Australian Greens will push Australian Parliament to declare a “climate emergency”, as Britain has done
Greens urge climate emergency declaration, https://www.sbs.com.au/news/greens-urge-climate-emergency-declaration 4 May 19, The Greens will push the Australian parliament to declare a “climate emergency” after the federal election, party leader Richard Di Natale says.The federal Greens will push for Australia to declare a national “climate emergency”, following in the footsteps of the UK.
With Britain’s parliament becoming the first in the world to make such a declaration, federal Greens leader Richard Di Natale says it’s time to do the same at home.
With Britain’s parliament becoming the first in the world to make such a declaration, federal Greens leader Richard Di Natale says it’s time to do the same at home.
“We’ve put forward proposals to the parliament already. We’ll be doing that again when we return to the parliament,” he told AAP on Saturday.
“We’re calling on both the Liberal and the Labor party to support what the conservative party in the UK have now adopted.”
Senator Di Natale says the push isn’t a lost cause in Australia’s political environment because “the pressure (to act) is building and it’s building very fast”.
“The major parties ignore the community at their own peril.”
The Greens leader also said he wanted environmental laws to be changed so projects had to specifically take into account their effect on climate change.
Senator Di Natale also backed Labor’s $1 billion pledge for environmental initiatives, including a native species protection fund and protecting beaches from erosion.
But the Greens want a “climate trigger” put into environment laws.
“Quite simply when any proposal is being put forward and the environment impact is being considered, what we have to do is make sure climate change is the first thing that’s considered as part of environmental impact,” Senator Di Natale said.
Adani coal mine expansion is the critical test for Australia’s climate action. We must stop it – Bob Brown
‘It is up to us,’ to stop Adani: Bob Brown’s dire warning on coal mine, SBS, 5 May 19, The stop Adani convoy has ended its long j
ourney in Canberra with a rally on the lawns of Parliament House where Paul Kelly performed.
Veteran environmental activist Bob Brown has told thousands of climate action supporters they can’t rely on divine intervention to prevent the Adani coal mine. “It is up to us”.
The former federal Greens leader led the stop-Adani convoy that began in Hobart just before Easter and travelled to Clermont in central Queensland before reaching its final destination in Canberra on Sunday where a rally was held on the lawns of Parliament House.
Organisers estimated there were 2,500 people at the rally – “a bigger crowd than Bill Shorten will face today and a bigger crowd than Scott Morrison will ever face”, Dr Brown said.
He told the crowd that neither of the big parties were willing to stop the Adani mine to secure the planet for Australia’s kids……..
Dr Brown told reporters the convoy had been peaceful and law abiding but participants had endured hardships along the route.
“We had rocks thrown at us, we had people spat on, some people were actually physically absued.”…..
Greens leader Richard Di Natale told reporters Australia was in the midst of a climate election.
“Right now the Adani coal mine is a test of whether Liberal or Labor are serious about stopping climate change and right now,” he said,
“Liberal and Labor have failed the test.”……. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/it-is-up-to-us-to-stop-adani-bob-brown-s-dire-warning-on-coal-mine
After a while, the planned South Australian would by more aptly called “A Nuclear Abandonment Site.”
Paul Waldon Fight To Stop Nuclear Waste Dump In Flinders Ranges SA, 6 May 19, Promising new nuclear waste disposal method would be PERMANENT and would not require long dangerous transport
Could this be a solution for Lucas Heights nuclear waste? It would mean permanent, not just temporary, disposal , and it would mean dispoosal near Lucas Heights, NOT trekking the waste dangerously 1700 km to Kimba or Hawker.
We will provide an option for people not satisfied with existing options,” said Deep Isolation’s co-founder and CEO Elizabeth Muller. She pointed out the interim sites were not “deep geologic storage.”
They’re looking at being safe for decades,” Muller said. “They’re looking at temporary storage. We’re looking at disposal.”
David Lochbaum, former director of the Nuclear Safety Program for the Union of Concerned Scientists, has taken a seat on Deep Isolation’s advisory board.
“There are technical, legal and political challenges facing Deep Isolation, to be sure,” Lochbaum said via email. “I think their proposal could very well meet all these challenges.
“The spent fuel storage status quo is only worsening with time,” he said. “We need to find a solution before we run out of time to do so without harm.”
