10 June 2016, Environmental justice Australia, Victorian climate change laws: A state stepping up. The Victorian government today released their intentions to change Victoria’s climate change laws. Climate change is real, and it’s happening now. The devastating bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef due to warmer water is not something that can be dismissed or hidden, despite the best efforts of the Federal government – and yet Australia is still ticking off on new coal mines. With the federal election just around the corner, there’s a very real possibility that we’ll get another three years of Turnbull government tinkering around the edges of the real, lasting changes we need to make to avoid the worst climate change scenarios. But we do not need to wait for federal government action. State governments can take on the role of action on climate. Today the Victorian government are promising to do just that. Their plans for Victoria’s climate laws draw heavily on Environmental Justice Australia’s proposed Climate Charter. A report by the Independent Review Panel suggested that the government embrace many of our proposed measures. They include emissions targets enshrined in law, and provisions that mean climate change will need to be taken into account in a whole range of government decision and policies – embedding climate change considerations throughout the Victorian Government. Read more here
Tag Archives: Legal Action
16 May 2016, MSF, IF EUROPE TURNS ITS BACK NOW THE CONCEPT OF ‘REFUGEE’ WILL CEASE TO EXIST. This week Europe celebrated unity and peace on Europe Day. But in 2016 we fear its leaders, like Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten, are united in turning their backs on those seeking our protection. In March, Europe’s leaders passed a deal with Turkey that allows Greece to send people back to Turkey in exchange for, among other things, a multi-billion Euro financial aid package. Sound familiar? Just like Australia’s “push back” policy and offshore detention program this new agreement, the so-called “EU-Turkey Deal”, threatens the right of all people to seek asylum and violates governments obligations to assist each man, woman or child asking for protection. Putting people’s lives or health at risk and causing suffering in asylum seekers is not a justifiable way to stop others risking their lives at sea, or worse, to control borders. Pushing people back to their country of last transit or banishing them to offshore detention transforms asylum into nothing but a political bargaining chip to keep refugees as far away from our borders and the eyes of the voting public as possible. “It betrays the humanitarian principle of providing impartial aid based on need, and need alone, without political strings attached” In exchange for this deal, Europe promises “humanitarian” and development aid to fulfill the needs of Syrian refugees and presents these funds as a measure to ease human suffering. But this aid to willing neighbours such as Turkey (just like the aid given to Papua New Guinea and Nauru), is conditional on shipping suffering offshore. It betrays the humanitarian principle of providing impartial aid based on need, and need alone, without political strings attached. By offering billions of euros to care for people out of sight in Turkey, Europe is also asking aid agencies to become complicit in their border control scheme. The Australian government has also referred to its push back policy as ‘humanitarian’. It has similarly funded it at the cost of its overseas development aid budget. But there is nothing whatsoever humanitarian about denying people their right to seek protection, and instead leaving people to suffer or die out of sight.Read More here
4 May 2016, The Guardian, The time has come to turn up the heat on those who are wrecking planet Earth – n interesting question is, what are you waiting for? Global warming is the biggest problem we’ve ever faced as a civilisation — certainly you want to act to slow it down, but perhaps you’ve been waiting for just the right moment. The moment when, oh, marine biologists across the Pacific begin weeping in their scuba masks as they dive on reefs bleached of life in a matter of days. The moment when drought in India gets deep enough that there are armed guards on dams to prevent the theft of water. The moment when we record the hottest month ever measured on the planet, and then smash that record the next month,and then smash that record the next month? The moment when scientists reassessing the stability of the Antarctic ice sheet have what one calls an ‘OMG moment’ and start talking about massive sea level rise in the next 30 years? Join the Guardian Sustainable Business Aus network for news and features on the social and environmental impact of business, as well as other exclusive benefits. That would be this moment – the moment when 135 children have drowned in Thailand trying to cool off from the worst heatwave on record there. The moment when, in a matter of months, we’ve recorded the highest windspeeds ever measured in the western and southern hemispheres. For years people have patiently and gently tried to nudge us on to a new path for dealing with our climate and energy troubles – we’ve had international conferences and countless symposia and lots and lots and lots of websites. And it’s sort of worked—the world met in Paris last December and announced it would like to hold temperature increases to 1.5C or less. Celebration ensued. But what also ensued was February, when the planet’s temperature first broke through that 1.5C barrier. And as people looked past the rhetoric, they saw that the promises made in Paris would add up to a world 3.5C warmer—an impossible world. The world we’re starting to see take shape around us. So there’s a need to push harder. Read More here
13 April 2016, Inside Climate News, CO2’s Role in Global Warming Has Been on the Oil Industry’s Radar Since the 1960s. Historical records reveal early industry concern with air pollutants, including smog and CO2, and unwanted regulation. The oil industry’s leading pollution-control consultants advised the American Petroleum Institute in 1968 that carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels deserved as much concern as the smog and soot that had commanded attention for decades. Carbon dioxide was “the only air pollutant which has been proven to be of global importance to man’s environment on the basis of a long period of scientific investigation,” two scientists from the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) told the API. This paper, along with scores of other publications, shows that the risks of climate change were being discussed in the inner circles of the oil industry earlier than previously documented. The records, unearthed from archives by a Washington, D.C. environmental law organization, the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), reveal that the carbon dioxide question—an obscure corner of research for much of the 20th century—had been closely studied since the 1950s by some oil company researchers. Read More here