Our Constitution doesn’t contain an explicit paragraph for environmental protection, nor do we have a bill of rights.
Brendan Sydes said we have very few rights in our Constitution. “We don’t have the direct constitutional foundation for pursuing these sorts of actions,” he said.
“But there certainly is interest in … trying to find duties or obligations deep within our legal system that would force the Australian Government to take climate change and the need to reduce emissions farm more seriously than they are at the moment.
Dr Tom Baxter, corporate governance lecturer at the University of Tasmania, says the Federal Government hasn’t added a climate change trigger to Australia’s environment legislation. “Environmental lawyers are trying to use other mechanisms to prevent companies like Adani digging up the Galilee Basin and shipping coal out through the Great Barrier Reef.”
Greenpeace and the environmental group Youth and Nature are suing the Norwegian Government for granting Arctic oil drilling licenses.
Their argument is based on an article in the Norwegian constitution protecting the right to an environment that’s healthy and that long-term consideration be given to digging up natural resources.
Greenpeace Norway head Truls Gulowsen told Hack it all comes down to climate change and oil licenses.
“We had challenged the Norwegian state for handing out new licenses for drilling in the arctic in spite of the fact that they have signed the Paris Agreement,” he said on his way to court. “They acknowledge climate change is a problem, and they know that the world has already found more carbon, fossil carbon, than we can ever afford to burn.”
He said Norway’s constitution gives future generations the right to a healthy environment.
“[That] puts duties on the state to guarantee and safeguard those rights.”
Brendan Sydes, lawyer and CEO of Environmental Justice Australia, says the strategy used by Greenpeace goes to a country’s legal foundation, instead of working with a country’s environmental regulations. Continue reading →
Millions of dollars are being injected into the New England for large-scale renewable projects every year.
And while it might be daunting for many farmers, it’s a brave new world we have to get used to, Wind Alliance NSW organiser Charlie Prell says.
A fourth generation farmer from Crookwell and a turbine host himself, Mr Prell is holding a forum in Kentucky this week to shed light on common myths about renewable projects.
He said a major issue is when neighbouring properties are left with no say and no money while next door gets the benefits. “It’s really easy to solve,” he said. “The Wind Alliance has been promoting this thing called benefit sharing.” It’s all about strategic options for delivering ownership for wind farms in NSW, Mr Prell said.
“It’s so most people are not excluded from projects,” he said. “They probably won’t get paid as much as a host but at the moment there’s a cliff face where the host gets paid a lot and the neighbours get paid nothing.“Obviously they become disillusioned and skeptical by that process.”
Mr Prell said if neighbours are paid on a sliding scale depending on their proximity to the turbines, instead of a “cliff face” there’s a gradual decline.
“There’s no economic precedent for doing that but in small regional communities it actually makes a whole lot of social sense,” he said. Continue reading →
New nuclear power cannot rival windfarms on price, energy boss says
Innogy Renewables chief claims future reactors will not be competitive as offshore windfarms become even cheaper, Guardian, Adam Vaughan, 23 Nov 17, New nuclear power stations in the UK can no longer compete with windfarms on price, according to the boss of a German energy company’s green power arm.
Hans Bunting, the chief operating officer of renewables at Innogy SE, part of the company that owns the UK energy supplier npower, said offshore windfarms had become mainstream and were destined to become even cheaper because of new, bigger turbines.
Asked whether nuclear groups that want to build new reactors in the UK could compete with windfarms on cost, even when their intermittency was taken into account, Bunting replied: “Obviously they can’t.”
“What we see now [with prices] is with today’s technology. It’s not about tomorrow’s technology, which is about [to come in] 2025, 2027, when Hinkley will most likely come to the grid … and then it [windfarms] will be even cheaper.”
“It will be a nightmare for anything living there — humans, animals, or plants,” a geologist familiar with ionic clay rare earth mining told Mongabay. “It will be a huge disaster. It will destroy the whole peninsula,” added the geologist, who asked not to be named due to the sensitive nature of the situation.
