Environment

About 200 residents blockaded Somerville Road during morning rush hour in the inner-west Melbourne suburb of Kingsville on November 12 to protest against the number of container trucks using the street. Somerville Road is a two-lane residential road that carries 3000 trucks a day. There are three primary schools and a kindergarten nearby with 1500 children enrolled. The protest was organised by Maribyrnong Truck Action Group (MTAG) and heard from Maribyrnong Mayor Grant Miles, MTAG president Samantha McArthur, and Merryn Redenbach from Doctors for the Environment.
The Western Australian government has finalised its acquisition of land in the Kimberley for future development, despite long-standing opposition from environmentalists and the local Aboriginal community. The 3414 hectares of land near James Price Point — part of one of the most ecologically opulent and pristine stretches of land left in the world — north of Broome, was bought from traditional landowners as “unallocated crown land.” The area is now under management of LandCorp and the Broome Port Authority.
A protest against using the Victorian port of Hastings for brown coal exports attracted 200 people on November 9, including locals and community members from across Gippsland. Several coal export projects are seeking to use land at Hastings in Western Port, south-east of Melbourne, for a one-square-kilometre brown coal drying facility and port.
The statement below was released by the Party of the Labouring Masses, a Filipino party of the marginalised and poor. You can donate to the grassroots relief efforts the PLM is part of organising. * * *
Stop CSG Illawarra released this statement on November 12. *** Chris Hartcher, the NSW Minister for Resources and Energy, announced a temporary moratorium on coal seam gas (CSG) exploration and mining in Sydney's drinking water catchment “Special Areas” on November 12. This will be in place until the outcome of the NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer's review of CSG activities in NSW — currently expected in late 2014. Stop CSG Illawarra spokesperson Jess Moore said: “This is welcome announcement and a win for the campaign.
Below is an open letter and petition to governments of the rich industrialised nations, initiated by the Philippines Movement for Climate Justice. The PMCJ is a broad movement consisting of 103 national networks and local groups representing many grassroots communities across the Philippines. Please add your name here. You can also donate to grassroots relief work via http://transform-asia.org/. * * *
On October 20 last year, I did stand up at a party in Chelsea, Manhattan, for the book I had just written called America's Got Democracy! The joke that got the biggest laugh, which I will now ruin by writing it out, was about how the supposedly “stark choice” between Democrats and Republicans around global warming isn't the different things they're going to do about it, but the different ways they say they're not going to do anything about it.
Malaysia's Belum-Temengor rainforest is a place of amazing natural wonders. More than 130 million years old, this 300,000 hectare forest is home to a vast number of species of animals and plants, many of which cannot be found anywhere else in the world. This pristine forest remains one of the largest untouched forest reserves in Peninsular Malaysia. It is home to 14 threatened species and may lead to the discovery of more new species.
Having virtually all the money in the world often means you can buy silence, you can buy time, and you can buy lies. Chevron has demonstrated this time and again in its decades-long battle to evade accountability for deliberately dumping 18 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into the Ecuadorian Amazon. The problem is that this time, what Chevron has bought is a bag of lies in the form of false testimony from a thoroughly disreputable source, and it isn't able to hide the price tag.
Big Coal: Australia’s Dirtiest Habit Guy Pearse, David Mcknight, Bob Burton Newsouth Publishing, 2013, 257 pages, $34.99 (pb) You don’t have to look far to see why Australians are locked in an absurd and vicious circle of climate change, burning more coal to, for example, run more air conditioners to cope with the more severe heat waves from the global warming resulting from burning more coal.
About 1000 people rallied on November 11 in front of the US Embassy in Manila to demand climate justice after the aftermath of Super Typhoon Yolanda (as Typhoon Haiyan is known in the Philippines). The demonstrators care from various sectors of Filipino society. Farmers, urban poor, women, workers, and youth marched from Bonifacio Shrine to the T.M. Kalaw demanding that the US immediately and radically cut its emissions and pay its climate debt -- to assist with the costs of adapting to climate change and for loss and damages caused.
The statement below was released by the Party of the Labouring Masses (PLM, a Filipino socialist party) on November 10 in response the huge humanitarian disaster caused by Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda. Details on how to donate to the PLM's relief efforts at at the bottom. You can also sign a petition initiated by the Philippines Movement for Climate Justice. * * * Let Our People Live! Save Lives, Redistribute Food, Stop the Economic and Environment Plunder! Climate Justice Now!