FoE
Coalition’s obsession with coal and gas will go down like lead balloon when renewable energy is the best option
Dec 13, 2018 by Pat Simons, Friends of the Earth’s renewable energy spokesperson
Environment group Friends of the Earth Australia reject indications that the Morrison government will seek to use public funds to underwrite new coal and gas projects, and say they should be 100% focused on landmark renewable energy projects like the proposed Star of the South offshore wind farm instead.
“Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the federal Coalition have learned nothing from the Liberal party’s drubbing in the recent Victorian state election,” said Friends of the Earth climate spokesperson Leigh Ewbank.
The Liberal party’s support for coal and gas was resoundingly rejected by voters in the Wentworth by-election and at the November state election in Victoria.
“When community support for action on climate change is on the rise, the Coalition government’s support for polluting fossil fuels will go down like a lead balloon” added Ewbank.
While time is running out to act on climate change, the Coalition’s obsession with coal and gas only imperils Australia’s future.
Instead of wasting more public money on polluting fossil fuels, Friends of the Earth Australia says the federal Coalition should be taking landmark renewable energy projects like the proposed Star of the South offshore wind farm to the next stage to create jobs and cut emissions.
“New renewable energy is cheaper and cleaner than fossil fuels, so it’s bizarre that the supposedly free-market Liberal party wants to intervene in the market to back in polluting, old technology like coal and gas,” said Pat Simons, Friends of the Earth’s renewable energy spokesperson.
Read more at FoE Australia about the coalition’s coal obsession.
Genetic extinction technology challenged at UN Convention on Biological Diversity
FoE International Press release, 18 November, 2018
SHARM EL SHEIKH, EGYPT — Today, the African Centre for Biodiversity and Friends of the Earth International held a press conference at the 2018 UN Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) 14th Conference of the Parties to call for a global moratorium on the environmental release of gene drives, a new genetic extinction technology, and to caution for stronger regulation of synthetic biology.
From November 17-29th, international conservation and environmental leaders will meet to call on governments to protect biodiversity and Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ rights from controversial new biotechnologies. Gene drives have the capacity to wipe out or alter species forever, and to significantly disrupt or modify the ecosystems on which humanity strongly depends for its survival. Gene drives pose serious and potentially irreversible threats to biodiversity and ecosystems, human health, as well as national sovereignty, peace and food sovereignty.
The first proposed application for gene drive is being led in Burkina Faso by the Target Malaria Project, funded by the Gates Foundation, designed to eradicate mosquito populations and thus malaria transmission. This Trojan horse project is exploiting a public health crisis in Africa, despite the lack of underlying science to support its efficacy as a sound medical intervention.
“We should not be used as lab rats in an experiment that could devastate African ecosystems. We ask delegates at COP14 to put the brakes on any release of gene drives.”
Mariann Bassey, Friends of the Earth International and chair of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa
“Burkina Faso is about to face a health and ecological catastrophe. This project risks creating a social and environmental crisis in these local communities. Burkinabe civil society groups are denouncing the project: we refuse to be the guinea pigs of the science of the unknown. We have our own indigenous solutions to put an end to malaria.”
Ali de Goamma Topsoba, president of Burkina Faso based Terre a Vie
Agricultural proposals such as spreading pesticide susceptibility back into weeds that have developed resistance, along with reports that the US military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is the largest funders of gene drive research, highlight wider corporate and military interests in the technology that are being masked by the Target Malaria project.
“Gene drives are threatening food sovereignty and peasant-led agriculture. Small scale farmers don’t need synthetic biology such as gene drives organisms or genome editing to feed communities. La Via Campesina insists that the industrial agriculture process annihilates the human family that is at the heart of small-scale agroecology.”
Geneviève Lalumière, Peasant seed saver from La Via Campesina North America
Read more at FoE International
2018 Envt Awards December 6th — book now!
Don’t miss the 2018 SA Environment Awards!
Registrations close this Sunday (25 Nov), so RSVP now — if you haven’t already done so — 
to secure your
place at this very special celebration of SA’s nature champions.
Commemorating 20 years of the Jill Hudson Awards for Environmental Protection,
the 2018 SA Environment Awards also honour our state’s Young Achievers and Unsung Heroes.
This year they continue the Lifetime Achiever Awards for significant and lasting
contributions to protecting SA’s precious natural environment.
Drinks and nibbles provided
Book via eventbrite