Water contamination could spell trouble not just for public health but for the local economy.
Another blow to troubled Madagascar rare earth mine, Monga Bay by Edward Carver on 22 November 2017
German and Singaporean business interests have been attempting to start a rare earth mine on northwestern Madagascar’s Ampasindava peninsula.
According to some scientists, going forward with the project would pose grave long-term threats to local people and the surrounding rainforest, including a protected area home to endangered lemurs and other unique wildlife.
The project has been beset by ownership uncertainty, an ongoing investigation into one of its owners for financial misconduct, and permit delays.
Now its concession, previously valued at over $1 billion, has been reappraised at just $48 million.
A rare earth mining project in Madagascar that has been in turmoil for the last two years took another blow in September, when its concession, previously valued at over $1 billion, was reappraised at just $48 million. Tantalum Rare Earth Malagasy (TREM), a company owned by firms in Germany and Singapore, holds the rights to the 92-square mile (238-square kilometer) concession, located on the Ampasindava peninsula in northwest Madagascar, just across the water from Nosy Be, the country’s main tourist destination.
Demand for rare earth elements, sometimes called “technology metals,” has risen in recent decades because they are used in the production of smartphones and other modern devices. China dominates the market for rare earths, having produced more than 85 percent of world supply for the last few decades. But the environmental and health impacts of rare earth mining have caused Chinese authorities to restructure the industry and close, or attempt to close, many of the mines. Now investors are looking elsewhere. Continue reading →
Northern Territory to release 50% renewables plan next week http://reneweconomy.com.au/northern-territory-release-50-renewables-plan-next-week-18260/ By Giles Parkinson on 24 November 2017 As Australia’s national energy policy enter a new hiatus – as the industry awaits some text to be inserted into the thought bubbles around the proposed National Energy Guarantee- some states and territories are getting on with their own plans.
The Labor government in the Northern Territory is expected next week, and possibly as early as Monday, to unveil the detail of its roadmap to a 50 per cent renewable energy target.
The government last year commissioned a special panel to put together the plan, which could result in some 400MW or more of mostly solar capacity in the territory over the next decade – not a huge sum by any means, but still significant given the potential investment droughts elsewhere.
The Labor government in the NT is taking a similar approach as the Labor government in Queensland with its 50 per cent renewable energy target, although the Queensland plans hinge on the outcome of the state election on Saturday. The results seem impossible to predict.
Victoria’s Labor government, meanwhile, has legislated a 40 per cent renewable energy target by 2025, and is conducting a 650MW auction – the largest ever in Australia – while the ACT has already contracted with some 700MW of wind and solar to meet its 100 per cent renewable energy target by 2020.
South Australia’s Labor government has already met its 50 per cent renewable energy target, and is keen on adding more, with numerous large scale solar, wind and storage projects lining up in the state.
Alice Springs has made a major push into solar – including 12MW of rooftop solar and the 4MW Uterne solar system (the first large scale system in Australia) – and is installing a 5MW battery storage unit to help allow more solar into its small grid.
The Department of Defence is also making a major push into solar, announcing tenders for a total of 12.5MW of utility-scale solar for the RAAF base and barracks in and around Darwin.
It was chaired by remote power system expert Alan Langworthy, and including Katherine Howard, former Australian Renewable Energy Agency chair Greg Bourne, Climate Council CEO Amanda McKenzie, and Lyndon Frearson, the head of solar and storage specialists Ekistica.
A National Energy Guarantee could be bad news for the ACT, Canberra Times, Katie Burgess , 24 Nov 17, A National Energy Guarantee could risk years of ACT energy policy and force Canberrans to pay more, ACT climate change minister Shane Rattenbury has warned.
The Greens minister met with his state and federal counterparts at the COAG Energy Council meeting in Hobart on Thursday and Friday.
