Showing posts with label environmental vandalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label environmental vandalism. Show all posts
Wednesday 20 May 2020
Time to fight for the forests in New South Wales
In the 2019-20 bushfire season wild fires ravaged forests across New South Wales.
The 100km deep coastal zone running the length of the state was particularly hard hit, but Nambucca State Forest was spared and is a critical refuge for unique wildlife still struggling after those fires.
The Sydney Morning Herald reported on 1 May 2020 that; Government logging has resumed in fire-damaged forests in NSW despite warnings that devastated bushland and endangered wildlife are too fragile to withstand further disruption.....about 92 per cent of the area set for logging was burnt in the fires.
On the morning of Friday 15 May 2020, Gumbaynggirr Traditional Owners and the Nambucca community peacefully demonstrated outside the forest and successfully stopped the NSW Forestry Corporation logging for the day.
This forest is one of the few remaining patches of unburnt koala habitat and critical refuge for wildlife after the recent bushfire season.
Community action brought a welcome reprieve but the fight is just beginning.
The people of New South Wales still need to make sure Nambucca State Forest is kept safe for good.
Support the Gumbaynggirr Traditional Owners on the frontline by calling on your MP to take urgent action to stop this logging destruction.
Join the fight and email your own state MP to save Nambucca and all native forests from the chopping block.
If you live in the Oxley state electorate make sure to email local Nationals MP Melinda Pavey at oxley@parliament.nsw.gov.au.
At 10am on Tuesday 19 May 2019 logging trucks again entered one of the few unburnt refuges in Nambucca State Forest at Jack Ridge Road, Nambucca. If you live in the region now is the time to protest legally along boundaries of this forest at logging road entrances.
The 'Protect Nambucca Heads State Forest' group have put out a call for assistance.
Wednesday 13 May 2020
Just a reminder that although the Australian Parliament is not regularly sitting during the COVID-19 pandemic, the drive to dismantle environmental protections continues apace
The Morrison Coalition Government, aided and abetted by the NSW Coalition Government and industry is pressing ahead with dismantling New South Wales environmental protections by omission & commission.
Here are just five examples.....
The
Oops, my bad! Defence
The
Age,
10 May 2020:
One
of NSW's major thermal coal miners has admitted it submitted
inaccurate figures on the carbon emissions impact of its fuel in an
environmental declaration to the state government.
Centennial
Coal stated in its submission for an extension of its Angus Place
coal mine near Lithgow that burning its coal would produce 80
kilograms of carbon dioxide per tonne. Similar mines – including
two of its own – actually cause 30 times more emissions, or 2.4
tonnes of CO2 per tonne of coal.
"Absolutely,
we stuffed up," Katie Brassil, the company's spokeswoman said.
"Our consultants got it wrong and so we got it wrong."
The
assessment of emissions resulting from burning fossil fuels has
become a sensitive one in NSW after approvals for two projects were
rejected because of the impact of so-called Scope 3 or downstream
emissions resulting from burning the product……
Don’t
Look Here, Look Over There!
Channel
9 News,
9 May 2020:
A
controversial plan for a US company to mine coal beneath a Sydney
drinking water dam has been approved by the New South Wales state
government while focus was on COVID-19.
Woronora
reservoir, an hour's drive south of the CBD, is part of a system
which supplies water to more than 3.4 million people in Greater
Sydney.
The
approval will allow Peabody Energy to send long wall mining machines
450 metres below the earth's surface to crawl along coal seams
directly below the dam.
Dr
Kerryn Phelps says the fact the decision was made "under the
cover of coronavirus" is "unfathomable".
NSW
has spent 12 of the last 20 years in drought, with record low
rainfall plunging much of the state into severe water shortage last
year.
"We
know about the potential for catastrophe," Dr Phelps told
9News.com.au.
"We
just cannot let this [decision] go unchallenged."…..
Washing
Their Hands Of The Problems They Caused
The Sydney Morning Herald,
9 May 2020:
Experts
warn the Morrison government is not using its legal powers to protect
wildlife from devastating bushfires, which killed billions of animals
in the summer.
Under
international law the Commonwealth is responsible for maintaining the
biodiversity of World Heritage Areas. Under federal law, it’s also
responsible for protecting threatened species listed under the
Environment Protection Biodiversity Act. But experts say the
Commonwealth is yet to fulfil its responsibilities.
