Environment

By Max Lane

The current federal election campaign is proceeding and will proceed until August 21 without the issue of climate change being seriously discussed. Neither the Labor Party nor the Liberal-National Coalition wants a serious discussion of the issue. Julia Gillard announced a “new” policy of doing nothing, except for a Rudd-style talk-fest to be called a “Citizens’ Assembly”. The Coalition are trying to buy environmental credentials with a “green army” while turning a blind eye to the greenhouse gasses spewing forth into the skies from Australian industry.

By James Crafti

Racism is at the forefront of the 2010 Australian election. Both Labor and Coalition politicians use some of their most passionate language to convey the false idea that the few thousand Afghan and other Asian asylum seekers who have arrived by boat are responsible for a host of problems caused by their own decisions to prioritise corporate profits before social needs, such as their encouragement of suburban sprawl and lack of funding of public transport and public health services.

By Barry Sheppard, in San Francisco

Two months after the April 20 explosion on a BP-leased Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico triggered the greatest environment disaster from a single incident in US history, the oil keeps gushing. Along the shoreline encompassing the US Gulf states, oil creeps up further and further from the gusher itself. The fertile seafood beds and fishing grounds along the Louisiana coast have been destroyed, along with the livelihoods of tens of thousands.

By Shua Garfield

Australia’s population, currently 22.4 million, is predicted to rise to 35.9 million by 2050, according to the Australian Treasury Department’s Intergenerational Report 2010, released by federal treasurer Wayne Swan on February 1. On April 3, then-Prime Minister Kevin Rudd appointed Tony Burke as Australia’s first population minister to “help guide the development of policies to meet Australia’s future population needs”. The predicted population growth and the appointment of Burke as population minister elicited commentary from across the political spectrum on the desirability of such growth and the supposed effects it will have.

By Barry Sheppard, in San Francisco

May 25 — The Obama administration, British Petroleum and the corporate media have worked overtime to minimise information and outright lie about the catastrophic impact of the explosion on BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico on April 20. The truth has been coming out in dribbles, when it cannot be denied any longer, or when independent scientists publicise it.

[The following is an abridged version of the declaration issued by the April 20-22 World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, held on April 22 in Cochabamba, Bolivia. The conference, convened by the government of Bolivian President Evo Morales, was attended by at least 15,000 people, including official delegates from 47 countries.]

By Jon Lamb

Indigenous communities, environmentalists and human rights activists are gearing up for a fight against the federal government’s push to create a nuclear waste dump in the Northern Territory. Traditional owners in the area of the proposed waste dump at Muckaty Station, located around 120 kilometres north of Tennant Creek, are strongly opposed to it. The dump represents another step towards Australia playing a larger role in the deadly and unsustainable nuclear industry.

By Allen Myers

Last month, I was fortunate to hear Phillip Adams’ ABC Radio interview with Dr James Hansen, the US scientist who has done so much to awaken the world to the fact that our climate is already changing and that it will change catastrophically if we don’t very quickly stop dumping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

By Sam King

An Australian company has a significant but little-known role in the creation of the world’s largest mud volcano, located in the densely populated Sidoarjo district of Indonesia’s East Java province. The eruption began at 5am on May 28, 2006, when the mining company Lapindo Brantas took the decision to drill a bore hole to a depth of 2.8 kilometres without a protective steel casing. The subsequent eruption killed 13 people and has displaced more than 40,000 through the destruction of 13 villages.

By Tim Stewart

“Penny Wong jeered, Hugo Chavez cheered” was the headline of an article in the Australian newspaper during the final days of the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen last December. Wong, the Australian Minister for Climate Change, was there to “seal a deal” which favoured business-as-usual for the world’s biggest carbon dioxide polluters. Despite years of pledges to act on climate change, the bottom line for the Rudd Labor government is still a mere 5% reduction of carbon emissions by 2020.