XR climate activists start march from three cities to block A12 in The Hague next week
Participants in a climate march set off from Arnhem, Alkmaar, and Almere on Sunday morning, ending six days later in The Hague. The march is an initiative of Extinction Rebellion (XR), in advance of the next blockade of the A12 highway, which the climate activist group has announced for next Saturday. According to XR, the march will be “public-friendly and fully within the law.”
For each day, the activists have set a route of about 20 kilometers. The routes will go from station to station, so people who want to join the day’s march can do so easily. A similar march already took place in May, but then only from Arnhem.
Starting Saturday, September 9, XR plans to block the A12 in The Hague every day. This part of the road passes the temporary Tweede Kamer and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy. According to XR, this is exactly the right place for a protest against the financial benefits that the government grants for the use of fossil fuels. These fuels cause by far the most CO2 emissions and thus contribute significantly to global warming.
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Coalmine approvals in Australia this year could add 150m tonnes of CO2 to atmosphere
Expansion of metallurgical coalmine in Queensland will add 31m tonnes alone with activists accusing Albanese government of being reckless
Coalmine expansions and developments approved in Australia so far this year are expected to add nearly 150m tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere over their lifetimes – equivalent to nearly a third of the country’s annual climate pollution.
The Albanese government this week gave the greenlight to an expansion of the Gregory Crinum coalmine in central Queensland. It produces metallurgical coal, used in steelmaking.
According to an analysis by the Australia Institute, it is likely to extend the development’s life by 11 years – until the mid-2030s – and add about 31m tonnes of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere once it is burned. That equates to 6% of Australia’s annual emissions. The owner, Sojitz Blue, will have until 2073 to decommission the mine.
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Climate and conservation groups accused the government of recklessness and hypocrisy given its promise to act decisively on the climate crisis, pointing out it had the power to change the environment law to give it the power to block new fossil fuel developments if it chose.
The Climate Council’s chief executive, Amanda McKenzie, said the mine expansion approval showed Australia’s environment laws were “absolutely broken”.
“The Albanese government has a once-in-a-generation opportunity to arrest this decline,” she said. “Strengthening our national environment law, with climate at the heart of it, will safeguard our health, grow the economy, and protect our treasured natural places.”
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Albanese Government’s stunning hypocrisy: coal mine extension gets the go-ahead
THE CLIMATE COUNCIL has labelled the decision to approve an extension to the Gregory Crinum coal mine in Queensland’s Bowen Basin until 2073 as ‘stunning hypocrisy’.
Just one week after Climate Minister Chris Bowen toured the Pacific to promote Australia’s climate credentials, and with all warning sirens blaring about a climate change-fuelled summer of extreme heat and fires ahead, it beggars belief the Albanese Government has thrown a lifeline to a fourth highly-polluting fossil fuel project.
The approval was granted under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act (EPBC), Australia’s key national environmental law, which ironically fails to deal directly with the main threat Australia’s environment now faces: climate change.
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Rejecting Destruction to Communities, Groups Sue Biden Admin Over Offshore Lease Sale
Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“This vast lease sale—for millions of acres—poses threats to Gulf communities and endangered species while contributing to the climate crisis this region knows far too well,” said one advocate.
Calling the Biden administration’s plan to go ahead with an offshore drilling lease sale “mind-boggling” as the United States faces escalating climate harms including “record heat, fires, and flooding,” several advocacy groups filed a federal lawsuit Friday challenging the U.S. Interior Department’s impending sale of 67 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico to the fossil fuel industry.
Groups including the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD), Earthjustice, and Friends of the Earth (FOE) filed the lawsuit saying that in moving forward with Lease Sale 261—the last of three offshore lease sales mandated by the Inflation Reduction Act—the Interior Department did not sufficiently consider the environmental impacts on people and wildlife across Gulf communities.
“As steward of the country’s public lands and waters, Interior has a duty to fully consider the harms offshore leasing can cause, from air pollution to oil spills, and beyond,” said Julia Forgie, attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the plaintiffs. “This vast lease sale—for millions of acres—poses threats to Gulf communities and endangered species while contributing to the climate crisis this region knows far too well. We are holding the agency to its obligation to carefully assess these risks and the climate fallout of this giveaway to Big Oil.”
“If we are going to make a dent in the climate crisis, business as usual must stop.”
A study published in May in Environmental Research showed that people living near offshore drilling rigs are at heightened risk for respiratory and cardiovascular issues as well as other serious illnesses, along with facing the rising threat of extreme weather due to fossil fuel emissions from such projects.
Lease Sale 261 could result in the production of more than 1 billion barrels of oil and 4 trillion cubic feet of fossil gas over the next 50 years, noted the groups, leading to more than 370 tons of greenhouse gases at a time when scientists and energy experts are warning that continued fossil fuel extraction is threatening the planet.
The sale is scheduled to be held on September 27, around the same time that the Interior Department is expected to release its proposal for a five-year offshore oil and gas leasing program.
That proposal could include as many as 11 new offshore lease sales “with the potential to emit up to 3.5 billion tons of carbon pollution,” said the groups.
The lawsuit filed on Friday accused the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) of presenting “an incomplete and misleading picture of oil spill impacts and risks based on flawed modeling that failed to properly consider reasonably foreseeable accidents” in its analysis of environmental impacts that could be caused by Lease Sale 261.
“The final SEIS [supplemental environmental impact statement] failed to take the required ‘hard look’ at the significant impacts of this action,” reads the lawsuit. “For example, the bureau did not rationally evaluate the impacts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, relying instead on problematic modeling and assumptions to conclude that these massive lease sales will result in only slightly higher emissions than not leasing at all, and further failed to consider the impacts of such fossil fuel development on climate goals and commitments. With regard to environmental justice, the final SEIS arbitrarily dismissed the impacts of onshore oil and gas infrastructure—refineries, petrochemical plants, and other industrial sources that process fossil fuels and related products from these lease sales—on Gulf communities.”
The lawsuit was filed as thousands of people in Louisiana’s so-called “Cancer Alley” were ordered to evacuate due to a chemical leak and fire at a petroleum refinery.
Hallie Templeton, legal director for Friends of the Earth, said the group will “keep fighting until the Gulf of Mexico is off the table for good.”
“Unfortunately, given BOEM’s history of sacrificing the Gulf of Mexico to Big Oil, this lease sale decision comes as no surprise,” said Templeton. “Our lawsuit should also come as no surprise, since BOEM continues to rely on the same outdated, broken environmental analysis. If we are going to make a dent in the climate crisis, business as usual must stop.”
Original article by Julia Conley republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).