Articles by Melissa Haswell & David Shearman

The Conversation
Melissa Haswell & David Shearman
With this article on the production of gas in Western Australia we condemn the need for us to write together 30 articles on gas over the past 12 years. It was a necessity because gas is a threat to the future of humanity.

The published articles can be seen in this collection here… “Joint articles on gas mining in Australia” by Professors Melissa Haswell and David Shearman.

Woodside Energy is leading a joint venture, which would dramatically expand offshore drilling and gas production at the North West Shelf project – already Australia’s largest gas-producing venture which will release billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases until around 2070. Evidence suggests extending the project would undermine global efforts to curb carbon emissions and stabilise Earth’s climate. The extension also threatens significant Indigenous sites and pristine coral reef ecosystems and is a threat to human health. The North West Shelf project will continue to supply domestic and overseas markets with gas extracted off WA’s north coast. Woodside estimates the expansion will create 4.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases over its lifetime. Greenpeace analysis puts the figure much higher, at 6.1 billion tonnes. Increasing greenhouse gas emissions at this magnitude, when the window to climate stability is fast closing, threatens major damage to Earth’s natural systems, and human health and wellbeing. Read more…

Professor Melissa Haswell and Emeritus Professor David Shearman
In this submission we present evidence supporting our severe concerns about the health and wellbeing implications for the proposed drilling and hydraulic fracturing of 20 wells in the Kimberley region near Derby. We urge the EPA to step back and re-evaluate the copious evidence of harms to the environment and human health that have accumulated since the Inquiry in 2019. Even now, new and alarming evidence continues to emerge on a monthly basis. A recent spate of research is demonstration the atmospheric harm of methane emissions on global warming, the USA and Australia being particularly responsible. Read the submission...

Pearls and Irritations
with Melissa Haswell
By now many citizens of our planet recognise that the destructiveness of climate change is moving faster than they imagined, leaving our defences at serious risk and even the money men are concerned about the burgeoning costs and possible economic collapse. This article details the vast production on LNG by both the USA and Australia with the intent of producing even more. Gas hubs are being developed in Louisiana and at Middle Arm in Darwin where health impact studies have been availed by the NT government. Read more…

Professor Melissa Haswell BA, MSc, PhD (Epidemiology)
Emeritus Professor David Shearman AM MB, ChB, PhD, FRACP, FRCPE
Submissions on this important topic have not been assessed because the NT Government has withdrawn them presumably to avoid further scrutiny. So Despite Tamboran's plans to store up to 34 million litres of wastewater in open storage ponds, clear 145 hectares of land and emit more than 170,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions annually, the project has been approved and has not triggered further independent assessments such as an environmental impact statement. Read more…

The Canberra Times
with Melissa Haswell, Lisa Jackson Pulver
Australia offers the world outstanding higher education, intellect, innovation potential and access to world class scientific research and information systems. Yet we have failed to acknowledge Indigenous knowledge. Just one example is the use of thousands of years old Aboriginal cultural burning practices which can prevent or reduce severity of subsequent bushfires. Gas production with fracking is leaving Aboriginal communities with ill health, a damaged environment and loss of their cultural and spiritual homes. Read more online (with subscription), or download the original article…

Pearls and Irritations
with Melissa Haswell
The foundation for effective climate change adaptation must be the preservation of ecological life support systems for humans and all other species. We must prioritise the protection and expansion of water, biodiversity and ecological services to provide food security for future generations instead of environmentally damaging industries, especially fossil fuels. Hopes for effective long-term adaptation rely on the speed at which we can end this addiction and shift focus to life support priorities. Read more…

NT Independent
with Melissa Haswell
A report published under the auspices of Sydney University, The risks of oil and gas development for human health and wellbeing: A synthesis of evidence and implications for Australia, cited over 300 scientific and medical studies, including many new publications in 2022. Most studies identified increases in numerous diseases among those living near wells and many harms to air, water, land and the climate. Read more…

Pearls and Irritations
with Melissa Haswell
We discuss the extensive body of recent, peer-reviewed scientific and public health literature on five areas of extreme concern about the gas industry’s fracking, namely: the procedural risks posed by oil and gas operations to biodiversity, water and food security; contributions to the climate emergency; the vast array of potentially harmful chemicals involved; contamination pathways into water and air; resulting physical, social, emotional and spiritual health losses associated with extensive disruption of life near oil and gas fields. Read more…

With Melissa Haswell and Mr Jacob Hegedus
This report provides the Australian community and decision makers with a synthesis of the now extensive evidence demonstrating multiple direct and indirect health and wellbeing risks from oil and gas developments. It responds to a request from deeply concerned paediatricians about proposed shale gas development of the Beetaloo Basin and processing facilities at the proposed Middle Arm Precinct in Darwin Harbour. Australian production of gas for export is increasing rapidly when virtually all climate scientists believe we are in a climate crisis and we may soon reach a tipping point — a point of no return. Read more…

