New Fossil Fuel Projects Must Stop
By Keith Antonysen
I’m extremely concerned about where climate change is taking us. The Labor Party policy of reducing emissions to 43% is not good enough.
However, a reduction of 50% or 70% is hardly enough when huge “climate bombs” are being created through developments such as the new Scarborough gas field in Western Australia and Beetaloo Basin fracking site in the Northern Territory, along with other sites which are proposed in Australia. Major fossil fuel corporations are wanting to develop “carbon bombs” in other parts of the world also.
Satellite data shows how emissions of methane from the Bowen Basin coal fields display how the emissions have been understated by the previous government. The emissions from the Bowen Basin are said to produce the carbon footprint of a mid-sized European country.
The latest IPCC Reports in 2021 and 2022, and the International Energy Agency indicate that no new fossil fuel projects should go ahead.
Clearly, a mess has been left by the former government promoting fossil fuels, any new fossil fuel projects will take some time to be developed, and so, will not aid the current energy crisis.
For numerous decades the research of climate scientists has been showing that we can expect a deterioration of the climate through continuing to use fossil fuels.
While it might seem histrionic to suggest that a by-product of fossil fuel mining and use is killing people and the biosphere, that is exactly what is happening. Epidemiological studies display how millions of people die through the pollution created by the emissions from fossil fuels.
Labor’s 43% reduction in emissions is a starting point; while the development of “carbon bomb” type developments are also a further starting point to worsen extreme natural events amplified by climate change.
The very simple equation is: mining of fossil fuels and exporting them for use in power plants and transport = death for millions of people and ruining the biosphere.
Keith Antonysen is not a member of any political party. He has been concerned about climate change for several decades.
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Return to home pageAustralian Conservation Foundation today commenced legal proceedings against Woodside Energy.
The legal precedent they hope to achieve — Climate impacts must be considered under our national environment law.
“Woodside Energy’s Scarborough Gas Project and its Pluto extension is the most polluting new fossil fuel proposal in Australia . . . It would result in yearly, yes, YEARLY, climate pollution from 15 coal fired power stations.”
“ . . . plan to build it on one of the most captivating marine environments in the world in an area of immeasurable significance to First Nations Peoples.”
This is a disaster for nature and a methane time bomb.
ACF asks please help us take Woodside to the Federal Court. What are you waiting for. Give generously.
It’s Time, Albo, old son, many have faith that you and this government will put us on the path to hope, on the hind legs, buddy, stand up, we are in deep shit.
Science tells us we need to reduce our emission by 60% by 2030 to keep global warming under 2%..Majority ALP government assures a bright future for coal and gas donors. Whether I’m here or not to see it, I pray (to both Bacchus and Bastet) that the trend continues and our next government is a minority ALP one (thus assuring some real progress).
From the Guardian today… a salient essay as to why we are, effectively, doomed to endure a dismal future. The piece ought to be a wake-up call to the world’s political class, with regard to the subject of global warming, but it won’t be. It’s not as if there haven’t been any preceding essays; in fact, there’ve been myriad warnings, from as far back as the late years of the 19th and early years of the 20th centuries.
And the number of warnings have increased in frequency and in the degree of alarm, eventually leading to the first UN COP (Conference of the Parties) meeting in Berlin in 1995; since then these annual meetings now tally at 26. Australia is yet to host such an event, and whether it gets to do so is moot; but the list of host cities and countries is extensive; Geneva, Switzerland; Kyoto, Japan; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Marrakech, Morocco; New Delhi, India; Nairobi, Kenya; Bali, Indonesia; Poznań, Poland; Cancún, Mexico; Durban, South Africa; Doha, Qatar; Paris, France amongst the host locations, along with the most recent, Glasgow, in Scotland. The message has been widely disseminated.
As of 2019, the number of member countries in the UNFCCC (United Nations Climate Change Framework Convention) had reached the high 190’s; essentially every country in the world has a place at the table at these events. The level of alarm in the rhetoric has increasingly ratcheted upwards. The UN General-Secretary, António Guterres, has been strident in his warnings to the world community, but apparently, as today’s Guardian article makes evident, to no avail.
Not to criticise the UN, but to a large extent, their hands are tied. They have no capacity to force member nations to take the necessary steps to bring about radical curbs in the levels of emission of heat-trapping gases. All they seem able to do is to act as a forum, to table the data, to enable debate as to consequences, and to then encourage member nations to initiate programs and legislation that will go some way towards alleviation of the impending disaster.
Many scientists involved in mapping & tracking this unfolding disaster couch their public language for fear of being seen as simply doom-mongering. Privately, within their research laboratories and amongst their peers, they speak a different story. Increasingly, at the lay level, concerned citizen scientists and others, writers, journalists, are giving voice to the perils that face us now, and increasingly, into the future. Foremost amongst these voices was the recently deceased British scientist James Lovelock. Others include people with names like Bill McKibben, Derrick Jensen, Paul Wignall, Margaret Klein Salamon, Anne Primavesi, Shelley Streeby, Roy Scranton, Greta Thunberg, Elizabeth Kolbert, Robert Henson, David Wallace-Wells and Joseph Romm. The list is not exhaustive.All of them have made intelligent and appropriate contributions towards the raising of the public’s consciousness with respect to the consequences of the ongoing unfolding of the emissions of by-product gases due to the burning of fossil-fuel products.
And to where have their efforts brought us? To this point in time, where, apparently, nothing is as important to the fossil fuel corporations than ‘business as usual’. Nothing, it seems, will deter these voracious corporations from their apparent intent to kill off mankind in as cruel and heartless fashion as possible. And no political entity, planet-wide, seems capable of reining in these monstrous entities for the sake of humanity. It beggars the imagination that no political entity, anywhere, planet-wide, seems capable of acting responsibly in the interests of mankind, or, for that matter, the entirety of the planetary ecosystem and its teeming millions of inhabitants.
To repeat a phrase previously used in these pages, lifted from the opening words of the 2009 documentary, The Age of Stupid; “We could have saved ourselves.But we didn’t. It’s amazing. What state of mind were we in? To face extinction, and simply shrug it off.”