Climate crisis

Despite some complications, oil giant Shell is confident it will get to work drilling for oil in the Arctic this year. This just goes to show how things usually have a way of working out. Here we were worrying peak oil was just about upon us. But thanks to global warming caused by burning oil, the Arctic ice melt opens up more and more oil for the oil giants to burn.

If the official government line is to be believed, Australia is only a minor player when it comes to our greenhouse gas emissions. In this view, Australia is powerless to bring about international action to cut emissions. Indeed, any such efforts are only likely to amount to economic self-sabotage. From Laggard to Leader, the new report from research group Beyond Zero Emissions, demolishes these arguments. Far from being an inconsequential emitter, Australia’s carbon footprint is immense.

Quit Coal released the statement below on July 27. * * * It can be easy to despair when you are campaigning so hard on an issue for so long. Sometimes you can feel like the government just isn’t listening to you and that all your efforts are a bit pointless … but not today. We have been campaigning for over a year against the proposal by company HRL to build a dirty brown coal power station in Victoria.

Resistance national conference motion in solidarity with Pakistani political prisoner Baba Jan. Moved 22 July 2012. Adelaide South Australia.

Two leaders of the Labour Party Pakistan and the Progressive Youth Front (PYF) narrowly escaped torture by a special interrogation unit due to prompt protests in Pakistan and around the world, Farooq Tariq, LPP national spokesperson for the LPP, told Green Left Weekly. Baba Jan and four comrades were jailed last September for standing up for people's rights in the Hunza Valley, in the remote province of Gilgit-Baltistan, after their villages and farmlands were flooded in 2010.

A nuclear war using as few as 100 weapons would disrupt the global climate and agricultural production so severely that the lives of more than a billion people would be at risk, according to research released in April by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War and its Australian affiliate, the Medical Association for Prevention of War.

A report published on July 23 calls for Australia to institute a moratorium on new fossil fuel developments as the centrepiece of a global campaign to phase out fossil fuels. Hundreds attended the Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane meetings to launch the latest report from climate research group Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE), Laggard to Leader: How Australia Can Lead the World to Zero Carbon Prosperity.

Nuclear fission is an innately dangerous process – and the nuclear industry’s record of handling the dangers has been well short of perfect. Traditionally, that’s been enough for the environment movement to reject nuclear energy. Climate change, though, subjects this established position to an important challenge. The final death toll from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, by some estimates, could reach hundreds of thousands. But a full-scale climate disaster could kill most of humanity − thousands of millions of people.

Anti-uranium protesters' peaceful message of "uranium is just not cricket" was clearly too frightening for South Australian police who mobilised on horses and attacked the protest. Thirteen activists were arrested in the music festival at Roxby Downs Olympic Dam mine.

The Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) in NSW has fined a coal seam gas (CSG) company $3000 after it twice polluted a creek in the Pilliga forest near Narrabri in NSW by discharging contaminated water.

The Environmental Defender’s Office NSW has advised community group Illawarra Residents for Responsible Mining Inc in a court case that will test the legality of mining company Gujarat NRE’s decision to start longwall mining in its Russell Vale colliery earlier this year.

The campaign for Port Augusta to become the site of Australia’s first solar thermal power plant has escalated. Port Augusta residents will be asked to vote on the plan. Newly-formed community group “Repower Port Augusta” will host a week-long community vote, which they say will show the overwhelming support that exists for a solar thermal future for the town. Port Augusta residents have long-suffered serious health impacts from the town’s two coal-powered plants, which supply 30% of South Australia’s electricity.