A big month for the climate!

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:

 

Welcome

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Climate Action Newcastle (CAN) is a committed group of local residents from all backgrounds working together to address the single biggest issue facing humanity: Climate Change. We are a community based non-party-political group of volunteers who recognise that the world faces a crisis. Climate Change is a global emergency. The urgency to act simply cannot be understated. CAN is here for people of all walks of life to be a part of the solution.

Your input and involvement in creating a low emissions future is vital to the future of our region and the planet. Please join CAN on our common path towards a truly sustainable future.

CAN meets the first and third Wednesdays of the month at 6:30pm at Hunter Community Environment Centre, 169 Parry Street Hamilton East (Newcastle West).

Contact us at can[AT]climateaction.org.au

Join CAN here

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