SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
new south wales
109 Aussie Kayaktivists Charged for Blocking World's Largest Coal Port
"World leaders attending COP28 this week should take note that the mass protest in New South Wales is not an isolated incident but part of a global pushback for change now," said one campaigner.
Nov 27, 2023
More than 100 climate defenders were charged Monday in New South Wales, Australia after using kayaks or swimming to blockade the coal port at Newcastle—the world's largest—to demand an end to fossil fuels as petrostate United Arab Emirates prepares to host the United Nations Climate Change Conference later this week.
New South Wales police said 109 people were arrested after paddling kayaks or swimming into the shipping lane servicing coal cargo at the Port of Newcastle during a 30-hour protest on Saturday and Sunday. The arrested activists were all charged with operating a vessel so as to interfere with others' use of waters.
The climate action group Rising Tide Australia, which led the action, said it would keep holding protests until federal and state governments take meaningful climate action.
"That's the choice we are giving government, either do your job and take on the industry that's causing the crisis, or people will continue to put themselves in situations like this," Rising Tide spokesperson Zack Schofield told ABC Newcastle.
Among those arrested was 97-year-old church minister Alan Stuart, who told SBS News that he engaged in civil disobedience "for my grandchildren and for future generations because I don't want to leave them with a world full of increasingly severe, frequent national disasters because of climate change."
Anjali Beames, an activist with the School Strike for Climate movement started in Sweden by Greta Thunberg, was also arrested.
"My future is getting sold by the fossil fuel industry for profit, and I'm not going to sit idly by while that happens, it's the Australian government's failure to act," Beames told SBS News.
"We know that the climate crisis is here and now, and if there's any hope of mitigating the consequences and saving people's lives, we have to stop new fossil fuel projects, and that includes new coal," she added.
The New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties (NSWCCL) said several of the group's legal observers were arrested and charged along with the protesters. The group said its personnel "were easily identifiable by wearing pink high-visibility jackets with 'Legal Observers' written across the vest in large black letters."
NSWCCL president Lydia Shelly said that "the charges against the legal observers should be immediately withdrawn."
"It is not in the public interest for these charges to proceed," Shelly added. "If the charges are not withdrawn, it risks sending a dangerous message to the public that NSW police do not want their interactions or conduct with peaceful protestors monitored by independent organizations."
Referring to the U.N. Climate Change Conference slated to start Thursday in Dubai, Amnesty International Pacific researcher Kate Schuetze said in a statement Monday that "while it is deeply discouraging to see this kind of outcome after peaceful protests on the climate crisis days before COP28, it is also hugely inspiring to see the creativity, ingenuity, and solidarity of the protesters who took to kayaks to oppose climate inaction."
"World leaders attending COP28 this week should take note that the mass protest in New South Wales is not an isolated incident but part of a global pushback for change now," Schuetze continued. "People will not stay silent when climate upheaval threatens their futures."
New South Wales Premier Chris Minns of the center-left Labor Party dismissed the protesters' climate concerns, noting on Monday that "not only is the extraction and sale and export of minerals in NSW legal, it's our single biggest export."
"If we don't take some of the royalties from coal export, we will not meet our renewable energy targets in NSW," Minns added. "We won't even come close."
Alexa Stuart, an organizer of the protest and Alan Stuart's granddaughter, told SBS News that the Australian government's climate inaction forced climate campaigners' hands.
"We wish we did not have to do this but the Albanese government needs to understand we are serious," she said, referring to Labor Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, a supporter of Australia's nearly U.S. $40 billion coal industry.
"If Australia today said we are not going to export any more coal, [it] wouldn't lead to a reduction in global emissions," Albanese said last year, rejecting Australian Greens' calls for a fossil fuel export moratorium. "What you would see is a replacement with coal from other countries that's likely to produce higher emissions… because of the quality of the product."
Still, Australian Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen claims the government's COP28 delegation will bring to Dubai evidence proving the country is on track to meet its target of a 43% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030.
Kelly O'Shanassy, chief executive of the Australian Conservation Foundation, toldThe Guardian on Saturday that "the Albanese government is taking genuine steps to reduce carbon emissions at home, while enabling the increased and indefinite export of coal and gas to other countries."
"It doesn't matter where the coal and gas is burnt," O'Shanassy added. "Australian fossil fuels are supercharging climate damage, fueling heatwaves, bushfires, and coral bleaching."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Virtually Unstoppable' Blazes, Record Heat, and Mass Evacuations as Australia Wildfires Intensify
"We are still yet to hit the worst of it," said Gladys Berejiklian, premier of New South Wales.
Jan 03, 2020
Powerful winds and sweltering heat on Saturday combined to intensify catastrophic bushfires across Australia, forcing more than 100,000 people to evacuate their homes as firefighters struggled to contain the "virtually unstoppable" blazes ravaging large swaths of the continent.