But Mr Rattenbury said he was concerned that the guarantee would “stymie” new sources of renewable energy, the emission targets were too low, the agreement too short and the modelling was tailored to “inflate the apparent cost-savings”.
He also said an “artificially suppressed” wholesale price would impact on the contract-for-difference model the ACT used as part of its plan to go 100 per cent renewable by 2020.
Through its reverse auctions, ActewAGL pays each large-scale renewable energy generator the difference between their feed-in tariff and the current wholesale price per megawatt hour.
However when wholesale prices are higher than the feed-in tariff, the generator pays ActewAGL and the savings are passed onto customers.
That model has insulated Canberra customers from future price rises.
But if the wholesale price was pushed down, Mr Rattebury said the ACT could pay more.
“We are concerned it will suppress artificially prices in the wholesale market and we believe the wholesale market is an effective means of driving good energy outcomes so the transition across to a certificate-based approach we think distorts the price signalling effect the labour wholesale market is designed to operate,” Mr Rattenbury told a stakeholder meeting.
“As a jurisdiction it’s particularly problematic for us because we have set ourselves on a pathway that’s premised on having an effective wholesale price. For our consumers it’s going to represent a potentially significant cost increase because of the way our electricity contracts are set for the next 20 years.”………
The federal government chose not to adopt the Clean Energy Target recommended by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, instead opting for a National Energy Agreement which would require energy retailers to meet a reliability and emissions guarantee.
The reliability guarantee compels retailers to make a proportion of electricity available from “dispatchable” sources like batteries, hydro or gas, that can be switched on when demand is high.
The emissions guarantee requires retailers to cut their greenhouse emissions by 26 per cent on 2005 by 2030.
The energy guarantee won’t apply to Western Australia and the Northern Territory, meaning those two jurisdictions will have no federal emissions reduction policy after the Renewable Energy Target is scrapped in 2020.
The ACT and South Australia called on the federal government to model the cost of a Clean Energy Target and a Renewable Energy Target as well but they refused.
Mr Rattenbury that was “deeply concerning”.
“We know the National Energy Guarantee is the fourth or fifth best choice because that’s what the backbench watered it down to.
It is notable that as late as two days before Australia’s energy ministers gathered in Hobart, the Turnbull government was still hoping to secure in-principle support for its national energy guarantee.
“Expecting us to sign up was a ridiculous proposition,” Lily D’Ambrosio, Victoria’s energy minister told Fairfax Media, adding there was a “massive pushback” against such undue haste.
So it’s perhaps no wonder the resulting COAG communique was unusually thin.
Indeed, the first pass at modelling the vaguely outlined policy was only completed and shared a few days earlier. Modelling can be made to do almost whatever you want it to do. That’s especially the case when the modeller – in this case, Frontier Economics – wasn’t commissioned to compare outcomes for other schemes.
South Australia and the ACT tried to have the Energy Security Board – which is supposed to answer to all COAG members but so far has served as chief cheerleader of the guarantee – expand the next stage of modelling to consider other options.
While on the face of it a reasonable request, the bid stirred anger from at least one other state because Josh Frydenberg, the environment and energy minister, would never have got such a proposal near his partyroom for approval.
More number crunching in any case may not be the answer – at least, not until the design of the two elements of the guarantee to curb emissions and boost reliability are better defined.
A better approximation of the market distortions caused by relying on the electricity retailers to carry the guarantee obligations – rather than generators, as other programs such as an emissions intensity scheme, would require – may also reveal smaller savings for consumers than being touted.
Closer scrutiny of the guarantee modelling to date only fans doubts.
As South Australia’s Tom Koutsantonis notes, renewable energy schemes of Victoria and Queensland have largely been ignored, while the massive Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro scheme that hasn’t passed a feasibility study is assumed as operating.
The emissions trajectory also falls far short of what has otherwise been projected for the electricity sector – an industry that accounts for about a third of Australia’s carbon pollution.
