“A carbon bomb” which can blow out Australia’s emissions by 20%, is how plans to fracking the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin are described by climate activists. As Federal subsidies for Darwin’s petro-port mount, Dominic Geiger tours the north to check out the damage so far and protest at a court case involving American-backed gas fracker Tamboran Resources.
Source: Beetaloo Madness: protestors, farmers, First Nations unite to fight US gas frackers – Michael West
Dr Colette Harmsen was imprisoned for her devotion to environmental protection (Screenshot via YouTube)
My name is Dr Colette Harmsen. I am a veterinarian, wildlife defender and peaceful forest protester, and I have just spent three months in gaol at your expense for protecting Tasmania’s native forests.
Source: Government and law won’t stop us from fighting for environment
“We don’t know for sure under what circumstances these fish were washed up, so I do not recommend” eating them, Fujioka said.
Source: Thousands of tonnes of dead fish wash ashore in Japan
Don’t blame Reynard Felix is a far far bigger killer
Australia’s unique environment is under relentless attack by unwanted aliens and climate change is about to supercharge the threat, top scientists warn.
Source: Invasive alien species driving destruction of nature worldwide
Due more to the courts than politicians, native forest logging may be nearing an end. Recent court judgements in Victorian Supreme and and Federal courts don’t augur well for the logging industry. Sue Arnold reports.
Over the period 1992-2020, the water stored in the world’s largest 1972 natural lakes and reservoirs, accounting for approximately 90% of Earth’s total freshwater storage, decreased overall by 53%. Two-fifths of lakes and two-thirds of reservoirs experienced severe water losses over this period and the trend was not limited to arid areas; it was also observed in the humid tropics and high latitude areas.
Source: Environment: Who are the green groups pocketing dirty dollars?
There is no debate to be had Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is simply WRONG on so many levels. NATO may have provoked but Putin took the bait and attacked resulting the planet being threatened like never before.
And then there’s the link between climate and security. “We should work to combine security issues with the environmental and climate agenda,” Ackermann concludes. “This war revealed so many things that we hadn’t seen, that we didn’t want to see, so we’d closed our eyes. Now they are revealed, and we have to be working on that.”
Source: Environmental Hazard: How Russia’s War in Ukraine Threatens the Planet
Wage earners above $180K + aren’t a threatened species. Stage 3 tax cuts don’t protect our enviroment
This is not a trade-off between the environment and the economy. Roughly half our GDP relies on natural systems. And nature has enormous benefits for the health and wellbeing of people and communities.
We must seriously examine our national priorities, and demand that Australian governments invest our national wealth in the species and ecosystems we depend on.
National polling conducted by Roy Morgan Research in March last year found that:
Key facts:
Australian Alliance for Animals Media Release Fate of Koalas Hangs in Balance as Party Policies Revealed Ahead of NSW Election. The Australian Alliance for Animals has today released a series of policy scorecards revealing where parties and candidates stand on protecting koala habitat, ending puppy farms, and other key animal welfare issues ahead of the…
Source: Party Policies on Koalas Revealed Ahead of NSW Election – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Indigenous held forests absorb carbon; non-Indigenous held forests produce carbon. Chicken and pig farms bad for the animals and the climate.
Source: Environment: humans must care for our travelling companions: earth’s animals, plants and ecosystems
But on Tuesday, the tribunal – which manages native title applications and is not comprised of Aboriginal Australians – determined the group had failed to prove the gas project would have “grave and irreversible consequences for the Gomeroi people’s culture, lands and waters and would contribute to climate change”.
Tribunal president and judge John Dowsett said in his decision that Santos had negotiated in good faith and the benefits the Narrabri-Pilliga gas project would provide to the region and wider country significantly outweighed the Gomeroi people’s concerns.
Pilliga Forest spans more than 500,000 hectares in northern NSW and is recognised as one of the most important areas for biodiversity in eastern Australia. It is home to at least 300 native animal species and more than 900 plant species, and is the largest remaining area of native forest west of the Great Divide.
Source: Santos given green light to drill 850 gas wells in Narrabri-Pilliga Forest area
Capitalism certainly won’t do it
The global population is now 8 billion but the vast majority make little contribution to global warming. The search is on for ways to feed 10 billion sustainably in 2050.
Source: Environment: How to feed 10 billion and predict the next Covid
Four reports and Greta Thunberg highlight the failure of 30 years of COP meetings to slow climate change. Our weekly environment report.
Use of fossil fuels and non-fossil fuels in 2050
The IEA report I summarised above includes the following figure (page 58). It shows the amount of energy (in Exajoules) provided by fossil and non-fossil energy sources from 2020-2050. The figure on the left shows the likely trajectories if all governments’ current policies are pursued. The figure on the right shows the trajectories that are needed to reach net zero emissions by 2050. Current policies will more than double non-fossil supplies by 2050, whereas the net zero course needs an almost four-fold increase. The big change though is in the supply of fossil energy. Current policies will produce only a marginal reduction in fossil fuel energy, but to achieve net zero emissions fossil energy must be reduced to approximately one-fifth of 2020 levels by 2050.