Mirage News
with Melissa Haswell
Queensland has significant responsibilities for maintaining the integrity of Great Artesian Basin (GAB) water for sustainable use by humans and agriculture. The evidence suggests it is failing. Pressure in the GAB is falling and the Mound Springs which maintain the biodiversity of the Lake Eyre Basin are drying up. Oil and industry developments have a prodigious water usage and pollute water and land with toxic long acting polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, heavy metals and endocrine disrupting chemicals. Read more…

Croakey Health Media
With Sereako Stephen (Jr), Melissa Haswell and Francis Nona

Without drastic curtailment of greenhouse emissions in the next decade or so, the Torres Strait islands will become inundated this century. The UN has ruled that Australia has violated the rights of its own people by denying their claims. This article describes extensive discussions between local communities and staff and students from three universities and presents the views of the Islanders in a spirit vital to this year of The Voice and the Uluru Statement. “We invite you to walk with us in a movement of the Australian people for a better future.” Read more…

Pearls and Irritations
With Professor Melissa Haswell
Health Impact Assessment (HIA) can richly support Environmental Impact Assessment used to approve gas mining projects but is neglected by the states. It is a collaborative public health process based on careful scientific and community assessment of possible harms, their risks and methods of prevention. Consequently new gas developments proliferate. Read more…

Renew Economy
With Professor Melissa Haswell
Since 2011, hundreds of scientific papers from recognised US researchers have provided evidence linking health impacts, ranging from lower birth weight, severe birth defects, asthma and other respiratory disease, mental distress and illness,  heart attacks, heart failure, cancers and all-cause mortality, to living near gas and oil extraction operations. Australian governments have ignored or dismissed this information as insufficient or irrelevant to act on. Read more…

With Professor Melissa Haswell
This submission details a litany of health impacts which are threatened by this massive development proposal to frack for gas. It demonstrates that the unconventional gas industry poses significant risks to human health, water, the environment and the stability of our climate. We conclude that a comprehensive health assessment process must be instituted. Read here at APO or on the Senate website, submission 9.

Pearls and Irritations
with Melissa Haswell, Lisa Jackson Pulver
Australia’s Covid ‘let it rip’ mentality is deeply ingrained in the nation’s past and, through climate and environmental inaction, is driving a larger peril. Today the most critical challenge is to deeply reflect on how this approach has shaped Australia’s greatest failures and to unite behind a changed course for our collective future. This article was the most read article of the week in Pearls and Irritations. Read more…

Mirage News
If the Beetaloo Gas project is allowed to proceed, not only will it drive up Australia’s and the world’s climate emissions, it will also ignore many newly documented health dangers for the people of the Northern Territory. Read more…

Pearls and Irritations

The Samuel Report and its rejection of an independent regulator by the Minister have ‘grave’ implications for the health of countless communities around Australia. The Report dismissed health, water and climate change issues suggesting that to include them “would result in muddled responsibilities, leading to poor accountability, duplication and inefficiency”. Read more…

Pearls and Irritations

Approval for the Narrabri gas project will say goodbye to hope of an effective climate policy to usher in an expanding national gas industry with a rise in emissions and untold direct damage to the sustainability of this drying continent. It will compound a philosophy of primacy of fossil fuel development, and delay consideration of any post-Covid Green New Deal. Read more…

The authors urge the New South Wales IPC to reject the proposed expansion of CSG mining in the Narrabri region until all concerns for the safety of people and the environment are addressed and properly mitigated. Read more…

Canberra Times

The evidence that gas mining can harm those living near to the wells, processing plants and compressor stations has been accumulating since 2012. Of particular concern are impacts on the unborn and infants probably caused by a wide variety of endocrine disrupting chemicals that interfere with the hormones in our bodies. Read more…

Pearls and Imitations

Climate change is a massively complex ‘wicked’ problem hence solutions require human capacities of logic and imagination guiding action. Our leaders appear bereft of science-based logic, acknowledging neither magnitude nor urgency of climate change. This denial may be facilitated by refusal to imagine themselves inside these disasters. Read more…

Croakey

A National Sustainability Commission should be established and new environmental laws based on science and community values should replace the complex and unworkable Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act 1999, according to medical and public health experts. Read more…

Renew Economy

Our studies provide compelling evidence that the Act has failed as exemplified most recently by  the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science at University of Queensland estimating that 93% of over 7.7 million hectares of potential habitat and ecological communities were cleared by the states between 2000 and 2017 with minimal EPBC scrutiny.

Pearls and Irritations

The forthcoming Review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act will provide an early indication whether the doomsday clock now at 100 seconds to midnight will continue ticking away Australia’s future. However, the government’s vision sends multiple bad omens of no change. Read more…

Canberra Times

At a time when we are consumed by the threats to our health and the nation's economy from an unpredictable pandemic, a national committee has been considering the likely devastation from another existential global catastrophe - environmental collapse. Read more…

Analysis and Policy Observatory

This submission urges the EPBC Committee to recognise the full gravity of its task and to have the courage to take responsibility for completely transforming our environmental laws and regulations to enable them to protect the Australian community's current and future health and lives. Read more…

ResearchGate

This is a Submission to the Northern Territory SREBA Consultation draft for baseline data collection prior to commencement of unconventional gas mining in the Northern Territory. Read more…