A Personal View from the Hunter
By Sharyn Munro
My Wildlife Refuge exists to protect native animals.
We human animals seem to need protection too — from our own progress. Since we’re not quite ready to set up a refuge for humans on Mars, I think we need to look seriously at this ‘progress’. The word implies an advance towards something better, but it’s been misused as an excuse for anything to be imposed on the populace, and endowed with such sanctity and national pride that protesters are labelled mad, bad — or worse, green.
‘Standing in the way of Progress’ is a Sin.
Yet much Progress is not advancing towards anything except Profits for the few and side-benefits for the governments who allow it to happen. For the little people and the environment it is often Regress — ‘a going backwards’ to a worse state than they already had.
As our primary aim we’d do better to replace Progress with Sustainability if we want to leave our grandchildren a viable planet. Global warming is a fact. Rapidly increasing CO2 levels are the reason.
Burning coal for energy emits vast quantities of CO2 — it has to stop. Trees absorb CO2 — land-clearing has to stop.
Here’s the biggest ‘weapon of mass destruction’ the modern world has faced and this time we not only know where it is but it’s in our power to put an end to it. How come the President of the World has shown no interest in tackling this one? Someone should enlighten him: ‘P-s-s-t! No planet, no profits.’
The polar ice caps are melting, as are the glaciers, right now threatening whole countries like Bhutan. They knew it wasn’t just a green conspiracy myth.
Low islands are already being evacuated as the ocean level rises; the 680 inhabitants of the Cataret Atolls off Papua New Guinea were the first official permanent evacuation due to climate change. They knew it wasn’t just a green conspiracy myth.
Our already ‘sunburnt country’ is drying up. The farmers knew it wasn’t just a green conspiracy myth.
The world’s climate is in chaos — ‘natural’ disasters of massive extent are hardly news anymore.
It would be nice if the government could work towards a future beyond the next election. It would be nice if they genuinely got behind renewable energy industries. It would be nice if they stopped saying coal is necessary for the economy, and admitted how much the industry costs us in economic terms, which they should understand.
Politicians keep saying that coal is cheap energy and renewables are too expensive. In fact, the New South Wales government pays the Hunter coal industry more in subsidies than it receives from it in royalties. Hunter coalmines were given $300 million in diesel subsidies in 2005. Imagine that much money going into developing renewable energy industries.
All the attention and the funding is going into research into ‘clean coal’ and ‘low greenhouse gas emission technology’. We already have the latter in renewables — but they’re no good because they don’t involve coal.
It would be nice if they all stopped speaking with forked tongues.
Sometimes it seems that those big money makers and takers live in a different world from us little people, and superficially, they do. But there’s only one earth, and they can’t buy immunity from climate chaos any more than we can.
The Hunter is called Carbon Valley, as the second biggest greenhouse gas producer in Australia, with our power stations and aluminium smelters. And they want to build a third station there. Burning coal. More CO2. Surely no government will agree to that? Knowing the damage it would do to the planet? Of course not — if we lived in a sane world.
For government can’t seem to say ‘No’ to coal, even while now saying, ‘Yes, yes, we must do something about climate change.’ Coal’s toxic effect on the world is proven; it is self-destructive to continue to facilitate its use. Yet our state government still won’t take the carbon cost of proposed new coalmines into account when assessing their environmental impact. How irresponsible is that?
People agree, but shake their heads, shrug their shoulders. ‘You can’t fight the big boys with the big bucks.’ Oh, but we have to try!
So far Australia’s been lucky, just a longer drought and a stronger than usual cyclone or two. Rural stuff. Public awareness is rising at last, but it will probably take a tsunami at Bondi to get the voting majorities to look up from their shopping mall worlds to the bigger picture, and demand real action on climate change from the powers-that-be.
The logical next step is not to mine and sell the coal to other countries’ power stations — there are no atmospheric borders. We must think of other ways of economically progressing. Every new coalmine will add nails to the global coffin. I find downright immoral the view taken by the federal MP responsible for the area where the huge Anvil Hill mine (now called Xstrata Mangoola) is to be — that if we don’t sell them the coal to burn, someone else will. You could say the same about nuclear weapons – or drugs.
It used to be said that Australia rode on the sheep’s back. Do we really want to be now riding on the back of global warming, from coal; or nuclear danger, from uranium? We’re rich in coal and uranium, but we’re also rich in sunshine and wind. We could be proud of our economy riding on those instead, famous for our technological and manufacturing skills in these energy industries that have a safe and proven record, and a future.
If coal is now dodo technology because it’s turned out to be globally self-destructive, nuclear is already proven to be dangerous: in process, in possible uses and in by-products.
‘Safe nuclear’ is as much a myth as ‘clean coal’.
Who’s keeping the blinkers on our ‘leaders’? They see black, they see red, but they can’t or won’t see green, let alone go for it. This cynical little old solar-powered lady dares to wonder why.
Extracts from ‘The Woman on the Mountain’ by Sharyn Munro, published 2007 by Exisle Publishing.
