Environment

  • 3000 make human sign to say: 'Protect H20, Stop CSG!'

    Stop CSG Illawarra released the statement below on October 21. * * * Just over 3000 people rallied in the Illawarra on October 21 to spell out: "Protect H20, Stop CSG!". Following a slew of broken promises by the state government last month, and a failure to rule out CSG development in drinking water catchments, people across the Illawarra came out in force once again. Stop CSG Illawarra spokesperson Jess Moore said: "It's astonishing that the community is having to fight the state government to protect our water supply.

  • South Africa: Metal workers call for class struggle approach to climate change

    The article below was presented by Karl Cloete, deputy general-secretary of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) on October 10 at a conference at Cornell University in New York. NUMSA is South Africa's second-largest union, with almost 290,000 members in the smelting, manufacturing, auto and electricity generation industries. It is abridged from Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal * * *

  • Uranium mine: 'more than the issues we'll lock on to'

    Twenty-four hours after telling the world that "people need to start showing some respect for the environment they live in", WA environment minister Bill Marmion showed what he meant by that statement by approving Western Australia's first uranium mine. The October 9 decision gives state approval to Toro Energy for its Wiluna uranium mine. The mine still requires approval from the federal Labor government, but the state approval is considered to be a major hurdles passed.

  • Forget the fall, what about the fallout?

    Channel 9's morning news program showed footage of Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard stumbling and falling during her official visit to India over and over again — at least 10 times in succession. Then for “balance” it showed footage of a similar stumble by former PM John Howard (who, unlike Gillard, wasn't wearing high-heeled shoes on grass at the time) — replayed just three times.

  • Letter from the United States: Full steam ahead for gas, oil and coal!

    This election year has seen some of the most extreme weather in the US for some time. Heat records were topped in many cites for a prolonged period. The most devastating drought in decades has ruined crops in a large area of the country. Yet there has been hardly a peep from either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney about global warming and climate change. Both have championed dangerous new methods of drilling for oil and natural gas, and promoted the very dirty tar sands oil from Canada.

  • Stop CSG campaigners hold ‘people’s conference’ outside industry event

    Under the banner of the Lock the Gate Alliance, about 100 demonstrators assembled outside Brisbane’s Convention Centre for the Queensland Gas Conference and exhibition on October 9 to protest their exclusion from the Australian Petroleum and Production Association’s (APPEA) inaugural Coal Seam Gas (CSG) Conference and Exhibition. Lock the Gate formally requested that its observers be permitted entry to the conference seminars concerning “social licence to operate”.

  • Blue Mountains residents protest CSG exploration

    Many residents of the Blue Mountains are discovering for the first time that coal seam gas (CSG) drilling is an immediate, local issue for them. Gas giant AGL has a licence to explore for CSG in a huge area covering the Blue Mountains communities from Lapstone, Glenbrook, Blaxland, Warrimoo and Winmalee through to Springwood, and everything in between. The newly formed campaign group Stop CSG Blue Mountains joined the national week of action against CSG, organising a residents’ rally in Glenbrook Park on October 13.