Sent: Friday, April 04, 2014 3:53 PM
Subject: Submission to the Senate Inquiry
into Environmental Offsets (with Appendices 1-4, Appendix 5 & 6 to follow)
‘SINGAPORE
HAZE’
Submission
to the Senate Inquiry into Environmental Offsets
It has taken only a few days of
research into this legal instrument, known widely as a ‘Biodiversity Offset’ scheme which
governments in many First World countries have deployed for a number of years,
to conclude that it is beset with innumerable problems, is demonstrably
illogical, has the potential of truly catastrophic environmental consequences,
and is fundamentally, irretrievably flawed. There have of course been a few
cases of successful offsets over the years that have led to a net biodiversity
gain, but the vast majority of reporting and comments on this scheme are in the
negative.
The fundamental flaw is that it only comes into
play when endangered native habitat is proposed to be cleared. It is clearly an immoral act to destroy the
last intact remnants of an ecosystem, especially for an unnecessary and
totally avoidable activity such as mining more coal – such reckless destruction
could push hundreds of species into extinction. Extinction cannot be ‘offset’
by anything. Asking a company to pay a token towards ‘conservation’ or to
replace the highly complex, incomprehensible and irreplaceable old-growth
ecology with a revegetation program clearly will not provide the habitat needed
to prevent all those plants and animals from disappearing off the face of the
Earth. To approve this destruction, knowing full well that it will lead to mass
extinctions, is the very worst form of ecocide and the individuals in
government responsible for such approvals WILL be indicted in an International
Court and WILL face severe punishment.
Just one of the problems with this policy is that
‘due process’ can be so easily bypassed – the intention is that it is only
employed as a last resort after all
other alternatives have been considered and found not to be viable – clearly,
no other alternatives were considered for the Leard Forest or Bimblebox Reserve
– their destruction is entirely avoidable! Companies can and will go straight
to the easy ‘offset’ option, seemingly without having to justify it.
Moreover, this issue cannot be addressed without
taking into consideration a holistic picture of environmental degradation in
Australia today. So many of these discrete ecologies have been cleared over 90%
of their original extent, that it is now absolutely imperative that we save the
last remnants (My motto is: Identify, Protect, Augment and Connect every last
fragment of threatened ecosystem), not find surreptitious and nefarious ways to
destroy them. It encompasses numerous complex issues and cannot be considered
out of context. There have been a multitude of arguments and rationales
proffered by environmental professionals concerning these offsets that clearly
demonstrate just how problematic this particular policy is. (in Annexes)
One issue that has not been
addressed so far in the “offsets” debate is that CULTURAL HERITAGE cannot be
‘offset’! Goomeroi Elders have jumped
through all the bureaucratic hoops to try and save their precious Cultural
Heritage contained in the Leard State Forest, filing section 9 and 10
applications, to no avail – the bulldozers are clearing the critically
endangered forest as we speak - due process once again is being wilfully,
illegally, ignored.
I don’t have the time to go into much detail at the
moment – I am already engaged with many environmental battles in this “War
Against Nature” (Appendix 5), and now
have 8 new dams to fight in Queensland and many more to stop from straddling
wild Cape York rivers due to the profound ignorance of ecocidal governments.
(In the year 2000, the World Commission on Dams released a report concluding that megadams
are the most environmentally and socially destructive infrastructures on the
planet – they recommended no news dams and de-commissioning of existing ones
where possible – France and the US took notice and embarked on a program of
decommissioning - no other country did, certainly not Australia.) I shall instead copy here, with relevant
details highlighted, the transcript of the Radio National program that alerted
me to this debate over the “offset” policy in the first place, with my comments
(there were of course a great many sane and rational responses that this
Inquiry should consider), as well as other annexes relevant to the issue,
including an EIS by Paul Donatiu, Executive Coordinator, National Parks
Association of Queensland on the Bimblebox offsets.
At the crux of this issue are
Western society’ distorted and perverted values
- It is insane that we place so much value on, and give unlimited legal
recourse to the murder of one individual human animal, of which there are over
7 billion on the planet, but absolute zero value, zero recourse to justice, to
the murder of THOUSANDS of other animals which are close to extinction, of entire endangered
ecosystems, pillars of evolution 3.6 billion years in the building! Corrupt and
demonstrably psychopathic entities are bringing them crashing down into
oblivion with impunity.