A
wombat in the charred remains of a Kangaroo Valley
bushfire.CREDIT:WOLTER PEETERS
Environment
minister Sussan Ley has argued states and territories have "primary"
responsibility for wildlife. But environmental law expert, University
of Tasmania professor Jan McDonald, said the environment minister is
legally obliged to work with states to prevent bushfire damage to
threatened species and World Heritage Areas.
A
spokesman for Ms Ley said "other than Commonwealth-managed
National Parks [such as Kakadu and Uluru-Kata Tjuta], natural
disaster preparedness and response planning is led by states and
territories as part of their role as the primary regulators of
Australia’s plants and animals."….
Rigging
The Books
The
Guardian,
8 May 2020:
The
federal government has stopped listing major threats to species under
national environment laws, and plans to address listed threats are
often years out of date or have not been done at all.
Environment
department documents released under freedom of information laws show
the government has stopped assessing what are known as “key
threatening processes”, which are major threats to the survival of
native wildlife.
Conservationists
say it highlights the dysfunctional nature of Australia’s
environmental framework, which makes aspects of wildlife protection
optional for government.
The
Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act is being reviewed, a
once-a-decade requirement under the legislation, and there are calls
for greater accountability rules to be built into Australia’s
environmental laws.
It
follows longstanding criticism that the act is failing to curb
extinction.
‘An
unacceptable excuse’
In
a series of reports since 2018, Guardian Australia has uncovered
multiple failures including delays in listing threatened species and
habitats, threatened species funding being used for projects that do
not benefit species, critical habitat not being protected, and
recovery actions for species not being adopted or implemented.
The
act lists threats such as feral cats, land clearing and climate
change as key threatening processes that push native plants and
animals towards extinction.
Once
a threat is listed, the environment minister decides whether a plan –
known as a threat abatement plan – should be adopted to try to
reduce the impact of the threat on native species.
But
a 2019 briefing document shows the department has stopped
recommending the government’s threatened species scientific
committee assess new key threatening processes for potential listing.
“Addressing
threats to nature ... should not be treated as a luxury
Evan
Quartermain”
Among
its reasons given is that the department has limited resources to
support the work.
The
document says key threatening processes have “limited regulatory
influence” – that they have little effect – and the department
has limited capacity to support assessments of them. Because of this,
the department did not recommend any of the key threatening processes
put forward “as priorities for assessment”….
Quick,
Before They Notice!
The
Guardian, 23 April 2020:
The
environment minister, Sussan Ley, has flagged the government may
change Australia’s national environment laws before a review is
finished later this year.
Ley
said she would introduce “early pieces of legislation” to
parliament if she could to “really get moving with reforming and
revitalising one of our signature pieces of environmental
legislation”.
It
follows business groups and the government emphasising the need to
cut red tape as part of the economic recovery from the coronavirus
crisis, and comes as the businessman Graeme Samuel chairs an
independent statutory review of the Environment Protection and
Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act. An interim report is due in
June, followed by a final report in October.
When
the review was announced, the government said it would be used to
“tackle green tape” and speed up project approvals.
Environmental
organisations have stressed the need for tougher environmental
protections to stem Australia’s high rate of extinction. Australia
has lost more than 50 animal and 60 plant species in the past 200
years and recorded the highest rate of mammalian extinction in the
world over that period.
Ley
said, with the interim report due by the middle of the year, she
expected Samuel would “in the course of the review, identify a
range of measures that we can take to prevent unnecessary delays and
improve environmental standards”.
“Where
there are opportunities to make sensible changes ahead of the final
EPBC review report, I will be prepared to do so,” she said.
On
Thursday, Ley and the prime minister, Scott Morrison, said work was
already under way to speed up environmental assessments of projects
and that the number of on time “key decisions” in the EPBC
process had improved from 19% in the December quarter to 87% in the
March quarter…..
An
environment department spokesman said key decisions covered three
items in the assessment process: the decision on whether a project
requires assessment under the act, the decision on what assessment
method will be used, and the final decision on whether or not to
approve the project.....
