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please help with a fast and furious EPA action

January 26, 2025

Hi FOE members and friends.
Remember how upset you were last year when the Environmental Protection Agency amendments for Environmental Standards were not voted on in Parliament?
We need you to use that energy for good and put pressure on Labor MPs and Senators to pass these environmental amendments in the February sitting of Parliament (weeks starting 3/2 and 10/2).
The Labor Environment Action Network (LEAN) have mobilised their members to make calls to MPs and Senators next week. LEAN are inviting the environmental movement community to call their Labor MPs and Labor Senators as well, to show the widespread community support for the EPA amendments. We need to make the calls between 9am and 5pm Tuesday 28/1 to Friday 31/1.
Please take up this invitation to take this strong action for the environment. If you have a Labor MP, please make 5 calls to both them and the four SA Labor Senators. If you don’t have a Labor MP, please make 4 calls to each of the 4 Labor Senators.
If you chose to call and speak to the politician’s staffer, please be polite but clear about why you want the parliamentarian to take action. Each call should take less than 5 minutes, but is a powerful way you can let MPs and Senators know that their constituents are watching.
Phone numbers are below, and a suggested script is attached..
Please feel free to contact me if you need more information on 0423 219 096. It would be good if you could send me a quick email to let me know who you have called and what they have said.
Thanks for your support!
regards
Robyn Wood
0423 219 096

Steve Georganas

MP Adelaide

(08) 8269 2433

Louise Miller-Frost

MP Boothby

(08) 8374 0511

Mark Butler

MP HIndmarsh

(08) 8241 0190

Matt Burnell

MP Spence

(08) 8258 6300

Tony Zappia

MP Makin

(03) 9534 8126

Don Farrell

Senator

(08) 8231 8400

Penny Wong

Senator

(08) 8212 8272

Karen Grogan

Senator

(08) 8269 6022

Marielle Smith

Senator

(08) 8340 0444

Here’s the  script for the EPA ES Blitz

Adelaide FoE Notes, Clean Futures, Environmental Law

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.
…

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