Unsurprisingly, the Government doesn’t like to draw attention to the fact that since the 2022 election:
It has approved four new coal projects.
It has approved the drilling of 116 new coal seam gas wells.
It has sat in court with coal companies and defended its right not to consider the climate impact of opening new fossil fuel projects.
The Government has passed legislation at the request of gas companies specifically designed to expedite their expansion. This is not hyperbole. The transcripts and documents are there in black and white.
The Government has stacked the agencies legislated to oversee and shape Australia’s climate policies — including the Net Zero Authority and the National Reconstruction Fund — with industry interests and surrounded them with a fortress-like bureaucracy, impervious to public scrutiny. It has left a former gas executive in charge of the Climate Change Authority.
The Prime Minister and various ministers have flown to India, Japan, Korea, and (just this month) Vietnam to lock in customers for our gas and coal. The media releases never mention that either. Australia is one of the world’s largest fossil fuel exporters, and the Government is subsidising, legislating, and using the full weight of our foreign policy to ensure we stay that way. Because Governments are very effective at making very big things happen very quickly when they want to.
The Australian Government has lobbied UNESCO to stop the Great Barrier Reef from being listed as “in danger”. This is as it is in the grip of another mass coral bleaching event.
The Australian Government has refused to end native forest logging. Despite the carbon it would store and the very real risk of extinction to the koala and the swift parrot. It has left the protection of our collapsing ecosystems to the market. It has put far more energy into talking about being ‘nature positive’ than doing anything about it.
The federal Labor government alone still gives over $9 billion in subsidies to fossil fuels. It has committed $1.5 billion to a gas export hub in the Northern Territory. One single gas export hub is getting half of what Australia has committed to global climate finance over five years.
"Whether for fuel breaks, salvage logging, or private land logging, native forest logging hasn’t stopped in Victoria. It will continue for many years, and the logs cut from these operations will be sold commercially."
Pedal-electric Hopper may be the German "car" you didn't know you wanted.
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The rider's pedaling power is augmented by a 250-watt rear hub motor, taking the Hopper up to a top speed of 25 km/h (16 mph). The motor is powered by a removable 30-Ah/48V/1,440-Wh lithium-iron-phosphate battery, which is claimed to be good for a range of approximately 65 km (40 miles) per charge. An optional rooftop solar panel should help boost that figure.
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In order to minimise maintenance and mechanical complexity, the Hopper utilises an electronic pedal-by-wire system instead of a traditional chain-drive drivetrain.
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Such systems work by having the rider spin up a generator as they pedal. Doing so converts their mechanical energy into electrical energy, which is fed into the motor. That motor converts the electrical energy back into mechanical energy, which is used to turn the wheel.
What’s so bad about a road?
Roads are forest killers.
"A road means access. Once roads are bulldozed into rainforests, illegal loggers, miners, poachers and landgrabbers arrive. Once they get access, they can destroy forests, harm native ecosystems and even drive out or kill indigenous peoples. This looting of the natural world robs cash-strapped nations of valuable natural resources."
Hope for NSW forests: Court decision upholds community’s right to challenge native forest logging
Weak laws failing our forests , EDO
"In the shadow of claims made by the NSW Forestry Corporation, communities have been led to believe that they have no rights to challenge decisions about industrial logging in NSW native forests or seek action over unlawful conduct when logging destroys hollow-bearing trees and critical habitat for threatened species."
"But two recent court decisions have shattered those claims after EDO’s client successfully ran an argument which hasn’t previously been tested in the courts. After 20 years of resistance by the Forestry Corporation, it is now legally recognised that communities with a special interest have the right to hold the state-owned logging agency to account over its forestry operations in native forests."
New Australian environment laws would not stop widespread deforestation, organisations say
"Three groups familiar with draft conservation laws say they do not go far enough and may allow political influence on development decisions."
"Plibersek said about 90% of Australian timber came from plantations but the government was “not talking about banning native forest logging altogether...We’re talking about making sure that we are careful and thoughtful about the timber industry that we have in Australia."
Images of politicians and tourists seen cuddling the threatened marsupial are ubiquitous. The mascot, usually placed on a stump, has to pose and represent the 'brand' Australia.
Due to habitat destruction the animals are deprived of a living habitat and have to flee. The fragmented habitat they have to negotiate is crisscrossed with roads and dangerous canines.
Here in Bellingen, where Tuckers Nob public forest is being industrially logged, all images cropping up are of disoriented koalas on daytime roads. There will be nothing left to cuddle soon.
"Tarkeeth State Forest 'plantation' excluded from protection, and high quality habitat, but outside the 'provisional assessment area' for the park - to be clear-felled with no consultation"
"In Coffs Harbour Local Court the forestry contractors Michael Luigi Vitali and Rodney James Hearfield were found guilty of assaulting Graham and his companion Andre Johnston that afternoon on the road on the Dorrigo Plateaux three and a half years ago. No conviction was recorded."
Let's slow environmental destruction and achieve climate adaptation
"The planned 114 new fossil fuel developments threaten not only the climate, but also these very planetary life support systems that enable survival in an increasingly turbulent world. Our policies, regulations and development decisions are enabling new shale oil and gas, LNG, coal and petrochemical industries"
Logging operations to continue between NSW and Queensland after judge rejects environmentalists' court bid
"Environmentalists have lost a legal challenge to a forestry agreement between the NSW and Commonwealth governments, meaning logging operations can continue within a vast coastal area between Sydney and the Queensland border."
