Westgate Tunnel hearings nothing but concerns

September 22, 2017

BY  — SEPTEMBER 22, 2017

Since I started as the FoE & PTNT Sustainable Cities campaigner I have been continually shocked as I learn more about the Transurban $5.5 billion mega-toll road proposed for Melbourne’s West.

What started as a much needed proposal to get noisy, poisonous trucks off the residential streets of Melbourne’s inner West has now morphed into a crazy plan to lock the West into a car dependent future. Titled a tunnel, it actually consists of a 12-lane toll way, short tunnel, 3 giant bridges across the Maribyrnong River, then an 18-lane double-decker road leading to spaghetti interchanges and flyovers.

For the last few weeks, I have joined concerned residents from the west at the environmental effects (EES) hearings of the project.

Here, with the lawyers and the bureaucrats, ordinary citizens are trying to digest the 10,000 pages of environmental effects information in an insultingly short time. Many of the representatives are volunteers – residents and community groups that don’t have dedicated employees or professional experts to untangle the volume of information within the documents.

As Rosa McKenna from Better West – Spotswood South Kingsville Residents Group says “the government and Transurban are trying to push this project though, but we know it is wrong for so many reasons: shifting truck traffic onto other inner west streets in Hobsons Bay, with the health and safety implications, and locking us into decades more of road based infrastructure”.

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Adelaide FoE Notes, Clean Futures, Sustainability, Transport

Underground Coal Gasification too costly and too unreliable

September 22, 2017

This week The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) published a report describing how coal-to-gasification technology for electricity-generation purposes remains commercially unviable.

The report—“Using Coal Gasification to Generate Electricity: A Multibillion-Dollar Failure”—concludes that two long-running marquee American Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC), projects, Duke Energy’s Edwardsport plant in Indiana and Southern Company’s Kemper plant in Mississippi, prove the case against such investments.

“Efforts to gasify coal for power generation have been major failures, technologically and financially,” writes David Schlissel, the author of the report and IEEFA’s director of Resource Planning Analysis. “Both Kemper and Edwardsport have been economic disasters for consumers and investors alike, and a number of important and painful lessons have emerged from Kemper and Edwardsport.”

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Adelaide FoE Notes, Clean Futures

To Christians arguing ‘no’ on marriage equality: the Bible is not decisive

September 22, 2017

Just in case you were wondering about claims of biblical support:

“We need to put all this in perspective. These are six verses out of more than 31,000 verses or roughly 0.016% of the text. In contrast, the Bible contains more than 2,000 verses about money (and related issues of greed, wealth, loans, and property), and more than 100 specifically on one’s obligation to care for widows.

In other words, monitoring and proscribing human (homo)sexual activity is not a particular concern of the Bible when compared to the overarching demand for justice, economic equality, and the fair treatment of foreigners and strangers. For certain Christian groups to make this the decisive Christian issue is simply a misreading of biblical values.”
— Robyn J Whitaker, Lecturer in Biblical Studies, after analysing verses in the bible dealing with sex, writing in the conversation about the same sex marriage issue.

 

Actions, Adelaide FoE Notes

Healthy Murray-Darling Rivers Roadshow Fri 22 Sept

September 4, 2017

Join FOE Adelaide members attending this not to be missed event organised by the Australian Conservation Foundation and Conservation SA:

HEALTHY RIVERS ROADSHOW

Friday 22 September

6:30-8:30 pm

Walkerville Town Hall,

66 Walkerville Terrace

Walkerville

 

It’s time for people right across the basin to come together, connect and speak out so our rivers and our communities can thrive.

Find out what you can do to make a real difference for the Murray-Darling Basin. Hear from an inspiring panel of passionate people including Dr Anne Jensen, Healthy Rivers Ambassador and Environmental Consultant; Paul Harvey, Murray Darling Basin Authority – Basin Community Committee; Kat McBride and Kate McBride, pastoralists and Healthy River Ambassadors.

Let’s make plans, have a yarn and share ideas.

This is a free event but places are limited. 

BOOK YOUR SPOT NOW!

Event host: Kathy Whitta (08) 8223 5155

RSVP online here

Adelaide FoE Notes

Don’t let Monsanto get their way!

August 21, 2017

Don’t let Monsanto get their way!

It’s been over 20 years since the introduction of the first GM crops to Australia and the majority of our food remains GM free.

However, the GM crop industry has a plan. Aided and abetted by the Federal Government they have four key objectives this year:

  • Ensure that new GM techniques such as CRISPR are not regulated as GMOs – so they can use them in our food with no safety testing and no labelling.
  • Remove the ability of states to introduce GM crop bans – so they can introduce GM wheat unobstructed.
  • Remove GM labelling so they can sneak GMOs into our food without us knowing – even more than they already do.
  • Allow GM contamination in organics – so we are really unable to avoid GMOs in food.

In the past couple of years a Government Inquiry into Agricultural Innovation and a Productivity Commission report into the Regulation of Australian Agriculture made precisely these recommendations.

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Adelaide FoE Notes, Food