environment alert

Environment Minister Greg Hunt has caved to the mining industry and approved Indian mining giant Adani's monstrous Carmichael Mine, threatnening the Great Barrier Reef. The coal mine will be the biggest in Australia. It will pollute our climate with massive CO2 emissions for decades. It will mean massive and continual dredging and dumping in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area and will fill the Reef with thousands of coal ships every year. Original article and petition from GetUp. Note that, if you sign, GetUp puts you on two mailing lists, however the situation is serious and their campaign may be effective.

The good news is that while Adani may have the approval, it still needs to find up to $10 billion before it can proceeed. This means the battle to protect the Reef from Adani is down to who can persuade investors, us or them.

Adani will try and convince investors to lend it $10 billion to wreck the Reef. We'll try and convince them Adani is a company with no public support who cannot be trusted. Game on.

Donations here on GetUp.

The residents of Wyndham are distressed as their council is building a mountain, literally a mountain of rubbish, from theirs and other councils and it smells. It is blocking their views and rising up on a flat horizon in a ghastly kind of monument to the folly of our consumer society and our overpopulation predicament. You are invited to show solidarity with Wyndham citizens at a meeting on Tuesday 9th April, at 7.30pm at Wyndham EcoLiving Centre, 28 Ridge Drive Wyndham Vale, (Mel.205, A5).

Growth economies grow garbage

Growth economies depend on growing populations and encouraging them to consume more, faster. Mechanical refrigerators, which used to last 30 or more years, have been replaced by electronic ones that use far more energy and last only a few years.[1] Clockwork watches, which lasted for years, have been replaced by throw-away digital watches. These facts demonstrate the fallacy of the idea that humans progress forward in time and that our societies are growing more intelligent and more able to solve the complex problems they are constantly compounding.

Mountain of garbage festers on horizon

Here is another example of the tragic and absurd consequences of our consumer and growth society.

The residents of Wyndham are distressed as their council is building a mountain, literally a mountain of rubbish, from theirs and other councils and it smells. So if you in that area they would love some support at their council meeting. This is not good planning and certainly not good development.

Many of you may have have heard about the massive “mountain of Waste” that Council proposes to create at the Wests Road tip (“Refuse Disposal Facility”). It is proposed to increase its height to 130m (110m above surrounding ground level) and its footprint ten-fold (see artists rough representation in the photo below).

Recalcitrant, undemocratic Wyndham council

There have been growing complaints about the first stage of this development which has already risen to approx 24 meters above ground level (see first photo.) Council refused to meet to discuss this issue with residents.

Below is the overall representation of the proposal (note that the existing 24m ‘mountain’ is already obscuring part of the You Yangs).

It looks ugly: makes us a dumping ground for Melbourne’s rubbish: encourages waste dumping instead of recycling: and it smells!

If you think this is a bad idea then come along to the meeting next Tuesday and help us tell our elected councillors that this is not the sort of image Wyndham wants.

Meeting

When: 7.30 pm, Tuesday 9th April

Where: Wyndham EcoLiving Centre, 28 Ridge Drive Wyndham Vale

(Mel. 205, A5)

[1] To understand this phenomena, try looking for a new refridgerator with more than one efficiency star lately. Very hard to find. There are some exceptions, such as Sunfrost refrigerators.

Here is a fairly good article about energy efficiency in refrigerators - http://www.ecomall.com/greenshopping/icebox2.htm.