Startup promotes permanent nuclear waste storage via miles-long drilling, South Coast Today, By Christine Legere / Cape Cod Times, 4 May 19, A small startup company in Berkeley, California, with connections to scientists, university professors, industry experts and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs is marketing a method to permanently store nuclear waste, tapping advanced drilling technology used for years by the gas and oil industries.Storage of the highly radioactive waste would be permanent — unlike the options currently available around the world — and the method is being pitched as far less expensive than development of a deep geologic repository such as Yucca Mountain in Nevada. In New England, spent nuclear fuel is being stored on-site at the Maine Yankee, Seabrook, Vermont Yankee, Yankee Rowe, Pilgrim and Millstone nuclear plants. Continue reading
How Does the Olympics Clean Up? (Or, Is There an Olympics Without Cleaning Up?)
Under these circumstances, whether the unresolved issues of radiation, without appropriate treatment of nuclear power facilities, disaster victims lacking a place to reside, the forcible relocation of American army bases or the dispersal of the homeless, the Japanese media has relentlessly broadcast the Olympics.
“The Tokyo Olympics will take place in a state of nuclear emergency. Those countries and the people who participate will, on the one hand, themselves risk exposure, and, on the other, become accomplices to the crimes of this nation.”
THE OLYMPICS CLEAN-UP: FUKUSHIMA, OKINAWA, HOMELESSNESS 陳黃金菊05/05/2019 ENGLISH INTERNATIONAL MAY 2019 How Does the Olympics Clean Up? (Or, Is There an Olympics Without Cleaning Up?)
Young climate activist’s letter to Australia
‘I want my childhood back’: young climate activist’s letter to Australia, SMH ,By Bella Burgemeister, May 4, 2019, My name is Bella, I’m 13 years old and I’m a climate change activist and organiser……
My book – Bella’s Challenge – was published in 2017 and now all the schools in the South West region of WA have a copy! But there’s so much more to be done.
For most of my life, the major parties have done as little as they can get away with when it comes to climate change. Are we really that greedy that we can’t see the bigger, global picture?
Young people like me are the ones who will live with the consequences of inaction on climate
change.
So, when I see our Prime Minister tossing around a lump of coal in the Parliament, I know I have to fight back. When I hear both future potential future prime ministers say they support the Adani coal mine, I know I have to fight back.
When the state government here in WA opens up an area two-thirds the size of Tasmania to gas fracking, I know that I have to fight back. And I’m not the only one.
I’m just one of tens of thousands of kids across Australiagiving up part of their childhood to fight for our future because we have so little time to turn around this human made disaster.
We’ve got until 2030 to get serious – that’s just three more elections – so we can’t waste another term of government.
The School Strike for Climate youth have three simple demands:
2. No new fossil fuel projects, especially drilling in the bight and fracking
3. 100 per cent renewable energy by 2030
The last action, which I was so proud to help organise, saw almost 200,000 young people around
Australia march in over 100 towns and cities.
The Prime Minister used the Parliament to tell us to stay in school, and the opposition leader told us we should have done it on the weekend – surely, he knows, as a former union boss, what the point of a strike is. This time we want to send an even bigger message!
This Friday, May 3, was a national day of action to remind the major parties that this is a climate change election.
Our demands aren’t radical, they’re the very least that needs to be done. They will take effort, but aren’t our futures worth it?
I want to stop worrying about my future and I want my childhood back.
Bella Burgemeister is a WA high school student and one of the key organisers of the WA ‘Schools Strike 4 Climate’ actions. https://www.smh.com.au/national/i-want-my-childhood-back-young-climate-activist-s-letter-to-australia-20190504-p51k2i.html
Schoolkids take their climate message to the politicians. Abbott pooh poohs it.
The earth has survived many things’, Abbott tells children protesting against climate change inaction, SMH, By Laura Chung and Jenny Noyes May 4, 2019 Dark clouds threatened rain as schoolkids gathered outside the Sydney electorate offices of both Labor and Liberal politicians on Friday, but it didn’t dampen their message on climate change.Prime Minister Scott Morrison, former prime minister Tony Abbott and Labor infrastructure spokesman Anthony Albanese were among those targeted as part of the nationwide protest against climate change inaction by federal MPs.
The protest held extra potency in Manly, where Mr Abbott’s 25-year grip on the seat of Warringah is under threat from independent candidate Zali Steggall in a campaign centred on climate change.
Armed with homemade signs, about a hundred students, parents and grandparents marched on Mr Abbott’s Manly office, chanting the slogan favoured by Steggall supporters: “Time’s up Tony”……..
A group of students tracked Mr Abbott down in a local cafe after the protest and voiced their concerns to him.