Source: Environment: COP meetings keep happening; emissions keep rising
In a delightfully written article, Jared Farmer, a professor of history, eulogises about the benefits of ancient trees not only for the environment but also for humans: ‘They inspire long-term thinking and encourage us to be sapient. They engage our deepest faculties: to revere, analyze and meditate. If we can recognize how they call upon our ethical imperative to care for them, then we should slow down climate change now, and pay forward to people who will need a future planet with chronodiversity as well as biodiversity.’
Koalas in NSW could be extinct by 2050 unless the government makes drastic changes to knocking down trees.
Am I turning Green?
A new conservation plan designed to protect koalas is once again failing to save the species from extinction, writes Sue Arnold.
REGRETTABLY, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek’s latest environmental policy announcement, The Threatened Species Action Plan, is short on details and fails to address the substantive issues driving Australia’s extinction crisis.
It requires more than just “repair” it needs future proofing;
After the Coalition sabotaged the Murray-Darling Basin for profit, the Labor Government has a chance to repair the damage done, writes Tyler Rotche.
Plibersek has a golden opportunity to lead on Murray-Darling Basin Plan
Three chief authors of the State of the Environment Report provide its key findings. While it’s a sobering read, there are a few bright spots.
Morrison’s Miracle revealed the Vanishing Report
The gang-gang cockatoo is among the more than 200 plants and animals that have been added to the threatened species list. Here are the other grim findings.
Source: State of Environment report 2022: Five graphics explained
Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest reached a record high for the first six months of the year, as an area five times the size of New York City was destroyed.
Amazon reeling as Brazil’s deforestation breaks all former records
Most Australians at this point would not realise what damage the varroa mite can do. But in 2000 in New Zealand, a varroa mite outbreak led to 90% of bees being killed which almost destroyed the industry. And if that were to happen in Australia it would cause $billion in damage to Australia’s agriculture industry which relies on bees for pollination.
The EPA is urging the Government to order an independent review of Forestry Corporation NSW, which is facing new allegations after having just been fined for wiping out significant koala habitat, writes James Tremain.
She works twice as hard and is twice as smart as Susan Ley ever was. She’s real value for money and transparent to boot is our Tanya
Minister will release five-yearly report which she says details ‘alarming story’ of native species extinction and cultural heritage loss
For life as we know it to persist, we must acknowledge there are natural limits to growth. Economic growth equals increased demand, which is simply not sustainable in a finite world, writes Keith Presnell.
Source: Mother Nature: Economic growth is sending her bankrupt
Technology and new products will assist the transition to better environmental management. To demonstrate the point, was Michaela Cash correct when she claimed that Shorten was coming after your utes when promoting an electric vehicle subsidy? In a word – no. Ford in the USA is now accepting pre-orders for an all-electric F150 truck with a potential $7,500 US Government Tax Credit! If a large American ute is what you need to carry your tools during the week and tow your boat on the weekend, you’ll survive in an all-electric vehicle world. What do you think?
Source: The environmental vandals – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Is he right?
“Delusional, toxic nonsense” is how one critic described Bezos’ call for moving all polluting industry into space.
There is a monster in our oceans, and it isn’t sharks, it’s us.
Source: There Is a Monster in Our Oceans, and It Isn’t Sharks, It’s Us | The Smirking Chimp
Questions about the origins of Covid-19 raise concerns about the safety of U.S. biolabs.
Source: Expanding Research Complex Highlights Dangers of U.S. Biolabs
Burning wood for biomass energy is on the rise as an alternative to coal. But it is even more dirty than coal and is leading to alarming levels of deforestation. Elizabeth Minter, Tom Ferrier and Jane McIntyre report.
Source: “Worse than burning coal”: Hunter Energy powers on bid to burn wood – Michael West
It’s the smell that hits you first. The scent of urine and decomposing bodies. Then you notice other signs: scuttles and squeaks, small dead bodies leaking blood, tails sticking out of hubcaps. If you’ve lived through a mouse plague, you’ve seen this, and smelled the stench of mice dying of poison baits. As a desperate measure to help combat the mouse plague devastating rural communities across New South Wales, the state government yesterday secured 5,000 litres of bromadialone. This is a bait that’s usually illegal to roll out at the proposed scale. This is a bad idea. While bromadiolone effectively kills mice, it also travels up the food chain to poison predators who eat the mice, and other species. And these predators, from wedge-tailed eagles to goannas, are coming in out in droves to feast on their abundant prey.
Source: Mouse plague: bromadialone will obliterate mice, but it’ll poison eagles, snakes and owls, too
An international survey conducted by the University of Cambridge and YouGov ahead of this November’s COP26 United Nations Climate Change Conference, and published on Monday, found overwhelming support around the world for governments taking more robust action to protect the environment amid the worsening climate crisis.
