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Friends of the Earth Adelaide > Climate

UN Climate Change Conference COP 31 Letter to Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen

September 11, 2026

Friends of the Earth Adelaide sent a letter to Chris Bowen, Minister for Climate Change and Energy, before a series of important meetings in the lead up to the UN Climate Change Conference (COP31). A special climate event took place in Palau at the  Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting from 30 August to 4 September. That will be followed by pre-COP preparatory meetings in Fiji and Tuvalu (5-8 October). COP31 itself will take place from 9 to 20 November 2026 in Antalya, Türkiye.

Adelaide was vying to host COP31, but we missed out when Türkiye wouldn’t back down. The compromise was that Chris Bowen got to be President of Negotiations.

We thought it would be good idea to warn him that the nuclear industry lobby would be up to its usual tricks, trying to con negotiators into endorsing nuclear energy as the solution to climate change. We want him to resist their pressure.

Türkiye itself does not yet have operating nuclear reactors, but it has nuclear reactors under construction (by Russia). Unsurprisingly, construction is running well behind schedule. The current plan is to start up the first reactor late this year — i.e. about when COP31 will be taking place. It could be a big propaganda opportunity for the nuclear industry, or an embarrassment if start up is delayed even further.

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Climate, Nuclear

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Recording: “Is Nuclear Power the solution to Climate Change?” 

September 11, 2026

re: The Recording for FoE Adelaide’s 31 July webinar
Unfortunately the video of the talk had problems, so we only have the audio for you to follow along with the slides of the talks for Dr Paul Dorfman, Dr Margie Beavis and Dr Jim Green. Refer to this link on the FOE Australia website.
The other speaker was Wendy Farmer of Voices of the Valley, who shared her experiences campaigning for renewables and against nuclear energy in the Latrobe Valley. She introduced the Yes2Renewables Toolkit as a useful resource for campaigners.

Climate, FoE, Nuclear

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Boothby campaign: Renewables or Nukes

February 24, 2025

Friends of the Earth Adelaide would like to announce a new campaign to inform residents in the electorate of Boothby (SA, marginal ALP) of the dangers of the Coalition’s nuclear energy policy.
We will soon begin posting leaflets in as many letterboxes in Boothby as our legs and our finances will reach. As much as we can afford, we will use Australia Post’s ‘unaddressed mail’ service, but that is not cheap. We are therefore calling for volunteers to help us deliver leaflets by hand.
The outcome of the forthcoming federal election will be critical for the direction of Australia’s climate and energy policy. It is vital that voters know what they are voting for and understand the consequences.  Limited resources will probably restrict us to Boothby, but we are very pleased that people are campaigning in other electorates, including the neighbouring electorate of Sturt.
The electorate of Boothby extends from Millswood and Blackforest in the north, west to the coast at Glenelg, south to Marino, east across to Blackwood, Belair and Brownhill Creek, then north to Cross Road.
In order to reach the whole of Boothby (over 85,000 letterboxes), we will need donations and volunteers. If you are able to help with letterboxing, please send us an email at adelaide.office@foe.org.au  You don’t have to live in Boothby and you can deliver as many or as few leaflets as you like — no pressure. Leaflets will come in bundles of 100.
If you would like to make a tax-deductible donation to this campaign, please go to the following link
https://www.foe.org.au/donate_to_friends_of_the_earth_adelaide

Thank you for your support and for all the work you do to achieve a nuclear free, sustainable future.
Philip White on behalf of Friends of the Earth Adelaide.
Authorised by Cam Walker, Friends of the Earth 312 Smith St, Collingwood, VIC, 3066.
A full list of Boothby suburbs can be found at https://electorate.aec.gov.au/
A map can be found at https://www.aec.gov.au/redistributions/2017/sa/final-report/maps-data.html

Actions, Adelaide FoE Notes, Climate, FoE

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