He also told them he didn’t believe the “environmental catastrophe” predicted by scientists would come about.
“I’m not saying that there isn’t going to be some time in the future when, for whatever reason, things come to an end, but I don’t believe that modest increases of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations over the next few decades are bound to bring about the kind of environmental catastrophe that you seem to fear.”……
Another protester dressed up in costume as Scott Morrison and a blackened piece of ‘coal’.
Another protester dressed up in costume as Scott Morrison and a blackened piece of ‘coal’.
Labor wasn’t let off the hook either.
Students also took their climate message to infrastructure spokesman Anthony Albanese’s Marrickville electorate office too, with a focus on urging Labor to pull the plug on the Adani coal mine. A Bill Shorten costume also made an appearance. https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/the-earth-has-survived-many-things-abbott-tells-children-protesting-against-climate-change-inaction-20190503-p51jts.html
Uranium production is declining
Quarterly uranium output decreases in Kazakhstan and USA, WNN, 03 May 2019 Kazatomprom’s uranium production for the first quarter of 2019 was 4% down from the same period in 2018 as the Kazakh company continues with its plan to reduce production. Meanwhile, US uranium production for the quarter was 74% down from 2018……
US production hits low
US uranium production in the first quarter of 2019, at 58,481 pounds U3O8, was down 83% from the fourth quarter of 2018 and down 74% from the first quarter of 2018, according to figures released on 1 May by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA)……. http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Quarterly-uranium-output-decreases-in-Kazakhstan-a
UK MP deplores the danger of flying nuclear wastes from Scotland
Press and Journal 4th May 2019 Highland Green MSP John Finnie has expressed concern after three quarters
of a ton of highly enriched uranium was transported from Dounreay in
Caithness to America. He said: “The appropriate place for dangerous
material is secure storage and supervision by highly trained staff where it
was created, not transportation.
“Whilst pleased that this risky has been completed without incident, that we know of. “But before the authorities
on both sides of the Atlantic pat themselves on the back, they need to
reflect on the dangers they put communities in. “As was evidenced when a
ship which was transporting nuclear material in the Moray Firth went on
fire. As with oil and gas reserves, the message regarding nuclear waste has
to be ‘keep it in the ground’.”
WA rules out Lynas rare earths waste imports
WA rules out Lynas waste imports THE AUSTRALIAN, 5 May 19
Mines Minister Bill Johnston has rejected a request by the Malaysian government…. (subscribers only)
Vote Tony Out: Campaign hits streets as Steggall takes lead over Abbott — RenewEconomy
Zali Steggall takes commanding lead over Tony Abbott, with the former PM’s lack of interest in climate change cited as major factor. The post Vote Tony Out: Campaign hits streets as Steggall takes lead over Abbott appeared first on RenewEconomy.
via Vote Tony Out: Campaign hits streets as Steggall takes lead over Abbott — RenewEconomy
May 5 Energy News — geoharvey
Opinion: ¶ “Can Microgrids Really Bring Power To The Last Billion?” • After Hurricane Maria, Puerto Rico turned to microgrids for resiliency. Puerto Rico’s embrace of microgrids hints at a different energy future. Some of the 1 billion people around the world without electricity may finally get it without ever needing a central power grid. […]
Keating: Morrison “a fossil with a baseball cap” — RenewEconomy
Keating slams Morrison as a “fossil”, and while Paul Kelly’s music graced official Labor election launch, the man himself was signing at Bob Brown’s Stop Adani protest in Canberra. The post Keating: Morrison “a fossil with a baseball cap” appeared first on RenewEconomy.
via Keating: Morrison “a fossil with a baseball cap” — RenewEconomy
Big batteries help Tesla lift storage revenue near 10-fold in Australia — RenewEconomy
Tesla says revenue from battery storage in Australia jumps nearly 10 fold in 2018 – thanks to its big batteries – but revenue from electric car sales fell. The post Big batteries help Tesla lift storage revenue near 10-fold in Australia appeared first on RenewEconomy.
via Big batteries help Tesla lift storage revenue near 10-fold in Australia — RenewEconomy
Labour will establish South East Queensland community power hub — RenewEconomy
People living in South East Queensland will benefit from cleaner and cheaper renewable energy that will help cut pollution and the cost of power bills, with Labor’s plan to establish a Community Power Hub in the region. The post Labour will establish South East Queensland community power hub appeared first on RenewEconomy.
via Labour will establish South East Queensland community power hub — RenewEconomy
Antinuclear 