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…

The Canberra Times
Toowoomba Council has voted for a moratorium on coal seam gas projects in the Darling Downs region because of land subsidence and interference with local aquifers. Over two decades, more than 9000 coal seam gas wells have been developed west of the Toowoomba council area in highly productive agricultural land. The health of humans and agricultural land is harmed and greenhouse gas emissions increase. Read more online (with subscription), or click to see newspaper clipping…

Pearls and Irritations
How can we recognise the rights of children who will suffer a deteriorating life under advancing climate change? An amendment to the Climate Change Act will soon be discussed in the Senate. This Bill requires decision makers to consider the wellbeing of current and future children when making certain decisions that are likely to contribute to climate change. This article discusses other ways in which we could involve young people in the national discourse on climate. Read more…

David Shearman
This Bill has been sponsored by Senator David Pocock and has been delayed several times. The Bill seeks to amend the Climate Change Act 2022 to require decision makers to consider the wellbeing of current and future children when making certain decisions that are likely to contribute to climate change, including decisions that will increase scope one, two or three emissions. Read David’s Submission…

Pearls and Irritations
Anguish, despair and fear for the future will ravage your brain when you read the latest UN Production (emissions) Gap Report. Your distress will further increase when you read that Australia will increase the Gap with the development of the Middle Arm Sustainable Development Precinct. However the NT government reassures us the Precinct is “a clean energy investment and jobs powerhouse. In a global-first, the Precinct will be largely powered by renewables, master-planned to achieve a circular economy approach of sustainable and responsible production and will use technology to achieve low-to-zero emissions.” Read more…

Pearls and Irritations
The EPBC Act must be reformed to allow shale gas to be included in the remit of the IESC to conduct water assessments. Without this and comprehensive reform of the entire Act, it would be inappropriate to make any further assessments on both the Beetaloo fracking and Middle Arm proposals. Ninety–six leading Australian scientists and experts have called for the Northern Territory Government to follow the science and ban unconventional gas development because of its unacceptable impact. 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…

As from now the process of assessment must be guided by a revised EPBC with water trigger and health impact assessment; this will correct errors and introduce a Commonwealth Heath Impact Assessment. The human health aspects of fracking at Beetaloo need to be considered because many toxic substances will be released into the environment of MAIP. Finally, I introduce the health need for re-examination of the effectiveness of CCUS and the suitability of the chosen site for MAIP industries. Read more…

Pearls and Irritations
Many rivers around the world are dying from overuse, pollution, the effects of dams, river barriers and global warming; governmental failures and political squabbles are often paramount. These factors also apply to the River Murray where states have failed to return agreed volumes of environmental water to the river. Water ‘distribution’ is decided by a market which trades water in the same way as commodities and financial products with manipulation, profiteering and conflicts of interest. To save the River Murray a revolution in management is needed which the article explains. 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…

The Conversation
There is a need to combat widely held misconceptions and repeated misinformation about the safety of the oil and gas industry. We undertook the review at the request of concerned paediatricians in the Northern Territory. New research clearly shows that “unlocking gas” is at least as harmful to the climate as mining and burning coal. This is largely due to methane leaks at many stages of production. Methane is 86 times more powerful than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere over 20 years. 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…

Richard Heller, Stephen Leeder, Tamson Pietsch, Lauren Rickards, and David Shearman
We respond to the Interim Report of the Accord by proposing that the Final Report should add a section that recognises the importance of university reform including a commitment to reduce the impact of the sector on climate. Climate change is only mentioned three times in the Interim Report of the Accord. There is no mention of other related terms such as carbon footprint or greenhouse gas emissions and the Report contains no proposal that university reform should focus on, or even include, reducing the sector’s carbon footprint. This is a major omission. Read more…

See the Mount Lofty Golf Estate Pty Ltd Development Report here. This submission is important because the proposal to build a tourism facility involves clearance of native vegetation in the wooded Mount Lofty Ranges which have less than 10% of the original forest remaining. In South Australia between 1990 and 2015 nearly 500,000 hectares of native vegetation were lost under the Native Vegetation Act of 1991; between 2010 and 2020 only 1% of 1428 applications to clear were refused. Read more…

This consultation was on how to best ensure Queensland’s environmental protections can achieve a balance between ecological sustainability and future economic prosperity for the Queensland Lake Eyre Basin region. My submission makes the points that more consideration is needed on the impacts of climate change, confirmation of the Wild Rivers Act and the exclusion of further fracking. Read more…

Pearls and Irritations
The Government’s draft Strategy on Health and Climate Change is vital to cope with the expected increase in deaths and illness from accelerating climate change. It fails in many respects and should be rewritten to reflect the views of medical experts. It was written by KPMG which has many links to the coal industry and the words fossil fuels are not mentioned in the entire text. The Strategy fails to deal with the climate emergency which is now upon us. Read more…

The proposed amendments to the Sea Dumping Act would enable the Minister to grant permits for the export of carbon dioxide streams from carbon dioxide capture processes for the purpose of sequestration into a sub-seabed geological formation (CCUS). There are many independent scientific and engineering reports on major CCUS projects which indicate their inadequacy in reducing emissions. The Act, proposed to support emission reduction from Beetaloo gas should not be supported. Read more…

Pearls and Irritations
Governments around the world are promoting and subsidising carbon capture and underground storage to facilitate an increase in fossil gas mining despite storage being problematic. This will dash any hope of controlling world emissions at a time when there are deep concerns for climate change becoming uncontrollable. The Dumping Bill facilitates under the sea storage of carbon dioxide generated from the NT Beetaloo fossil gas development. This will generate a huge income from export of fossil gas to the detriment of world emissions. Read more…

Journal of Economic Reform Australia
This article is a follow up with modifications on the article “Deteriorating health, housing and education upshot of inequality”. Our nation is threatened by inflation. More nurses, teachers and aged care workers cannot afford housing on their poor remuneration and now – beset by inflation - they are quitting their vocation. But an even greater problem is arising, the collapse of basic health services which are becoming unavailable to many and particularly the poor. Read more…

The Guardian
I have realised that I have a grief disorder which has arisen slowly over the past few decades and will remain prolonged. My brain suddenly came to the diagnosis when I tried to watch Tim Winton’s series on Ningaloo Nyinggulu, one of the Earth’s last truly wild and intact places. “Tried” because it hurt to watch, and I had to turn it off. After many years of working on environmental issues and being steeped in the wonder and beauty of the natural world I had realised it would inevitably die soon. Read more…