At least two dozen people and an estimated half a billion animals have been killed by the fires, which have scorched more than six million hectares of land since September.
Australian authorities said Saturday and Sunday are likely to be two of the worst days since the fire season began late last year. "We are still yet to hit the worst of it," warned New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian.
As the Associated Pressreported Saturday, "the fire danger increased as temperatures rose to record levels across Australia on Saturday, surpassing 43 degrees Celsius (109 Fahrenheit) in Canberra, the capital, and reaching a record-high 48.9 C (120 F) in Penrith, in Sydney's western suburbs."
\u201c#Canberra has reached 43.6C\u2014a new hottest temperature record for any month. The previous Canberra records are 42.2C at Canberra Airport in 1968 and 42.8C at the now-closed Acton site in 1939. Observations at: https://t.co/8mMXbj9VGR\u201d— Bureau of Meteorology Australian Capital Territory (@Bureau of Meteorology Australian Capital Territory) 1578110868
According to CNN, three fires in the Omeo region in Victoria state combined overnight "to form a single blaze bigger than the New York borough of Manhattan."
Angus Barners, an incident controller at the Rural Fire Service in Moruya, NSW, told CNN that "we can't stop the fires, all we can do is steer them around communities."
\u201c"The entire sky has been turned this deathly shade of orange"\n\nThe BBC's Phil Mercer reports from a dust storm in New South Wales - the high winds are making conditions perilous for firefighters tackling Australia's bushfires\n\nhttps://t.co/gXPAKxtGGt\u201d— BBC News (World) (@BBC News (World)) 1578140799
Prime Minister Scott Morrison--who has faced fierce criticism from residents for failing to take sufficient action to confront the blazes--announced the 3,000 Australian Defense Force Reserve troops Saturday to help fight the devastating fires.
Defense Minister Linda Reynolds told reporters that it is the first time reservists have been called up "in this way in living memory and, in fact, I believe for the first time in our nation's history."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Tony Abbott and Co. Declare War on 'Vigilante' Green Groups
Australian Conservation Society says the political maneuver is 'nothing short of an attempt to strip communities of their right to a healthy environment'
Aug 18, 2015
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who was described this week by author and activist Naomi Klein as a "climate villain," is cracking down further on environmental groups and democracy by seeking to repeal a section of the country's conservation law that allows green groups to mount legal challenges to environmental approvals.
The move is described by the Sydney Morning Herald as a response to the controversial decision that stopped Australia's largest coal project--Adani's Carmichael coal mine--in its tracks. Earlier this month, the federal court overturned the Abbott government's approval of the mine, saying the environment minister, Greg Hunt, ignored his department's advice about the mine's impact on two vulnerable species, the yakka skink and the ornamental snake.
"If these changes go ahead, it will undermine basic justice and fairness for rural communities who are facing off against the biggest mining companies in the world."
--Nicky Chirlian, Upper Mooki Landcare Group
Abbott decried the successful challenge, brought by a small environmental group, as "legal sabotage." Attorney General and Senator George Brandis, who will take the repeal amendments to Parliament this week, said the country's Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, as it currently stands, had encouraged cases of "vigilante litigation," and he was "appalled" by the Adani decision.
"Section 487 of the [Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act] provides a red carpet for radical activists who have a political, but not a legal interest, in a development to use aggressive litigation tactics to disrupt and sabotage important projects," Brandis said.
But Lenore Taylor, the Guardian's Australia political editor, put it another way: "When an environment group successfully uses 16-year-old national environmental laws to delay a project, the Abbott government tries to change the law to prevent them from ever doing it again."
According to the Morning Herald:
Under the current laws, anyone "adversely affected" by a decision or a failure to make a decision has the legal right to challenge it.
This includes any Australian citizens and residents who have acted "for protection or conservation of or research into the environment" any time in the two years before the decision was made.
The changes proposed will mean that legal challenges can only be made by people directly affected by a development, such as a land holder.
"I won't be directly affected by the Shenhua mine, but my regional environment and my entire community will be," said Nicky Chirlian, a member of the Upper Mooki Landcare Group challenging another controversial project, the Shenhua Watermark coal mine proposed for the Liverpool Plains of New South Wales, Australia. "If these changes go ahead, it will undermine basic justice and fairness for rural communities facing off against the biggest mining companies in the world."
Echoing that charge, the Australian Conservation Society said the political maneuver was "nothing short of an attempt to strip communities of their right to a healthy environment."
And Greenpeace chief executive David Ritter added: "Australia's environment laws aren't very restrictive; they allow you to mine coal in prime farmland and are even failing to protect world heritage areas like the Great Barrier Reef ... but today the government [has] announced that they are going to get them to prevent local communities from objecting to mega mines like the Carmichael coal mine in Queensland."
Essentially, Ritter said, Abbott and his coalition are "seeking to legislate special treatment and fast-tracking for an industry in decline that causes significant environmental and economic damage."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular