Last year almost 90% of Queensland was drought declared. For farmers and graziers struggling for survival this meant increasing reliance on groundwater.
Mining
The South Australian government has begun a public consultation on whether to hold a trial of underground coal gasification (UCG). The practice was banned in Queensland after it caused “irreversible” damage to hundreds of square kilometres of valuable Darling Downs farming land.
The Traditional Owners of the Mount Jowlaenga area in Western Australia’s Kimberley have won an appeal in the Federal Court against miner Sheffield Resources and the West Australian government over one of the country’s biggest mineral sands deposits.
The win means the Traditional Owners have succeeded in preventing Sheffield Resources from constructing its multi-million dollar Thunderbird project on their land without having reached agreements with them in key areas, including compensation and the management of Aboriginal heritage sites.
The United States Senate passed a Bill on December 2 that will allow oil drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) – an area which has been protected since 1960. Chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Senator Lisa Murkowski, managed to get a narrow 52-48 vote for the Bill – a part of the tax reform legislation – to pass.
The threatened 19.6-million acre refuge is located in northeastern Alaska and is home to polar bears, caribou, migratory birds and other wildlife, but also billions of barrels of crude oil underground.
A sleeper issue in the recent Queensland election was the inaction by mines minister Anthony Lynham on the Land Court’s ruling of May 31 to reject the application by New Hope Coal for the third stage in the expansion of the Acland coalmine, known as Acland Stage 3, in the agriculturally rich Darling Downs.
More than 60 Aboriginal community members from across the Northern Territory gathered on Larrakia Country in Darwin over November 18–19 to discuss how to stop fracking from destroying the Territory.
They came from Alice Springs, Borroloola, Mataranka, Minyerri, Maningrida, Marlinja, Tennant Creek, Yuendumu, Jilkminggan and Katherine to demand a permanent fracking ban, saying they fear for the future of their land and culture if the moratorium ends.
Activists from the Oakey Coal Action Alliance, Great Sandy Strait Saviours and Lock the Gate gathered in the park across the road from New Hope Coal’s AGM in Ipswich on November 16 with a message for shareholders.
Accompanied by a giant inflatable cow, the protesters’ message was that New Hope is wasting its money on legal battles and public relations campaigns.
I was in Honduras last October visiting Azacualpa, a municipality under threat from Canadian corporate mining giant Aura Minerals and its San Andres mine in La Union, Copan.
At the time, residents from the rural municipality were successfully holding off the combined forces of the mine management, its security forces, the regional police, the local mayor, the provincial governor, the regional military commander and the Minister for Homeland Security (who arrived in the community by helicopter with his own entourage of state security bodyguards).
A year on, Aura Minerals, with the collusion of the post-coup Honduran regime, is moving to break the stalemate.
Communities in south-west Western Australia are angry the state government has granted Bunbury Energy a new gas exploration permit, covering the shires of Capel, Dardanup and Donnybrook-Balingup and parts of Bunbury and Busselton.
Co-convenor of the Gasfield Free South West Alliance, Boyanup landholder Kathy Thomson said the permit was a kick in the guts to the people of the south west.
“The government promised us a fracking ban before to the state election. We understood the promise meant we would be protected from encroachment by the invasive onshore gas industry.
Seven years after he launched a ground-breaking study showing how Australia could re-power with 100% renewable energy by 2020, Malcolm Turnbull, now Prime Minister, has announced a “National Energy Guarantee” (NEG) policy that will have no renewable energy target.
Thousands of people converged on more than 40 sites around Australia on October 7 to make human signs spelling out “Stop Adani”.
The National Day of Action was called by the Stop Adani Alliance, a national grouping of large environmental NGOs. But what made it happen on the ground were the many grassroots groups that had been organising in their local communities to build the mass movement needed to combat climate change.
Scotland vowed on October 3 to ban hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking” due to “overwhelming” public opposition to shale gas.
Scottish energy minister Paul Wheelhouse said Scotland’s current moratorium would be extended “indefinitely” through planning powers — removing the need for legislation.
Activists from all over Australia travelled to be part of the week of frontline action against Adani coalmine. Green Left Weekly spoke to Juliette from Gympie in Queensland and asked her thoughts on the protest.
"I have come up to join all these amazing, strong, empowered people to show my opposition to the Adani coalmine because I really care about our planet, I care about our future.
Despite the overwhelming evidence that fossil fuels are killing the Great Barrier Reef and making many extreme weather events worse; despite the emphatic thumbs-down from the f
A new research report from the Queensland Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) has revealed that any move by the Queensland state government to approve the Acland coalmine expansion would represent an unprecedented and radical departure from recent tradition.
Activists from all over Australia travelled to be part of the week of frontline action against Adani coalmine. Green Left Weekly spoke to some of them to get their thoughts on the protest.
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