Thursday 12 March 2020
A reminder that the NSW Nationals do not have the best interests of Northern Rivers communities at heart
Echo Net Daily, 21 February 2020:
A recently announced bilateral energy deal between the NSW and federal coalition governments – which includes expanding the gas industry – has the full support of local Nationals MLC Ben Franklin.
Franklin replied to the question of whether he was supportive of the expansion of the gas industry, despite it contributing to anthropogenic climate change.
He said, ‘The bilateral deal on energy signed between NSW and the federal government is a wonderful step forward’.
‘As the minister for energy and the environment Matt Kean says, “It is the single biggest state-based financial commitment to emissions reduction in the nation’s history and represents a massive Green deal for NSW”.’
It’s a statement rejected by The Greens and environmental groups.....
* Photograph from www.parliament.nsw.gov.au
Sunday 1 March 2020
Australian Forestry Industry: these future eaters need to be stopped
Australia is the world's smallest continent with a land area of 149,450,000 km2 completely surrounded by ocean.
It is not by accident that the vast majority of its est. 25.6 million strong population live along its fringes - that's where most of the forests and rivers are.
What you see on this map represented approximately 3 per cent of the world’s forests in 2016 and, globally Australia was the country with the seventh largest forest area.
It is estimated that when British-Europeans first came to Australia in 1788, forests covered one-third of the continent - a total of around 49,811,685km2.
This had fallen to less than one-fifth or 19 per cent by 2006. At that time more than 16,500 plant and 3,800 animal species had been identified as forest-dependent.
Ten years later Australia had only 134 million hectares of forest remaining, covering 17 per cent of its land area.
In the 228 years between 1788 and 2016 under the policies, legislation and regulations of successive federal, state and territory governments a total of 24,405,185km2 of predominately tall trees had disappeared under the forester's and farmer's axe, never to return.
The eating of Australia's future continues to this day as projections suggest that by 2030, another 3 million hectares of untouched forest will have been bulldozed in eastern Australia.
That's on top of the tree cover lost in the 2019-20 bushfire season when over 5 million hectares of forest and grassland burned - with 100 per cent of tree canopy lost in some areas of the vast firegrounds.
Combined forest burnt in New South Wales and Victoria this fire season has been estimated in one study as 21 per cent of Australia's entire remaining forest cover.
Yet despite what has been lost and the uncertainty surrounding what might regrow due to the continuing stressful heating and drying of the Australian continent caused by climate change, the forestry industry is pushing hard to expand its activities further into state forests, nature reserves and national parks.
The relentless, selfish greed of this industry needs to be called out for what it is - a collective madness.
If you would like to see the federal government and east coast state governments reign in this madness, please express your views to your local state & federal members of parliament and to the following:
The Hon. Scott Morrison MP, Prime Minister of Australia, PO Box 6022 House of Representatives Parliament House, CANBERRA, ACT 2600
The Hon. Sussan Ley MP, Minister for the Environment, PO Box 6022, House of Representatives, Parliament House, CANBERRA, ACT 2600
The Hon. Gladys Berejiklian MP, Premier of New South Wales,
GPO Box 5341, SYDNEY, NSW 2001
willoughby@parliament.nsw.gov.au
The Hon. Matt Kean MP, NSW Minister for Energy and the Environment,
52 Martin Place, SYDNEY, NSW 2000
hornsby@parliament.nsw.gov.au
The Hon Annastacia Palaszczuk MP, Premier of Queensland,
PO Box 15185, CITY EAST, QLD 4002
thepremier@premiers.qld.gov.au
The Hon Leeanne Enoch MP, Minister for the Environment and the Great Barrier Reef,
GPO Box 5078 BRISBANE, QLD 4001
environment@ministerial.qld.gov.au
The Hon. Daniel Andrews MP, Premier of Victoria,
Office of the Premier, Level 1, 1 Treasury Place, EAST MELBOURNE, Victoria 3002
daniel.andrews@parliament.vic.gov.au
The Hon. Lily D'Ambrosio MP, Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change,
Level 16 8 Nicholson Street, EAST MELBOURNE, Victoria 3002
lily.dambrosio@parliament.vic.gov.au
The Hon Peter Gutwein MP, Premier of Tasmania,
Ground Floor, Public Building, 53 St John Street, LAUNCESTON, Tasmania 7250 peter.gutwein@dpac.tas.gov.au
Roger Janesh MP, Minister for Environment and Parks,
GPO Box 44 HOBART, Tasmania 7001
roger.jaensch@parliament.tas.gov.au
Thursday 5 December 2019
Queensland Government gives Adani Group an early Christmas present worth up to $900 million in royalty deferrals
INSTITUTE FOR ENERGY ECONOMICS AND FINANCIAL ANALYSIS (IEEFA):
29 November 2019 (IEEFA Australia) – Queensland Treasury are expected to sign off on a massive early Christmas present worth up to $900m packaged as a seven-year royalty deferral – another term for a capital subsidy – for the Adani Group on 30 November 2019 (likely to be announced on 29 November), ironically on the one-year anniversary of Adani declaring it will self-fund its Carmichael thermal coal mine in the Galilee Basin, Queensland.
