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Australia second only to Russia in emissions from fossil fuel exports

November 3, 2024

Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Feleti Teo took to a stage in Apia, Samoa, on Thursday morning to say something pointed. Planned fossil fuel expansions in nations such as Australia represented, for his nation, a “death sentence”.

The phrase “death sentence”, Teo said, had not been chosen lightly. He followed up with this: “We will not sit quietly and allow others to determine our fate.”
Teo chose the moment for this broadside well – on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), attended by both King Charles and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. The speech came at the launch of a new report on moves by the “big three” Commonwealth states – the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia – to expand fossil fuel exports.
These three states make up just 6% of the population of the Commonwealth’s 56 nations, but account for over 60% of the carbon emissions generated through extraction since 1990, the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative report shows.
Canada and the UK are no climate angels, given their respective exports of highly polluting oil from oil sands and North Sea oil and gas. But Teo and others in the movement to stop proliferation of fossil fuels have reserved special criticism for Australia. That’s because Australia is now second only to Russia based on emissions from its fossil fuel exports and has the largest pipeline of coal export projects in the world – 61% of the world’s total.

— Liam Moore, The Conversation “‘We will not allow others to determine our fate’: Pacific nations dial up pressure on Australia’s fossil fuel exports” October 24th

Adelaide FoE Notes, Climate

SANTOS targetting activists

November 3, 2024

Major Australian oil and gas company Santos is deploying “scorched earth” tactics in contentious legal proceedings that could silence future opposition to the fossil fuel industry’s expansion plans in Australia.

The proceedings are the aftermath of Munkara v Santos, an unsuccessful attempt by a group of Tiwi Islanders to protect areas of claimed cultural significance for First Nations people from a new gas pipeline being constructed by Santos.

After winning the case earlier this year, Santos is now using the “world’s most-feared law firm” to pursue lawyers from the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) and several Australian environment groups in a bid to recover its substantial legal costs. Santos’s legal actions could also expose the inner workings of Australia’s climate movement, putting activists personally at risk of retribution.

“It has aggressively targeted the Tiwi Islanders’ legal team, relentlessly seeking costs against them. These actions risk discouraging communities from using legal avenues to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for their harmful practices.”

If successful, future efforts to hold fossil fuel companies accountable through the courts could be incapacitated. The ramifications include the potential to force any “third-party supporter” of unsuccessful climate litigation – such as donors, campaigners or environment groups that provide logistical or funding support – to pay the legal bills of fossil fuel defendants.

In January, Santos successfully defended a challenge to the Barossa Gas Export Pipeline that will transport gas from the Barossa gas field in the Timor Sea to a gas processing and export terminal at Middle Arm near Darwin.

— article by Michael Mazengarb in The Saturday Paper

Actions, Adelaide FoE Notes, Climate

Rising Tide Alert

November 3, 2024

At 9am on Saturday 16th November, join us at Brighton Jetty.

Become part of a Bike ride, Walk, Scoot or… to show solidarity with thousands of people

blockading coal ships at the world’s largest coal port.

Start at 9am, moving slowly north along the shared paths and esplanades.

Finish at 11am back at Brighton Jetty. — Cafés close by, for cuppas.


Rising Tide Alert is supported by Unley Voices for Climate Action & Friends of the Earth Adelaide

Download PDF leaflet

Actions, Adelaide FoE Notes, Clean Futures, Climate

Adelaide is losing 75,000 trees a year

April 17, 2024

One of the best ways to keep our cool is to maintain leafy streets, parks and backyards. But in some cities, trees are being chopped down faster than local councils can replace them. Some councils are also fast running out of land to plant trees.

Most of the damage happens on private land. Usually it’s a result of large blocks being subdivided or undeveloped land being opened up for more homes.

Cutting down trees for urban development is well within the law. But tree-protection laws are weaker in some parts of Australia than in others. To ensure our cities remain liveable, some laws will have to change.
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Beyond just providing shade, trees reflect heat into the atmosphere. They also cool the air by releasing water through pores in their leaves, acting like evaporative air conditioners.

Trees provide many other benefits such as removing pollutants, limiting erosion and improving public health.

The influential 3-30-300 rule for green cities, proposed by Dutch researcher Cecil Konijnendijk, states:

  • you should be able to easily see three trees from the window of your house or workplace

  • cities should have at least 30% overall tree cover

  • you should have a green space with trees within 300 metres (or a three-minute walk) of your house or workplace

Our team at the University of Adelaide produced a 2022 report on tree-protection laws across Australia. The state government commissioned us to verify a claim that South Australia’s tree-protection laws were the weakest in the nation. We compared state and local council regulations, and the claim turned out to be true.

— from the Conversation: “Adelaide is losing 75,000 trees a year. Tree-removal laws must be tightened if we want our cities to be liveable and green”, by Stefan Caddy-Retalic,  Kate Delaporte &  Kiri Marker

 

Adelaide FoE Notes, Clean Futures, Climate

New report from lock the gate…

March 27, 2023

A new report by renowned environmental scientist Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe finds that methane emissions from coal, oil and gas facilities make up ~70% of total greenhouse gas emissions covered under the federal Safeguard Mechanism (SGM), when the global warming impact is calculated over a 20-year period. Methane devastates the climate. It is 85 times more potent than CO2 over 20 years.

Accounting responsibly for the severe short-term warming impact of methane emissions shows that coal mining is by far the biggest emitter of all heavy industries covered by the Safeguard Mechanism in Australia currently, followed by oil and gas.

The report, “Short-term warming effect of methane from fossil fuels and implications for the Safeguard Mechanism”, also finds that the unlimited use of carbon offsets by methane-emitting facilities allowed under the SGM is irretrievably flawed. There is no technically feasible way to draw down methane from the atmosphere and no “like for like” offsetting is possible.

Download the full report here.

Climate, Old_Notes