|
MUZZLED AUSTRALIANS GAIN A VOICE ON ETS
Sign on to the ListenToUs online petition The petition opposes the federal government’s “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme” and will eventually be presented to Parliament by Dr Dennis Jensen, MHR for Tangney. See the AEF media release. Also see Dr Jensen's media release.
As well as signing the petition you can subscribe at the site to the ListenToUs campaign newsletter and also make a foundation investment in the campaign through PayPal.
We have so far raised over $20,000. Our target for the campaign against the Emission’s Trading Scheme is $30,000.
Here is another voice coming out against ETS. Read the transcript of Barnaby Joyce on ABC Lateline 24 February 2009. (He is the head of the Nationals in the Senate.)
Save the Environment, Stop the Emissions Trading Scheme
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Request for Financial Support to Stop the Emissions Trading Scheme
At our recent conference and AGM in Canberra, members decided that the best thing we could do as an organisation for the environment over the next year would be to oppose the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS).
You might well ask why an environment group would oppose such a scheme. Well, for three reasons:
1. An ETS will not change the global temperature;
2. It will force many clean and green Australian industries overseas; and
3. It will make Australians poor, but it is richer, not poorer nations, that are generally better able to protect their natural environment.
Last week the Minister for Climate Change and Water, Penny Wong, said that the Australian government would take the global economic slowdown into account with its plans for carbon trading, but said there was no reason to push back start dates.
I wish she would also take some of the science into consideration!
Indeed the proposed trading scheme represents a major intervention in to the Australian economy with absolutely no chance of changing global temperatures let alone preventing the feared ‘climate crisis’.
It is bad economics, it is bad science and the associated policies are bad for the environment.
On July 14 this year, just before Minister Wong released The Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Green Paper, she stood with the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on the banks of the Hume Dam and suggested that by embracing Emissions Trading, Australians could somehow make it rain in the Murray Darling Basin. (Interview)
Ridiculous statements continue to be made by politicians and lobbyists in the media and attempts to correct them are mostly just ignored. For example, on Monday, Dr Dennis Jensen MP was denied the opportunity to table information in federal parliament showing that many of the current problems facing the Murray Darling Basin are the result of low runoff as a consequence of changed land management practices (including more plantations in the top of catchments), catchment-wide drainage management plans (place in the 1980s and 1990s to lower water tables) and more efficient water use (resulting in less leakage). He explained that it was wrong to blame climate change because there had been no long term decline in rainfall in the Basin, yet the data which shows this was not permitted to be provided to our elected representatives.
Also on Monday, but in the Senate, Ron Boswell spoke against a proposed tax deduction for establishing carbon sinks. The Senator asked the question “If we put 40 million hectares of land into new forestry, where on earth do we put those millions of kangaroos that we’re supposed to farm according to [Professor Ross] Garnaut?” More seriously, if 40 million hectares goes under plantation forestry as proposed by the federal government to fight climate change and offset emissions, there will be even less water for our rivers and streams.
There are a lot of politicians and journalists, as well as ordinary Australians who know that much of what is currently being proposed in the name of stopping climate change is absurd, but there is no organised campaign putting the alternative perspective.
An AEF member, Professor Bob Carter, recently commented to me, “One of the things that I find most troublesome is the degree to which the public airwaves and print channels are filled by people propagating ritualistic, often irrational, emotional views. To what degree this is caused by systematic activity by Green groups or their acolytes, I can't judge, but the result is the same regardless of what the balance of genuine: zealot contributors might be. It is that public opinion still appears to be utterly captivated by AGW dogma. This, of course, is the same perception that all MPs still have, for the Greens make very sure that every communication channel that they can command delivers the alarmist message to MPs.”
The internet is increasingly recognised as an important medium for networking and campaigning. It is a medium for getting an alternative message to a large audience. A dedicated and custom built campaigning website can make it easy for an online community to quickly find their local media and local member and send them a message – as well as encouraging their friends, colleagues and family to send a message.
The AEF needs to build and run a dedicated campaigning website that will initially be used to campaign against the ETS.
If you can make a financial contribution, please go to our website and donate through the PayPal facility using your credit card. http://www.aefweb.info/
Alternatively send a cheque to the Australian Environment Foundation, PO Box 274, Deakin West, ACT 2600.
If you need more information contact Max Rheese (info@aefweb.info, tel. 03 5762 6883)
Make a Donation, Save the Environment, Stop the Emissions Trading Scheme!
Kind regards,
Jennifer Marohasy
Australian Environment Foundation
|
News Update
At talks presented in Bendigo, Shepparton and Albury, AEF member Professor Bob Carter gets the message across that Australia has nothing to gain but a lot to lose from the Emissions Trading Scheme. See regional press reports here and here.
AEF speaks out on global warming in The Australian
An advertisement was placed in The Australian on Tuesday June 9th to draw attention to the ListenToUs campaign opposed to the introduction of an Emissions Tradinng Scheme.
Do yourself, the economy and the enivironment a favour, go to www.listentous.org.au to sign the petition or send an e-postcard to Senators in your state.
The background theme for the advertisement were all the ridiculous claims attributed to global warming listed at John Brignell's Numberwatch website.