Adani Australia – part of the Adani Group of India – announced the Carmichael thermal coal mine would ‘stand on its own two feet’, without any subsidies, in November 2018.
One year later and the Adani Group is not only expected to receive a $900m royalty present from the Queensland government, but the Adani Group is also set to receive over $4.4 billion in total tax exemptions, deferrals and capital subsidies from taxpayers for the life of the Carmichael mine.
“If you give enough subsidies, anything becomes viable.”
“If you give enough subsidies, anything becomes viable,” says Tim Buckley, director of energy finance studies at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).
“Global and domestic banks and insurers have turned their back on financing the Adani Group, joining the massive global financial exit away from thermal coal. To-date, 111 globally significant banks and insurers have implemented formal thermal coal restriction policies, including the latest just this week, being UniCredit, the largest bank in Italy.
“Yet the Queensland government still wants to give an early $900m Christmas present to the Adani Group for a product that faces technological obsolescence, is reliant on ongoing subsidies, and is only viable absent a price on carbon emissions.”
Under existing arrangements, Adani will effectively receive 17% of their coal for free compared to the royalty regime applying in NSW, according to The Australia Institute.
Any deal should be publicly transparent given rising stranded asset risks
“Queensland’s generosity in providing such a lavish gift to India’s richest man means local Queenslanders will NOT see royalties from Adani’s Carmichael thermal coal mine for a decade,” says Buckley. “Any deal should be made transparent to the public, and credible financial assurance needs to be put in place as a minimum to ensure eventual payment, given rising stranded asset risks....
Read the full article here.
BACKGROUND
ABC News, 14 March 2017:
Up to $3 billion from Adani's planned Carmichael coal mine will be shifted to a subsidiary owned in the Cayman Islands if the controversial project goes ahead, an analysis of company filings shows.
Key points:
- 'Royalty deed' gives shell company rights to recieve $2-a-tonne payment beyond first 400K tonnes mined for two decades
- Entitlement owned by company registered in Cayman Islands, controlled by Adani family
- Carmichael coal mine's production capacity means payment ammounts to about $120 million per year
An "overarching royalty deed" gives a shell company rights to receive a $2-a-tonne payment, rising yearly by the inflation rate, beyond the first 400,000 tonnes mined in each production year for two decades.
The company with this entitlement is ultimately owned by Atulya Resources Limited, a secretive entity registered in the Cayman Islands, and controlled by the Adani family.
"In plain English, the upshot for the Adani family is [that] if the mine goes ahead, they receive a $2-a-tonne payment, so up to $3 billion, via a Cayman Islands company, a company owned in a tax haven," says Adam Walters, principal researcher and Energy Resource Insights.
With a production capacity of 60 million tonnes or more a year, that amounts to about $120 million per annum in payments, increasing each year in line with the CPI, potentially flowing offshore.
"I would describe it as a structure that means that the Adani family enriches themselves if the mine goes ahead but that other shareholders are impoverished," associate professor Thomas Clarke, director of the Centre for Corporate Governance at UTS told the ABC.
"The worry is that this may be just the beginning.
"That the Adani family have the ability to shift cash and assets around at will and in the future they may well do so at the cost of shareholders and the Queensland economy."
He said the billions flowing to the Adani private company would come at the expense of minority shareholders in the company listed on the Bombay stock exchange which ultimately owns the Carmichael mine.....