We must progress the punishment, at long last, of
corporations and governments who lay waste to the natural world – to date
they’ve got away with their ecocide and cultural genocide because no-one has
ever laid charges against them in the International Court. The decimation and
pollution of the natural world will continue to its inevitable end while these
individuals and entities continue to escape justice. One straight-forward case
of wilful ecocide that could be taken to the International Court right now is
The Paradise Dam; Peter Beattie and the federal environment minister could be
indicted as being responsible for the eradication of an entire Gondwana
ecosystem, as the 45kms of unique riverine Gondwana habitat that was inundated
on the Burnett River were the LAST stretches of that intact ecosystem left on
Earth – inundated too were the most significant sacred sites of the Wakka Wakka
Jinda on primeval Murullbakgera.
It can only be concluded that ‘Biodiversity
offsets’ are instruments that allow governments world-wide to ‘legally’
encroach on the last remnants of rare forests and other complex endangered
ecosystems with motorways, mines and housing estates etc. It is another nail, a
significant one to boot, in the coffin of Australia’s precious native plants
and animals.
I leave the last comment to one of my colleagues
who understand more about ecological matters than most ‘ecologists’:
I recently
learned of an idiotic concept of our politicians called ‘biodiversity offset’
where genetically diverse country can be destroyed (by mining for example) as a
trade-off for protecting some other region or regenerating it as a shadow of
its original richness. What stupid policy-maker thought of this dumb principle
and which dickhead politicians voted it into law? Perhaps a course on ecology
and environmental diversity should be essential training for public servants.
How do you offset the clearing of mixed system native vegetation and destroying
sustainable ecosystems??? By asking farmers to ‘preserve’ a few trees on
private property? Spare me!
And finally, I titled this submission ‘Singapore
Haze’* to draw attention to the fact that nearly every day this year, the
Weather Page has shown ‘haze’ in Singapore – on only a few out of the last 100
days was there ‘rain’ – tangential evidence of an environmental crisis
happening in our region, that of drought-exacerbated illegal land-clearing
fires in Sumatra and Borneo for Palm Oil Plantations. It has nothing yet
everything to do with ‘Environmental Offsets’ which need to be evaluated in
context with this entirely avoidable wholesale destruction of priceless,
irreplaceable habitats that will inevitably lead to the spiral into extinction
of countless species.
Maureen
Brannan, 905 Wilsons Road CLOYNA via MURGON Q 4605 ph: 0427710523
*‘Singapore Haze’ is also the title of a submission
I am making to The Australian newspaper to reinstate a full weather page, only
calling it a ‘Weather and Climate’ page with far more information and
explanations of how weather and climate work, to better inform the public of
the multiple problems the planet is facing but especially as an educational
tool for schools, a page that can be pulled out, discussed and saved for
continuity of understanding.
---------------------------------------o0o---------------------------------------
APPENDIX 1
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/551/218/065/?z00m=20699209
Stop Coal Mine in Australian Nature Reserveauthor: Judith B. target: Greg Hunt, Minister for the Environment, Australia
Greg Hunt, who’s beginning to
look more like the coal minister than the environment minister, has just given
permission for a coal mine right in the middle of Queensland’s most threatened
natural habitat.
Clive Palmer’s Galilee Basin
mine, grandly titled the China First mine, was given official blessing on
Wednesday 18 December.
The mine plans and associated
railway line would obliterate half of the Bimblebox Nature Refuge, a vital
habitat for koalas, not to mention using up groundwater and adding to
pollution.
To “offset” all this destruction, the company in
question, Waratah Coal, has to pay a token amount towards conservation efforts
and abide by a few none-too-stringent restrictions. None of these will replace
the habitat destroyed or the wildlife it contains.
Killing off Australia’s wildlife
for the sake of a deadly and completely unsustainable industry is not what
environment ministers are supposed to encourage.
Tell Hunt to get his priorities right and call an
immediate halt to the project.
