. It's a catastrophe we are singularly ill-equipped to prevent.

Shocking photos and an update from the Colorado fracking flood zone

Shocking photos and an update from the Colorado fracking flood zone

Advance Australia - Lock the Gate! on Vimeo

Advance Australia - Lock the Gate! on Vimeo

The first trailer of two forthcoming films from the Lock the Gate Alliance (Australia), 'Undermining Australia: Coal vs Communities' and 'Fractured Country: an Unconventional Invasion', to be released nationally as part of our Week of Action.

These documentaries feature the personal stories of Australians whose lives have been changed forever by coal and gas mining. The films are directed by two Northern Rivers film makers.

Minister Bill Marmion offers to drink fracking fluid | Perth Now

Minister Bill Marmion offers to drink fracking fluid | Perth Nocapes blasted by 130km/h gales

MINES Minister Bill Marmion has offered to drink fracking fluid to prove it poses no threat to the state's underground aquifers.

 at a conference in Fremantle this week, Mr Marmion said WA's vast resources of undeveloped shale and tight gas offered significant economic benefits to Australia, but there were challenges reassuring people that fracking  the process to release it  was safe.
 
Opponents of fracking argue it is a major threat to groundwater.

"I met the NSW Minister for Resources and Petroleum this week and he suggested the challenge we might have to take up ... is to do what he has done and also (ConocoPhillips boss) Todd Creeger  pick up a glass, have a drink of it and tell everybody, 'I have just drunk some fracking fluid'," Mr Marmion said.

While a State Government committee investigates the science behind shale and tight gas safety, Mr Marmion accused the conservation movement and the Greens, who are opposed to fracking, of using the issue to "drum up" membership numbers.

Help stop the Kimberley from becoming a polluted gasfield | Clean Water, Healthy Land

Help stop the Kimberley from becoming a polluted gasfield | Clean Water, Healthy Land

The WA State Government has introduced legislation into the WA Parliament to open up the vast and spectacular Kimberley region to toxic gas fracking at a scale never seen before in Australia!

The proposed laws would promote the development of thousands of gas fracking wells across the unique Kimberley region.

Without consultation or environmental assessment, these laws would commit the state of Western Australia to supporting an industry that will have a devastating impact on the cultural and environmental values of one of the most precious places on Earth.
In his rush to see this legislation passed as soon as possible, Premier Barnett has even attempted to suspend usual Parliamentary process in an attempt to rush the bill through!

Use the form opposite to send an urgent message asking your local Member of Parliament to vote this appalling legislation down
http://cleanwaterhealthyland.org.au/node/75104

Help stop the Kimberley from becoming a polluted gasfield | Clean Water, Healthy Land

Help stop the Kimberley from becoming a polluted gasfield | Clean Water, Healthy Land

The WA State Government has introduced legislation into the WA Parliament to open up the vast and spectacular Kimberley region to toxic gas fracking at a scale never seen before in Australia!

The proposed laws would promote the development of thousands of gas fracking wells across the unique Kimberley region.

Without consultation or environmental assessment, these laws would commit the state of Western Australia to supporting an industry that will have a devastating impact on the cultural and environmental values of one of the most precious places on Earth.
In his rush to see this legislation passed as soon as possible, Premier Barnett has even attempted to suspend usual Parliamentary process in an attempt to rush the bill through!

Use the form opposite to send an urgent message asking your local Member of Parliament to vote this appalling legislation down
http://cleanwaterhealthyland.org.au/node/75104

HERITAGE FIGHT - Ronin Films - Educational DVD Sales

HERITAGE FIGHT - Ronin Films - Educational DVD Sales

HERITAGE FIGHT

Year: 2013 Classification: Exempt - Ronin Recommends: PG Runtime: 104 min Produced In: Australia Directed By: Eugénie Dumont Produced By: Eugénie Dumont, Yoon-Seok Nam Language: English Website: www.heritagefight.com
Proceed with ordering this title and for pricing information »

There are still some pristine places on earth, untouched by industrialisation and urbanisation. But for how long?

The Kimberley region in Western Australia is the scene of a major struggle by Aboriginal people to protect their land from a huge development planned by the conservative Premier of WA, Colin Barnett, and the oil and gas corporation, Woodside. With government support, Woodside plans to build one of the largest liquified natural gas plants in the world, in the Kimberley wilderness.

This film, by the French filmmaker, Eugenie Dumont, who spent many months in the Kimberleys with the protesters against the plant, is a powerful portrait of the Aboriginal people at the heart of the struggle - the traditional owners of the area, the Goolarabooloo people.

The film questions, listens and quotes scientists, activists, politicians and businessmen, as well as the Goolarabooloo people, to bring a broad perspective to this issue. The role of the citizens of Broome is also depicted: it was a battle in which the Aboriginal people and the towns-people fought hand in hand, and the Goolarabooloo would not have won the battle without their support.

On what the citizens of nearby Broome call “Black Tuesday”, 120 policemen came from Perth to end the protesters’ “blockade”, to allow Woodside to begin exploration work although it hadn’t acquired all legal approvals. History is made in front of the camera, as we observe the clash between protesters and the police, and witness abusive arrests and the use of force.

Team Australian Greens is growing | Bob Brown | Comment is free | theguardian.com

Team Australian Greens is growing | Bob Brown | Comment is free | theguardian.com

'The Milne-Bandt Greens team will use the Senate's constitutional powers to act as a moderator on the most right-wing government in living memory'. Photograph: Sydney Low/Demotix/Corbis

The new parliament will have more Greens, and more parties, than ever before. It will test the patience of the press gallery which lives for the simplicity of two-party politics and the jousting of personalities above the contest of ideas for Australia's future.

The Milne-Bandt Greens team of 11 will be the largest of any third party since 1923. It will use the Senate's constitutional powers to act as a moderator in the most right-wing government in living memory. And Abbott, who has made a virtue out of refusing to negotiate with independents and "minor" parties, will knuckle down to dealing history's most diverse polyglot of parties in the Senate.

For its part the press gallery, which lives for two party simplicity, faces the same large contingent of political parties. It may find itself pining for the days when it thought the Greens and a handful of independents was a bothersome aberration.

Mine mistake leads to concrete river - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Mine mistake leads to concrete river - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Mine mistake leads to concrete river

A botched attempt to fix up subsidance from a coal mine has left a river of concrete running through what was a pristine conservation area in Newcastle.