A big month for the climate
Climate Action Newcastle Meets: 1st Wednesday of each month (6:30pm -
8pm)
Hunter
Community Environment Centre (HCEC), 169 Parry St, Hamilton East.
We'd love to see you there
sometime!
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So much has happened
on the climate front lines in the last month, here are some highlights
CAMPAIGN WINS & UPCOMING
EVENTS:
T4 'shelved' - but PWCS still seeking
approval
Port Waratah
Coal Services (PWCS) has decided to shelve plans to build a
forth coal terminal on Kooragang until at least 2018 - mainly due to falling
coal prices (see 'The Carbon Bubble' story below) although CEO Hennie Du Pluooy
acknowledged that the local community campaign against
the terminal has been significant. Nearly 500 submissions opposing
the project has meant that the assessment has taken much longer than PWCS
anticipated - but the company still intends to seek approval from the NSW
government; and so the Coal Terminal Action Group continues their campaign.
There's a fundraising gig on Saturday
10th May at La Paz - 167 Parry St Hamilton East, $10 entry. night. For more
info about T4 see www.hcec.org.au. You can
Click here to make a
donation to the campaign.
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DART Coal Seam Gas pulls out of Fullerton Cove!
To the great
relief of Novocastrians, there is to be no drilling for coal seam gas under one
of our drinking water aquifers (the Tomago sandbeds) in Fullerton Cove after Dart
Energy announced in early April that it is suspending all field operations in
New South Wales. It comes after months of community opposition to Dart's CSG
drilling project near Newcastle. Lock the Gate, The Wilderness Society, The
Environmental Defenders Office and The Greens have worked closely with the
local community to have the CSG project stopped.
Lindsay Clout of Fullerton Cove
Residents Action Group says he is well aware the fight is not over yet."We
still need to be vigilant on where this could go," he said."There is
a petroleum exploration licence out there for the Newcastle area."We need
to know exactly where that is moving to, and we need to be sure that the
two-kilometre buffer zone does apply and gives us the protection that we're
seeking.
ABC News
The
Herald
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Land &
Environment Court win for Bulga residents
The Land and Environment Court has upheld a
challenge to the approval of Rio Tinto's Warkworth mine extension near
Singleton. An expansion would have brought the mine within two kilometres of
the town of Bulga and affected a bio-diversity corridor set aside for
protection. This is an excellent example of why the new NSW Planning
Laws currently being developed need to provide for community appeal rights so
that our courts can protect communities where governments will not. It's
telling that the best that Rio Tinto can do is describe community opposition as
a "significant obstruction" to them making money. Perhaps if they
respected the community they would not have pushed forward for approval without
a social licence to operate. Perhaps Rio Tinto might heed this community
warning and reconsider many of their other coal projects and shelve them
permanently, including the proposed 4th coal terminal in Newcastle (partly
owned by Rio Tinto).
The
Herald
Lock
the Gate
ABC
News
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No Gas Hub for James Price Point in the Kimberley!
The long and
bitter battle against Woodside Petroleum in Broome has paid off - on April 11
Woodside announced it wouldn't go ahead with the project. "Australians
have woken up to the threats that mining and industrialisation pose to our
environment and our communities, and resource companies need to start listening
to their concerns or face the same sort of opposition that Woodside met in
Broome," said Wilderness Society national director Lyndon Schneiders.
The
Wilderness Society
ABC
News
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Our Land, Our
Water, Our Future
Australia's
biggest ever meeting of communities working to save the places they love from
coal and gas development is just over two weeks away! Join people from across
Australia in Kurri Kurri for this exciting event.
See beyondcoalandgas.org
for more information. The organisers need to lock in final numbers soon -
registrations close on Thursday 9 May. You can register online at the above
website.
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One we still need
to win - help stop the Galilee mine in Qld
Submissions to Clive Palmer's Supplementary Environmental
Impact Statement (SEIS) for the China First (Galilee) coal mine in Queensland
are due on Monday 6th May. This mine would destroy Bimblebox Nature Refuge (you
might recall the moving documentary Bimblebox)
You can make your submission and sign the petition here.
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CUTTING EDGE RESEARCH AND OUTREACH
Do The Math - the film.
350.org has made an amazing film focusing
on the battle with the global fossil fuel industry, which holds the rights to five times more coal, oil and gas than
is considered 'safe' to burn to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius. Climate
conditions above the 2°C limit "are not compatible with life or human
civilisation as we know it". As Bill McKibbon says in the film, "If
they carry out their business plan, the planet tanks."
You can
watch the entire film online here
- but we'd love to host a public screening in Newcastle. If you can help out
with this, in any way, please get in touch: can@climateaction.org.au. 350.org
is seeking crowd-funding for the film tour here in May - click
here to help out.
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Australia's 'Carbon Bubble'
The
Climate Institute released Unburnable
Carbon: Australia's Carbon Bubble just days ago. The TCI website
has the full report and an online slide presentation of the research. A key
finding is that Australian and overseas investments in Australian coal
resources rest on a speculative bubble that ignore their impact on global
carbon budgets and their exposure to rapid devaluation. The 51 gigatonnes of
carbon pollution (GtCO2) in Australian coal reserves that companies
already have on their books represent about 25 per cent of the 200 GtCO2
global carbon budget for coal that is needed to prevent 2 degrees of global
warming.
This report follows Carbon Tracker's recent global analysis, which confirmed
that for there to be an 80 per cent chance of achieving internationally agreed
targets of limiting global warming to 2°C, only
20-40 per cent of existing coal, gas and oil reserves can be burnt.
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The
Point of No Return
The recent Greenpeace report The Point of No Return, The Massive Climate
Threats We Must Avoid identifies the top 10 climate 'hotspots' worldwide; and
the expansion of Australia's coal industry comes in at #2, second only to rapid
coal expansion in China. "The world is quickly reaching a Point of No
Return for preventing the worst impacts of climate change. Continuing on the
current course will make it difficult, if not impossible, to prevent the
widespread and catastrophic impacts of climate change. The costs will be
substantial: billions spent to deal with the destruction of extreme weather
events, untold human suffering and the deaths of tens of millions from the impacts
by as soon as 2030." Find the report here.
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The Critical Decade: Global Action Building on Climate Change
This latest report by the Climate Commission presents an overview of
progress in international action on climate change since August 2012, with a
particular focus on China and the US. The report also considers progress in
Australia, as it is one of the 20 countries contributing most of the world's
emissions. Since the Climate Commission's international report in August
2012 (The
Critical Decade: International Action on Climate Change), there
has been significant progress in many countries across the globe. There's good
news - such as 35 countries already have carbon trading schemes in place; and
plenty of worthwhile reading.
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Financing
Reef Destruction
Market
Forces and 350.org will be
launching a new report that identifies the banks that have lent the most money
to coal ports and liquefied natural gas plants inside the Great Barrier Reef
World Heritage Area over the past five years. The report is called Financing
Reef Destruction and is available for download at www.marketforces.org.au/banks
Australia's
biggest ever meeting of communities working to save the places they love from
coal and gas development is just over two weeks away! Join people from across
Australia in Kurri Kurri for this exciting event.
See beyondcoalandgas.org
for more information. The organisers need to lock in final numbers soon -
registrations close on Thursday 9 May. You can register online at the above
website.
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Links:
