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Ban Underground Coal Gasification
Underground Coal Gasification (UCG) is an undeveloped, high risk mining technique involving the combustion of coal seams underground.
It has already caused pollution disasters in Australia and overseas. In South West Queenland, Linc Energy polluted 175 square kilometres of prime agricultural land with dangerous chemicals and gasses, causing the death of livestock and damaging farmland for the foreseeable future.
The Queensland government recently responded to this disaster by banning Underground Coal Gasification.
However, this technology is not banned in other states or territories. South Australia is considering allowing commercialisation of UCG. In September 2018, Leigh Creek Energy received final approval from the state's Energy and Mining Minister to commence a three-month trial of UCG at the old Leigh Creek mine site in the state's north.
This proposal is being opposed by the Adnyamathanha people, who have applied for an injunction in South Australia's Supreme Court to stop it from proceeding.
It’s time to build on the momentum of this Queensland ban by instating a national ban on this dangerous practice.
We cannot let agricultural land, ground water and natural environments become the collateral damage of these high risk mining experiments, especially when we have safe, renewable energy options available.
There is no room for this dangerous, high emissions technology in a forward thinking country.
For background information on UCG, please check here.
Environment Minister, Melissa Price, has the power to act to ban this dangerous technology
No Nuclear Waste in the Flinders Ranges Petition
The Turnbull Government is pushing through plans to build a national nuclear waste dump in the Flinders Ranges, South Australia.
In November 2015 Federal Resource Minister Josh Frydenberg named six sites across Australia as potential locations for a facility where low level radioactive waste would be buried and long lived intermediate level waste stored above ground. In April 2016, Minsiter Frydenberg announced that just one of the sites remains under consideration ‒ on Aboriginal land in the Flinders Ranges of SA.
Friends of the Earth has been working closely with Adnyamathanha Traditional Owners who are united in their opposition to the proposed dump. Please show your support for the Traditional Owners by signing our petition.
Will you add your voice to the call?
Join the Climate court case against Shell Petition
Shell is one of the biggest climate polluters in the world. This transnational company has known about the severity of climate change and the impacts of oil and gas drilling for decades, but has not only misled the public on the issue, it continues drilling for fossil fuels. Across the world Shell’s climate wrecking activities are leaving a trail of devastation, from Australia to the Netherlands. We cannot save the climate if large corporations continue to pollute the planet. This is why Friends of the Earth Netherlands is taking Shell to court.
This historic case could set a powerful legal precedent: if we win, one of the world’s biggest polluters will have to stop wrecking the climate. Join the case against Shell as an honorary co-claimant.
Tell Turnbull to take responsibility for climate & energy
With the drought hitting farmers hard in rural NSW, and the Great Barrier Reef under serious threat from rising temperatures, Australia can't afford to waste time when it comes to acting on climate change.
After successive blunders, Energy and Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg has failed to deliver a positive outcome for climate.
It's time for PM Malcolm Turnbull to take responsibility for the important area of climate and energy policy.
Here's what the PM needs to do:
- Step in and stare down the climate deniers in the federal Coalition.
- Deliver a real plan for climate action that meets and exceeds Australia’s responsibilities under the Paris Climate Agreement.
- Extend the national Renewable Energy Target to drive emissions cuts in the electricity sector, create jobs in wind and solar and put downward pressure on power prices.
- Create a plan to phase out Australia’s aging coal fired power stations by 2030.
ACT NOW: Join us and email Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull today and tell him to take personal responsibility for climate and energy policy.
With bushfires raging in the northern hemisphere, and temperature records being broken around the planet, the need to act on climate change is becoming ever more urgent.
Process not postcode for nuclear waste
Please email Minister Matt Canavan and Shadow Minister Kim Carr calling for an end to the SA dump plans, and for the government to initiate a comprehensive, independent inquiry to address all options for the responsible long-term management of Australia's nuclear waste.
Send your emaill now!
Call on Angus Taylor to back Australia's first offshore wind farm Petition
Australia could soon be home to the world's largest offshore wind farm, the Star of the South Energy Project off Victoria's Gippsland coast.
This landmark project promises to deliver clean renewable energy to 1.2 million homes, creating an estimated 12,000 jobs and avoiding up to 10 million tonnes of polluting greenhouse gas emissions.
The Star of the South requires both state and federal planning approval, but has been held up by the federal Coalition government for unknown reasons.
The fate of the project now rests in the hands of Australia's latest Energy Minister, Liberal MP Angus Taylor.
The Playford Declaration
Here in South Australia we are in the midst of an energy transition
from fossil fuels to renewables plus storage.
We applaud what the former State Government has achieved in the construction of renewables and battery storage; the solar subsidy it announced for low income citizens; and the planned move to overlapping local grids to provide a robust network.
While South Australia is well on target to hit its plan for 50% renewables, and predicted to reach 73% renewables by 2025, it is still funding the search for more gas fields, fails to oppose oil exploration in the Great Australian Bight, and is still considering unconventional gas and fracking in the north and south-east of the state.
As was noted by Bill McKibben in his essay “Do The Math” in Rolling Stone, globally, we already have five times the amount of fossil fuel reserves we could possibly burn safely by 2050 — 2,795 Gigatons in reserves vs 565 Gigatons that we could burn by 2050 — there is no reason to spend $48 million searching for more gas and oil.
It makes no sense to search for new fossil fuels which we cannot burn if we hope to contain warming to at most the 1.5 – 2 degrees we pledged for the Paris Agreement.
This is a Friends of the Earth Adelaide and Left Unity SA initiative.
You can download a PDF of this declaration Here
solidarity action
The Australian government is seeking to introduce new espionage and foreign interference laws that threaten our democracy.
Liberal and Labor MPs say the Attorney General has veto power over prosecutions and will choose not to prosecute journalists and community groups. But if the government doesn’t intend to prosecute civil society for these new offences, why are they included in the bill at all?
Labor leader Bill Shorten says that the opposition “won’t support anything that punishes the charity and not-for-profit sector”. We welcome this statement. The Greens have already said they oppose the Bills in their current form. It is essential that the ALP announce that they will vote against the Espionage and Foreign Influence Bills while they include reference to charities.
A vibrant and vocal civil society who are not afraid to speak up are critical to a functioning democracy that seek to hold corporations and governments to account - and these laws put that at risk.
Tell Labor MPs not to support these draconian Bills.
Read more about the proposed bills here.
The outdoor community wants action on climate change Petition
Climate change poses an existential threat to the wild ecosystems that skiers and snow boarders, hikers, climbers, paddlers, trail runners, and mountain bike riders rely on for adventure. It also poses an equally grave threat to the businesses that rely on wild nature for their existence.
Tourist operators on the Great Barrier Reef are shifting their stance on climate change, with the peak industry body now opposing Adani's "mega coal mine", and acknowledging that fossil fuel use needs to be phased out.
In an unprecedented declaration, the Association of Marine Park Tourism Operators (AMPTO) and Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS) have called on "all our political leaders ... to fight for the future of our reef".
By definition, action to protect the Reef must include action to greatly limit greenhouse gas emissions. This is true of other natural landscapes.
In the USA, the outdoor industry and community is flexing its political muscle and campaigning to defend public lands that could lose their protection because of the Trump administration plan to hand them over to mining and fossil fuel companies. It is also calling on the USA to do its fair share of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.
The Australian outdoor community can do the same.
Please sign the open letter to the prime minister.