Minister
Hunt’s decision comes as little surprise. Countless letters and submissions
have been written in an effort to engage with the formal processes of
assessment and decision making. But this result shows decisively that
Australian governments would rather court coal interests than respect
agreements signed with committed landholders to protect Australia’s precious
biodiversity into the future.
Incredulously,
this approval comes at the same time that Waratah Coal is facing an
Environmental Protection Order for failing to rehabilitate their
exploration bore holes. It suggests the company has a blatant disregard for the
law that protects landholders and the environment, and we shudder to think what
their standards will be like should the mine go ahead. Also, the fact that the
government will need the Palmer United Party’s senate votes to pass future
legislation, including the repeal of the carbon tax next year, raises serious
questions as to the integrity of this decision.
To make
matters worse, the Abbot Government together with Labor passed a law in
mid-December that will make it difficult for this decision to be challenged
in the Federal Court. A further blow came on Wednesday, 18th December, when
Federal funding for the Environmental Defender’s Office was suddenly
withdrawn. The playing field is that much more uneven now, with
well-resourced companies (and self- proclaimed billionaires in the case of
Clive Palmer) able to throw their ample funds into legal cases against
landholders who have next to nothing. Is this how we want Australia to be?
But the
fight to stop the Galilee Coal Project is far from over. Nature Refuge owners,
local landholders, city based professionals and students, climate change
campaigners and our small dedicated team of volunteers will not sit idle while
coal mining is privileged over people and the environment.
Minister Hunt, we call on you to save Bimblebox from coal mining
#3,768 Jan 02
Maureen Brannan Australia
The Galilee basin thermal coal
deposit covers an area of 247,000 square kilometers. Why then do you need to
mine the coal beneath that particular miniscule 4000 hectares of LAST REMAINING
endangered eco-system, that will lead to the inevitable fatal deterioration of
the whole reserve? Clive Palmer has already admitted that because he is so
phenomenally wealthy, he has no need to mine his tenement under Bimblebox.
Message to Clive: Best wake up now, before your beloved new baby daughter
inevitably grows up to hate you for your leading part in the final destruction
of Australia’s last intact native forest remnants, due entirely to your
criminal wilful ignorance and insatiable greed – you will value your ill-gotten
wealth at nothing then. Best put your billions of dollars into advancing
solar/wind/wave/tide/thorium and thermal technologies and be worthy of her
love. Same applies to you, Greg Hunt, and all those who facilitate this mine -
your progeny will despise you when they realise how unnecessary and immoral-to-the-point-of-evil
all that destruction of our precious ecological heritage was.
At the present moment, just hours
after I posted the comment below, nearly 5000 people have signed – please add
to them and get this petition delivered with a combined shout loud enough to
wake them up from the collective nightmare that they are forcing us all to
endure - Bimblebox represents the Green Line, drawn first at Paradise and more
recently at Frog Rock, Bulahdelah, marking the line in the sand that the good
and decent people of Australia are taking to end the government’s relentless
War on Nature.
We have reached another polarity, where the party created by one
demonstrably callous and morally corrupt coal billionaire will hold
the balance of power in the senate. Our apathy
is to blame for this unbelievable situation.
OPEN LETTER TO CLIVE PALMER
Dear Clive, Congratulations on the latest addition
to your lovely family – they all deserve long and happy lives. You however
do not, along with anyone else who knowingly
and unnecessarily destroys the last pathetic, fragmented remnants of the
planet’s ecological foundations, who wish to bring down these pillars of
evolution, 3.6 billion years in the making, just to make more money. In a world
where your kind have already destroyed up to 99% of some of this continent’s
discrete eco-communities, and a large percentage of most of them, to continue
to wreak your mass biological annihilation on what remains is nothing less than
evil. That you cannot even understand this betrays a profound ignorance that
goes beyond insane. May your new daughter become an avid protector of the
planet’s last remnants of our biological life support structures. Your reign of
eco-terrorism is at an end – the good and decent people of this country will
simply not allow you to continue – IT ENDS AT BIMBLEBOX.
[I submit this statement in full as it gives
context as to why the ‘offsets’ for Bimblebox Nature Refuge are so profoundly
inadequate – I hope you will honour this work by at least reading it, but I
have highlighted in bold the segments specifically concerning offsets.]
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