Read the full article here.
ABC News, 21 December 2016:
Giant Indian conglomerate Adani, which plans to build one of the world's largest coal mines in Queensland's Galilee Basin, has set up a complex network of companies and trusts in Australia which are owned in one of the world's major tax havens, the Cayman Islands.
The Adani Group is also attempting to shift ownership of the existing Abbot Point coal port — which it bought for $1.8 billion — to a Singaporean company ultimately owned in the Cayman Islands.
An exhaustive search of company filings and documents across the globe has cast light on this opaque structure of ownership and control.
It has alarmed environmental activists and legal experts, who fear it could make it harder to gain compensation from Adani in the event of an environmental disaster from Adani's planned mine and port expansion on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef.
"I've been a businessman for most of my life, as well as an environmental activist, and the risks are great," said Geoff Cousins, former Optus CEO and chairman of the George Paterson advertising agency, now a board member of the Australian Conservation Foundation.
"With these kinds of approvals of big mining operations or port operations, you always get a set of conditions that the Government puts on.
"But those conditions aren't worth anything if, when something goes wrong, you try to find the company responsible and either it has no money or if it has money it's in a tax haven and you can't reach it."
It is a view echoed by David Chaikin, a professor of business law at the University of Sydney.
"The advantage of having the money in tax havens is that you are able to conceal the source of money, the use of money, and also to minimise tax," he said…..
Adani has created four companies and two trusts in Australia for the rail project.
The parent company for all these entities is Carmichael Rail and Port Singapore Holdings Pte Ltd, a company registered in Singapore where the corporate tax rate is 15 per cent.
This Singapore parent company is in turn owned by Atulya Resources Limited, a private company controlled by the Adani family and based in the Cayman Islands.
The port expansion has a similar structure: five companies and two trusts in Australia, ultimately controlled by Atulya Resources in the Cayman Islands……
The Guardian, 29 August 2018:
Mining conglomerate the Adani Group is trying to prevent Indian authorities from accessing its business records as part of an investigation into an alleged $4bn fraud by power companies.
Lawyers for Adani on Tuesday filed a plea asking the Bombay high court to quash a formal request by Indian investigators to Singaporean authorities to force the company to produce information regarding its coal imports from Indonesia.
The request is part of an investigation by India’s Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) into a $4.4bn alleged fraud by 40 power companies including six Adani subsidiaries.
According to DRI documents, the companies allegedly used fake middlemen to inflate the price of coal they were importing from Indonesia. The scheme allowed the companies to charge higher tariffs by exaggerating their production costs, the DRI claimed.
If true, the alleged scam would also have allowed the companies to siphon billions of dollars from India into offshore bank accounts where Indian authorities would struggle to tax or account for the money....
Labels:
Adani Group,
air pollution,
coal,
environmental vandalism,
mining
Sunday 3 November 2019
Meet some of Meet Scott Morrsison's "indulgent" environmental "anarchists" as they sing about 200 weeks of continuous protest
Terrifying bunch aren't they? One can just see they have molotov cocktails in their back pockets and are planning violent chaos.
Scott Morrison is such a fool.
Sign the petition below if you want to be alerted when the Narrabri Gas Project is referred to the IPC for a public hearing and a decision. And here's the Knitting Nannas in Martin Place today - 200 wks of protests! Sign the petition: https://t.co/F1iJfSj9HO?amp=1— Lock the Gate (@LockTheGate) November 1, 2019
Monday 30 September 2019
Water raiders drop the pretence and go for source of Clarence Valley's drinking water
Having degraded their own rivers and failed to adequately plan their own water security for times of drought, local governments in the Murray-Darling Basin are calling for damming and diversion of water from the Northern NSW Clarence River system.
Thus far the Maryland River and the Aberfoyle River have been identified as desirable options by these wannabee water raiders.
|
This is the Clarence River Catchment.
via Blicks River Guardians
The Aberfolye River is shown in the left hand lower curve of the catchment boundary.
The river is approximately 115km in length with an annual average water flow of 19,482 ML.
The Aberfoyle River* empties into the Guy Fawkes River which in turn runs into the Boyd River which is a tributary of the Nymbodia River which itself is the greatest contributor of water to the Clarence River system and the source of at least 95 per cent of Clarence Valley drinking water.