As Dylan McConnell of Melbourne University notes, the modelling to date has been based on sector emissions for the National Electricity Market, totalling 1352 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent for 2021 to 2030.
Separate work by the government’s Climate Change Authority last year, however, projected electricity sector emissions of 1600 MT of CO2 for the whole 2020-50 period, and included Western Australia and the Northern Territory in that total.
Compared with the Authority’s work then, the national energy guarantee would leave less than two years’ of current power sector emissions for the entire 20 years after 2030, he says.
It really does look like there’s a lot more work to be done.
In his enthusiasm Mr Baker seems unaware that the processed nuclear waste returning from France is classified there as high level waste. The proposed dump for radioactive wastes in outback Australia is obviously intended to store those long-lasting toxic wastes. Australia’s nuclear reactor in Lucas Heights, Sydney produces these dangerous wastes, just the same as any other nuclear reactor.
The Leonora man behind plan for a radioactive waste dump in outback WA, ABC Goldfields ,By Jarrod Lucas, 23 Nov 17, A mining entrepreneur who came to WA’s northern Goldfields during the 1960s nickel boom is behind a new bid to develop an outback repository to store the nation’s radioactive waste.
The Shire of Leonora this week voted 5-2 in favour of joining forces with a private company, headed by former councillor Glenn Baker, to make a bid for Commonwealth funding to fast-track the project.
The council sought legal advice and waited until after last month’s local government elections before voting on the proposal to store medical, industrial and scientific waste underground.
The proposed site is on Clover Downs pastoral station, about 20 kilometres north-west of Leonora……..
Conflict of interest was a deal breaker for council
Mr Baker is a director of Azark Project Proprietary Limited alongside his business partner, Perth-based corporate lawyer and mining executive Peter Remta, with whom he has developed several gold mining projects since the 1980s.
The 79-year-old was behind a previous proposal for a waste storage site that failed to progress in 2015, and he quit the council last month after more than 30 years because of the conflict of interest.
“Now there is no conflict of interest, but it did come up a few times and I left the meetings on those occasions,” he said………
Residents could be offered shares in waste company
Mr Baker flagged the possibility of Leonora residents eventually being given the opportunity to invest in the company.
Sites in South Australia and the Northern Territory have been considered, but lengthy environmental assessments and community consultation mean a final decision is not expected until next year…….
Sites in South Australia and the Northern Territory have been considered, but lengthy environmental assessments and community consultation mean a final decision is not expected until next year……..
Traditional landowner Vicky Abdullah said she had previously organised a petition with 500 signatures opposing the project.
“From my point of view, they can do it somewhere else, not in Leonora,” she said.
Ms Abdullah said the local Indigenous community was yet to be effectively consulted about the revived proposal.
Environmentalists opposed to facility in outback WA
Australian Conservation Foundation nuclear campaigner Dave Sweeney said it was a long way from a “bad council decision” to a national radioactive waste dump in outback WA.
“It is pretty much radioactive groundhog day,” he said.
“It’s come up before in Leonora, and there was a strong and negative response from many there in the community.
“I’m obviously disappointed Leonora has put itself back in this frame, because it’s a divisive place to be.”
Mr Sweeney suggested it would not just be for low-level radioactive material.
“This has nothing to do with nuclear medicine, and everything to do with the operations of the Lucas Heights reactor,” he said.
Mr Baker disputed that point, saying it was one of the misconceptions about what was being proposed.
“People are confused when we talk about radiation … this is not a nuclear waste disposal facility,” he said.
“Australia does not have a nuclear industry, so has no nuclear waste to bury. That’s uranium 235 which is used in atomic bombs, powerhouses etc.
Nuclear Hotseat , a nuclear awareness podcast, has cautioned about a burial plan for burial of highly radioactive waste near the high tide location of the Pacific Ocean.