THE Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is in excellent shape
Farming and other human activity are not killing the reef, according to James Cook University's reef scientist, and AEF board member, Professor Peter Ridd. Read the interview in the North Queensland Register.
Senator Fielding now a climate realist
See AEF media release
Stop the Emissions Trading Scheme!
Send your Senators an eCard
The ETS bill is in the House of Representatives and will shortly go to the Senate.
It would be difficult to justify an emissions trading scheme (ETS) that imposed large costs for purely symbolic benefit during a period of prosperity - it is absurd to consider as much during a financial crisis.
Send the Senators in your state a Listen To Us eCard to let them know how you feel. There are three cards with the following captions:
- This faulty carbon trading scheme will cost, and won't pay.
- Bad policy and bad science do NOT cancel out.
- Don't waste dollars! Spend them on renewable energy research.
An Inconvenient Truth for forest protestors - No Old Growth Logs used here
Calton Frame from Gunns defends their proposed pulp mill in an ABC Online Opinion piece (May 21st 2009)
Fossil Fuels Fail To Explain Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Levels
(AEF media release 14 April 2009)
The Australian Environment Foundation today welcomed new research by Australian physicist, Dr Tom Quirk, suggesting natural environmental forces, more than just fossil fuel emissions, could be contributing to the elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide [CO2].
“Most CO2 from fossil fuels is emitted in the northern hemisphere and it takes at least six months to spread to the southern hemisphere, which means that concentrations in the northern hemisphere should go up before they do in the southern hemisphere. In fact, they go up simultaneously, which suggests that manmade CO2 emissions are not the only contributor to the rise in global CO2 and there must be some other source. More
Australian Bushfire Management: a case study in wisdom versus folly
In his recent speech, Chairman of The Bushfire Front and AEF member, Roger Underwood makes clear what is wrong with our approach to bush fires - environmentalists and emergency services have the ear of government and this has lead to a serious neglect of preventive measures such as fuel reduction.
NEWS UPDATES
Lessons not yet learned: a bushfire tragedy
Apart from the terrible human and animal suffering from the continuing bushfire crisis in Victoria, the tragedy of this event is the failure of public land managers to heed lessons already learned from past holocausts. More
*********
An unsustainable future - Dr Tom Quirk
"Policy for reducing carbon dioxide emissions now appears to be double-barrelled with a target for renewable sources for electricity generation with government subsidies and a carbon tax in the form of an emissions trading scheme. Neither approach appears to be realistic, possible or even plausible." Read the rest of the article at On Line Opinion.
*********
The Victorian Government's plans for the Murray River forests increase fire risks says AEF Executive Director Max Rheese. See The Australian (13-2-2009).
*********
"Bushfire management: where to from here" On Line Opinion article by Roger Underwood (AEF member)
*********
Australia Lacks Capacity to Meet Carbon Reduction Targets. AEF media release
*********
Declaring four new national parks in northern Victoria is not the way to protect the Murray and its associated red gum forests according to Mark Poynter, a member of the Institute of Foresters of Australia and the AEF. See his article in the The Age of January 2: As red gum forests turn green.
Max Rheese makes a similar point in a letter in The Australian of January 4.
*********
GetUp’s global warming television ads are dishonest and inaccurate See AEF Media Release.
*********
This editorial in The Australian on Dec 17th 2008 highlights how badly the Fourth Estate have let the Australian public down “….naive, prone to hyperbole on environmental issues, ideologically blinkered and lacking logic and analysis skills”
*********
Friends of the Reef not worried about global warming
"THE Greens reckon the Great Barrier Reef is a casualty of Labor's lower-than-expected emissions reduction target, but for those who work among the corals, forecasts aren't so bleak." The Australian Dec 17th 2008.
*********
Professor Bob Carter on YouTube: Science & social context of climate change
(From our 2008 Conference)
RIVER RED GUM FOREST INVESTIGATION
The Rivers & Red Gum Environment Alliance launched its alternative plan to the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council [VEAC] proposals for the River Red Gum Forests of the Murray River at the Victorian Parliament on Thursday July 31st 2008.
The AEF is one of the 25 organisations that make up the Alliance and contributed to the compilation of the report.
The major recommendation of the Alliance Conservation & Community Plan is the creation of 104,700 hectares of Ramsar Reserves to allow for multiple use management of the forests and a higher level of biodiversity conservation. Read more on the launch and the Alliance plan here
ECHUCA RALLY OPPOSES VEAC’S RED GUM PROPOSALS
A Public Land Rights Rally was held in Echuca on October 5th 2008 to protest against the Victorian Environmental Assessment Council proposals for the red gum forests of the Murray River.
2000 marchers, a number of them AEF members, blocked the traffic in High Street Echuca and brought the town to a standstill. Local people and visitors alike clapped and cheered as the march led by dozens of Barmah cattlemen on their horses proceeded to the local park to hear speakers denounce the proposals that if implemented will see selective timber harvesting, controlled grazing and campfires in the holiday period all banned from new parks.
Nearby state forests at Nyah are already declining in health, even though grazing has been excluded for only six years. Parasitic native cherry, Exocarpus strictus is sweeping through the forest and forming dense stands, affecting the vigour of the red gums.
|