The Nymboida River is also the source for water storage held in the 30,000Ml Shannon Creek side dam which supplies water security for a combined total of 128,198 residents (as well as local businesses and over 5 million tourists annually) in Clarence Valley and Coffs Harbour City local government areas.
Ten years ago the Nymboida was supplying water for a population of 95,000 - in forty years time it is conservatively expected to supply 220,000. |
Currently WaterNSW, a NSW Government agency, is investigating a proposal to extract water from the Aberfoyle River and send it south-west to the Gwydir River and Copeton Dam at an estimated cost of $1.8 billion.
This proposal appears to be based on one of fourteen Clarence River diversion schemes 'desktop' investigated in the early 1980s - specifically a proposed dam on the Aberfoyle diverting water to either Happy Valley, Boorolong or Teatree creeks to feed the Gwydir River, or alternatively an Aberfoyle dam to feed the Gara River.
Drawing more water from the Upper Nymboida sub-catchment will in all probability raise hydrological and environmental stress on the entire Nymboida River and, may result in water levels at the Nymboida Weir falling below the 225Ml/D low flow level pumping cutoff up to est. 80 per cent of the time.
At the time of writing the Nymboida flow was 200Ml/D.
At the time of writing the Nymboida flow was 200Ml/D.
Indeed, given that rainfall decline has been occurring in the Northern Rivers region for around five decades, any further decline in available river water to supply daily use and long-term water storage has the potential to see intractable water scarcity develop in Clarence Valley and Coffs Harbour City local government areas, as well as a sharp decline in the health of the Nymboida River.
The rest of eastern Australia needs to realise that the Clarence River system is not filled to the brim with harvestable water. The 500,000,000Ml of water annually discharging into the Pacific Ocean at the mouth of the Clarence River was a myth from the first time it was calculated.
Even Clarence Valley and Coffs Harbour City councils will have to curb their desire for continuous development, as they probably have less than twenty years of water security remaining even if the wall of Shannon Creek Dam were to be raised.
Since the Millennium Drought Clarence Valley households have been on permanent low level water use restrictions as a precautionary measure, but as this current drought** may indicate that severe drought is no longer an anomaly but an everyday fact of life, we may be facing a higher level of permanent water restrictions very soon.
The rest of eastern Australia needs to realise that the Clarence River system is not filled to the brim with harvestable water. The 500,000,000Ml of water annually discharging into the Pacific Ocean at the mouth of the Clarence River was a myth from the first time it was calculated.
Even Clarence Valley and Coffs Harbour City councils will have to curb their desire for continuous development, as they probably have less than twenty years of water security remaining even if the wall of Shannon Creek Dam were to be raised.
Since the Millennium Drought Clarence Valley households have been on permanent low level water use restrictions as a precautionary measure, but as this current drought** may indicate that severe drought is no longer an anomaly but an everyday fact of life, we may be facing a higher level of permanent water restrictions very soon.
Note
* The Devils Chimney in the Aberfoyle River gorge was declared an Aboriginal Place on 8 August 1980. It is protected under under Section 90 of the NSW National Parks & Wildlife Act 1974 and can not be damaged, defaced or destroyed without the consent of the NPW Director-General. Unfortunately the NSW Berejiklian Government does allow for damage and destruction of such sites.
** The NSW DPI Clarence Valley Drought Map as of 24 September 2019:
CDI = Combined Drought Indicator. RI = Rainfall Index. SWI = Soil Water Index. PGI = Pasture Growth Index. DDI = Drought Direction Index
Data current to 24/9/2019 (AEST)
* The Devils Chimney in the Aberfoyle River gorge was declared an Aboriginal Place on 8 August 1980. It is protected under under Section 90 of the NSW National Parks & Wildlife Act 1974 and can not be damaged, defaced or destroyed without the consent of the NPW Director-General. Unfortunately the NSW Berejiklian Government does allow for damage and destruction of such sites.
** The NSW DPI Clarence Valley Drought Map as of 24 September 2019:
CDI = Combined Drought Indicator. RI = Rainfall Index. SWI = Soil Water Index. PGI = Pasture Growth Index. DDI = Drought Direction Index
Data current to 24/9/2019 (AEST)
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