This Week’s Featured Interview:
Donna Gilmore of SanOnofreSafety.org reports on Southern California Edison’s plans to bury 1,800 tons – that’s 3,600,000 pounds <!>of high-level radioactive waste on the Pacific Ocean a mere 36 yards from high tide in canisters that are known to crack and leak. Each one contains a Chernobyl’s worth of radiation less than 70 miles
Australia facing climate disaster on its doorstep, government’s white paper warns
Foreign policy paper says climate-related conflict and migration could put Australia’s economic interests under pressure, Guardian, Katharine Murphy, 23 Nov 17,Climate change is creating a disaster on Australia’s doorstep, with environmental degradation and the demand for sustainable sources of food undermining stability in some countries, especially “fragile states”, according to the Australian government’s first foreign policy white paper in more than a decade.
The new white paper, released on Thursday, contains warnings over the disruptive effects of climate change in Australia’s immediate region, noting that many small island states will be “severely affected in the long term”, and the coming decade will see increased need for disaster relief.
The white paper notes the demand for water and food will rise, with the world’s oceans and forests under intense pressure. It notes climate change and pressure on the environment could contribute to conflict and irregular migration, impacting specifically on Australia’s economic interests.
no amount of corporate black washing – including Indigenous participation plans that champion strong and effective relationships between Adani and W&J, alongside jobs and traineeships – can hide Adani’s direct and immediate part in walking over the rights of Traditional Owners.
Traditional Owners Expose Adani’s Relentless Pursuit of W&J Country, New Matilda By Kristen Lyonson
In the third in a five part series on the proposed Adani Carmichael coal mine, Kristen Lyons looks at a deal struck between the miners and the local traditional owners, and why it just adds to the smell that pervades the entire project.
Introduction
The Indian industrial conglomerate, Adani Enterprises – well known for environmental damage and human rights abuses at its project sites around the world, and built upon a complex business structure with tax havens in the Cayman Islands – entered Australia in 2010 with the purchase of coal tenements in the Galilee Basin, in Central Queensland.
Despite its controversial back story, some of which has only come to light since approvals were granted for its Australian project, Adani quickly rose to become a poster child for the State Government, based on promises its Carmichael mine project would deliver jobs and economic growth for regional Queensland.
Managed by its domestic arm, Adani Mining Pty Ltd, over the following years it developed a project proposal that included a coalmine, as well as rail and port infrastructure, thereby opening up the massive Galilee Basin for coal exports.
With seven years gone since acquisition of the coal tenements, and marred by substantial project downsizing, Adani is yet to start construction of its mega mine. Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners Family Councils’ (W&J) defiant opposition to Adani’s proposed Carmichael mine has been central to this delay; opposition that has, in itself, exposed the dirty deeds Adani is willing to perpetrate against Traditional Owners who seek to defend their right to say no to a mine that would destroy their country.
This article exposes some of Adani’s deeds, including its nefarious actions in reaching an ‘agreement’ with Traditional Owners, Continue reading →
Queensland election: Palaszczuk refuses to rule out Adani mine road upgrade funding, ABC, By Chris O’Brien, 23 Nov 17, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has not ruled out helping central Queensland councils upgrade roads for Adani’s planned Carmichael mine.
Ms Palaszczuk previously stated that taxpayers’ money would not be provided for the mine.
The Greens outline their balance of power demands, Brisbane Times, By Felicity Caldwell, 23 Nov 17, Banning cash-for-access meetings, scrapping the royalty holiday to Adani and $1 public transport fares will be among the Greens’ demands if the party holds the balance of power in the Queensland Parliament.
Fairfax Media can reveal the list of seven key demands from the minor party ahead of Saturday’s state election………
The Greens’ negotiating demands are:
Ban corporate donations and cash-for-access meetings
End the social housing waiting list and address homelessness, by building enough homes to get 29,000 people off the social housing waiting list and house 20,000 homeless people
Scrap the royalty holiday for Adani, revoke Adani’s mining licence and access to ground water…….
