Climate crisis

Hundreds of environmental protestors made their voices heard against coal and coal seam gas (CSG) mining over the weekend of February 20 and 21.

Gomeroi Traditional Custodians were joined on February 15 by concerned locals and supporters near the gates of Whitehaven's Maules Creek coalmine in the Leard State Forest for a traditional ceremony. The Emu Ceremony should have been held at the Gomeroi sacred site, Lawlers Well, the last remaining of 11 sites in the forest, but Whitehaven refused access. The site is part of an estimated 500 hectares of koala habitat in Leard Forest earmarked for clearing this summer by Whitehaven and Japanese miner Idemitsu which operates the Boggabri Coalmine.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull presents himself as a leader who is different to former prime minister Tony Abbott in substance as well as style. But on the issues that most marked Abbott's tenure — his head-in-the-sand attitude to climate change and his "stop the boats" approach to asylum seekers — there have been no changes.

Jim Casey, until recently the secretary of the Fire Brigade Employees Union in NSW, has been preselected for the Greens candidate in the seat of Grayndler in Sydney. I interviewed Casey for Green Left Radio on February 5. * * * Last week Anthony Albanese, who is the Labor MP for Grayndler, lambasted you for being a socialist.

The Queensland government gave Indian mining company Adani environmental approval to build Australia's largest coalmine in the Galilee Basin on February 3. Tony Fontes of the Environment Council of Central Queensland said: “This project has no money, no social license, is universally hated, and has been rejected by most of the world's largest banks. "With coal prices at an all-time low, support for protecting the Great Barrier Reef at an all-time high, the Palaszczuk government is treading a dangerous line in supporting this reef-wrecking coal project.”

Some of Australia's most important climate research institutions will be gutted as 350 jobs are cut at the CSIRO. Up to 110 positions in the Oceans and Atmosphere division will go, with a similar reduction in the Land and Water division. Data and Manufacturing divisions will also be hit.

The Costa Rican Electricity Institute said it had achieved 99% renewable energy generation last year. It also said that for 285 days last year the country managed to power its grid on 100% renewable sources. The bulk of Costa Rica's power generation comes from hydropower thanks to a large river system and heavy tropical rainfalls. The rest is made up of a mix of geothermal energy, wind, biomass and solar power.

Although about 99% of Victoria's volcanic plains grasslands have been destroyed by development, some outstanding remnants of this unique ecosystem persist, especially on the western fringes of Melbourne. The grasslands ecosystem was listed by the federal government as critically endangered in 2008. But at the same time, the then-Labor government of Victoria was initiating an expansion of Melbourne's Urban Growth Boundary that would severely impact some of its best remaining areas.

North-western Tasmania is home to one of the world's last remnants of primeval temperate rainforest, part of an ecosystem that once spread across the supercontinent of Gondwana. Thousand-year-old trees tower above ancient ferns, their roots growing in peat accumulated over millennia. This is why the region has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Eucalyptus forests in the rest of Australia need fire to regenerate. But these plants evolved before the cycle of conflagration and renewal began. If they burn they die.

China Shenhua Energy reported an 18% decline in coal sales in 2015. Shenhua’s internal coal production was down 8.4% — with a further 10% drop in sales from third-party providers. Its coal imports fell to almost nothing, reflecting an overall trend in which China’s total coal imports were down 30%. Shenhua still says it is committed to the $1 billion Watermark coal project in the Liverpool Plains of New South Wales, but the project now appears to lack financial backers.

Yale’s environmental performance index has placed Australia so low in its rankings that only Saudi Arabia has a worse ranking among wealthy nations. The index ranks countries’ performance in protecting human health and ecosystems, and looks at nine areas including air quality, climate and energy, forests and water resources. Australia was ranked 150th out of 180 countries for its carbon emissions for electricity generation. Overall in the climate and energy category, Australia was ranked 82nd.

On December 15, the Queensland Land Court recommended the giant Adani-Carmichael open-cut coalmine be given the go-ahead in central Queensland subject to several conditions including the protection of the endangered Black Throated Finch. The hearing was prompted by a number of objections to the mine, including from the conservation group Land Services of Coast and Country.