‘The Time Is Now’: Survey Finds Overwhelming International Support for Greater Environmental Protection Ahead of UN Climate Conference | Common Dreams News
In what critics are calling a parting gift to the fossil fuel industry, the Trump administration on Tuesday will ask oil and gas companies to choose which areas of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska—which is the sacred homeland of the Gwich’in Indigenous people—they would like to drill.
Trump Administration Rushes to Auction Off Arctic National Wildlife Refuge Drilling Rights Before Biden Inauguration | Common Dreams News
Today the Australian Koala Foundation announced they believe “there are no more than 80,000 koalas in Australia”, making the species “functionally extinct”.
The term “functionally extinct” can describe a few perilous situations. In one case, it can refer to a species whose population has declined to the point where it can no longer play a significant role in their ecosystem. For example, it has been used to describe dingoes in places where they have become so reduced they have a negligible influence on the species they prey on.
via A report claims koalas are ‘functionally extinct’ – but what does that mean?
AUSTRALIA DAY (ODT)
Whose guardianship do you trust?
It has only taken Europeans 230 years to destroy what the First Australians preserved for over 60,000 years. In another 230 years there may be nothing left to preserve.
via The true guardians of Australia – » The Australian Independent Media Network
But Richard Kingsford, the director of the Centre for Ecosystem Science at the University of NSW, said it was a disaster that had been many years in the making because too much water had been diverted from the system for agriculture.
“Droughts would have contributed to the blue green algae outbreak,” he said. “But the river droughts are happening more often and they’re more intense as a result of the irrigation industry in the Darling diverting water from the river over the last 10 to 20 years.”
The cotton industry says it is not to blame for the mass deaths of hundreds of thousands of fish in the Darling River and is tired of being a “whipping boy” for problems associated with the drought.
Communities in the Menindee Lakes region, where two fish kills have occurred since December, have said over-extraction by irrigators helped cause the catastrophe that has put a spotlight on the environmental management of Australia’s largest river system.
The Government, of course, blamed the drought which they also claimed neither to be an extraordinary event nor a man made regulatory failure. (ODT)
The CSIRO told the ABC that this increased regulation of river water and restricted water flow from low rainfall have caused an increased number of algal blooms in recent years in the Murray-Darling Basin.
“We’re really angry about it because we know that this is not a natural disaster, this is a man-made disaster,” said McBride.
“We really want to make sure that we change the way the lakes are managed so that we never see this again because it’s just heartbreaking.”
One Million Fish Have Died In The Darling River, Here’s What’s Going On
New information on the removal of koalas from the Coomera-Pimpama region reveals a lack of compassion from the Government.
Journalists from national news organizations were barred from a summit in Washington on harmful water contaminants on Tuesday, convened by the embattled environmental protection agency (EPA) chief, Scott Pruitt. One reporter was manhandled out of the building.
via Journalists barred from EPA summit on harmful water contaminants | Media | The Guardian
Yesterday, AECOM, an international corporation with assets worth almost $6 billion, confirmed it had “demobilised” from Adani Group’s project, joining a growing list of partners and investors who have walked away from the venture.
The Taj Mahal of the Adani Empire a Coal- Fired Power Plant is for sale for 0.05 cents ” the Mundra power plant – ironically, now for sale for one rupee.”
“Adani never bothered to meet environmental conditions in its own country, why do you imagine they will do so in yours?” Jairam Ramesh, former minister for the environment of India,
Related Story: Gas company ‘knew it was causing damage but allowed it to continue’
Related Story: Linc Energy workers told to drink milk and eat yogurt to avoid acid burns, court told
Related Story: Linc Energy ‘did nothing’ to stop its alleged contamination continuing, court told
Related Story: ‘Unusual’ trial against Linc Energy over alleged contamination in Queensland
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt announced a plan to revise existing tailpipe standards that were going to apply for model years 2022 to 2025, saying the current standards “are not appropriate” and were set “too high.” Pruitt also said the EPA is re-examining the state of California’s historic ability to adopt tailpipe standards that are more ambitious than the federal government’s.
via How Trump’s Gutting of Tailpipe Standards will make China Auto Leader Worldwide
Overall, 80 per cent of Australia’s marine park waters would be opened to commercial fishing, up from 63 percent.
The government believes the regulation protects important marine habitat, maintains sustainable fishing and promotes ecotourism. It argues the changes are needed to reduce the financial effects on commercial fishers of Labor’s plan, and simplify zoning and boundaries to enable better compliance.
via Government winds back marine protections to support fishing industry
Foster hadn’t killed anyone. He didn’t even injure anyone when, on Oct. 11, 2016, he put on a white hard hat and neon-yellow safety vest, grabbed some bolt cutters, and clipped the chain locking a fenced section of the Keystone Pipeline in Walhalla, North Dakota. Once inside the fence, Foster cranked a giant wheel-like valve until it closed, temporarily stopping the flow of tar sands oil.
via Environmentalists Say They’re Averting Climate Disaster. Conservatives Say It’s Terrorism.
When the Sun comes out and the leaves return to the trees, Australians know it’s time to flee, writes Ben Pobjie.
olddogthoughts 
You must be logged in to post a comment.