The Greens’ campaign has been bolstered by an Essential Research poll of 430 people, which shows the party ahead in South Brisbane, currently held by Labor Deputy Premier Jackie Trad.
The poll has the Greens on 36 per cent of the first preference vote, 32 per cent to Labor, 24 per cent to the LNP and 8 per cent not sure.
However, the LNP will list the Greens last on its how-to-vote cards, which should give Ms Trad a boost in the two-party preferred count.
Qld farmers and graziers afraid to speak out against the Adani mine, says Bruce Currie, ABC AM By Katherine Gregory 23 Nov 17 It’s not just urban southern greenies and pro-coal country Queenslanders involved in the Adani debate — farmers and graziers in the north are also voicing their concerns. In north and central parts of Queensland, some say they are worried about the environmental impacts of the mine and their future livelihood.
Bruce Currie, who has land near Jericho, about 100 kilometres from the Adani site, said many graziers in the Galilee basin were worried about their groundwater security.
“The people I have spoken to on the actual site are very concerned,” he said.
“Because any discussions they’ve had with Adani, the company has not been prepared to accept the onus of proof.
“Court cases have shown it is going to be extremely hard, if near nearly impossible, for landholders to get their water supplies secure if they have to prove it’s a mining company that destroyed them.”
However, farmers like Mr Couture concerned about the mine face desperation for jobs in the region.
Mr Couture said though publicly the media was reporting that Bowen was pro Adani, in truth the town was split on the issue.
“I would say it’s 50/50. The silent majority is not game to talk in public, because you could upset your neighbour, you could upset your family, you could upset people that are pro Adani,” he said.
Mr Currie, who is running as an independent in the electorate of Gregory for the state election, said while Adani spoke about developing the Galilee Basin, that was not really happening.
“Once those mines have been and gone within the lifetime of my kids, there will be no mines, there will be no resources and no royalties, and they would have destroyed our water for perpetuity,” he said.
Concern about the mine has also extended hundreds of kilometres further east to Bowen, about three hours drive south of Townsville.
Dennis Couture, a fruit and vegetable grower in Bowen, said the growing region and Great Barrier Reef could be under threat in the future.
“For the future generation, to be able to give them something that won’t be destructed and wrecked,” he said.
However he said he mostly unhappy with what appeared to be a double standard by the Queensland Government.
“The Government will permit Adani to use as much water as they want,” he said.
The protesters gathered at Labor MP Lisa Chesters’ office at noon before marching to the office of Senator Bridget McKenzie. Carrying placards and wearing pictures of black lungs, members from the Bendigo District Australian Conservation Foundation delivered letters to both politicians.
Victorian Committee of Doctors for the Environment Australia chair Dr John Iser also spoke at the protest, voicing concerns about health implications of the mine’s coal pollution on its workers and surrounding communities.
It is the first of two events planned in Bendigo for the national “Stop Adani Shakeup” week.
The Road to War brings a sharp focus to why it is not in Australia’s best interest to be dragged into a war with China which will almost inevitably go nuclear very quickly. The filmmaker has interviewed some of Australia’s senior foreign policy analysts who have vast experience behind them in analysing what really is going on here as the United States rattles its sabres with China. And sets us up to be its proxy, like the poor Ukranians have been fed into the Meatgrinder. So America can remain the Top Dog. The Road to War reveals how the United States through its spy base at Pine Gap and by stationing six nuclear capable B52 bombers in the Top End (without permission from the traditional owners) is making Australia a prime nuclear target if the current war of words suddenly melts down into full scale war.
The Road to War shows the implicit connection between Carbon emissions (the US military uses a whopping 70% of America’s annual petroleum to move its armies and vast War Machine around the globe to its 800+ military bases..but under a loophole wangled at Kyoto, the US military does not have to report its C02 annual emissions). The Road to War starts screening at selected cities and regional centres in March. See the trailer end for details.
Antinuclear 