"On behalf of the alliance (The North East Forest Alliance), the Environmental Defenders Office (EDO) argued the Commonwealth was required to assess environmental values and principles of ecologically sustainable management when it was renewed, but failed to do so".
Surge in extreme forest fires fuels global emissions
"Climate change and human activities have led to more frequent and intense forest blazes over the past two decades."
"The increased numbers of forest fires was partially driven by the frequent heatwaves and droughts caused by climate change...In turn, the CO2 emitted by forest fires contributes to global warming, creating a feedback loop between the two.”
"Humans also played a part. “Many forest fires were actually caused by humans when they were, for example, building fires to get warm at night, lighting fireworks or discarding cigarette butts."
"The hollows would have been visible when the tree was standing."
"Forestry Corporation NSW sentenced for felling hollow-bearing trees in Mogo State Forest. FCNSW was fined $20,000 and ordered to pay more than $84,000 in legal costs to the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA)."
FCNSW "was also ordered to widely publicise the judgement on its social media accounts and through a paid advertisement in the local newspaper and the Sydney Morning Herald within 60 days of the judgement."
"Under the Coastal Integrated Forestry Operations Approval (CIFOA), the state-owned timber corporation responsible for managing more than 2 million hectares of public land is required to retain any hollow-bearing trees during harvesting operations. Such hollows typically form in trees more than 150 years old."
"Hollow bearings are protected in NSW legislation because they take so long to form, and more than 300 Australian native species rely on them for shelter.
The forests pledge
ITS TIME TO END LOGGING IN NATIVE FORESTS ACROSS AUSTRALIA
Half of Australia’s forests have been lost. https://theforestpledge.com.au/
Outrage as endangered species living in forest goes unnoticed by loggers chopping it down. 'Nothing to see here': Greater gliders, yellow-bellied gliders, koalas and powerful owls.
“Forestry Corporation admitted that they don’t do surveys for the nocturnal greater gliders at night! No wonder they aren’t finding any — they don’t want to find them, as it would seriously restrict their operations,” CEO Jacqui Mumford
"Endangered marsupials have been discovered inside a forest that was being chopped down by the NSW government, prompting calls for its operations to be suspended across dozens of sites across the state."
"After the Environmental Protection Agency was asked to intervene this week, NSW Forestry Corporation voluntarily asked its contractors to cease operations at the Styx River State Forest which borders the Cathedral Rock National Park, west of Coffs Harbour. It’s the second time since August the state-owned agency has been forced to down chainsaws because of the discovery of greater gliders."
The impacts of extreme heat events on wildlife
How koalas are trying to cope
Temperatures are predicted to swelter above 40 degrees today in NSW. People are retreating into their coal-fired AC houses and AC combustion boxes. Dogs are offered drinking bowls at almost every door in Bellingen, but Australian animals are out there in a degraded landscape, having to deal with the extreme heat we generate.
Koalas are "using a tree species they don't feed on ... [hugging] the main trunks of trees and lower to the ground. We came up with the idea they were losing heat to the tree trunks. I found a colleague with a fancy thermal camera and went out in hot weather and it's exactly what they were doing. By pressing their body into the coolest tree they could find, the koalas halved their need to drink water in heatwaves. Hugging trees may not be enough for koalas to maintain their already dwindling distribution with rising average temperatures."
Dying and dead wildlife on a remote Australian timber plantation. Eagles were soaring.
"Disturbing video shot ...at a remote Australian timber plantation has sparked an investigation. Footage and images to Yahoo News Australia showing dead and dying wildlife strewn across a track in a recently logged Tasmanian forest."
Logging practices:
"It's basically dead" AI reveals the legacy of decades of logging in Victoria
"An AI-based analysis of 20 years of VicForests’ logging, researchers say, shows the scale of failed regeneration in Victoria’s state forests.The data, which has been shared exclusively with the ABC, suggests that 20 per cent of Victoria’s state forests have not regenerated after logging.... That’s almost 13,000 hectares of state forest the analysis found to be standing in a state of ruin."
"Now the state is shutting its native logging industry in a matter of weeks, and the forests that were once given to Victoria’s state-run logging agency, VicForests, are being returned to the public."
"By law, the logging agency is required to regenerate the areas it has logged and hand them back to the public in a healthy state. But until now, how much that has actually happened has largely been a mystery."
Native forest logging ban in Tasmania could save state $72m, pro-market thinktank says
"Analysis recommends the government stop subsidising its forestry arm and generate carbon credits, a move likely to be opposed by industry and conservationists. The taxpayer should not be subsidising environmental degradation to indulge the anti-competitive, protectionist fantasies of a small number of individuals with outdated and romanticised views of an industry."
A recent report details Forestry Corporation’s significant financial losses, costing taxpayers millions in subsidies, as well as degrading the environment. Suzanne Arnold reports.
A Frontier Economics report shows that the state-owned corporation had received tax payer funded grants worth $246.9m since the 2019//20 financial year and operated with a loss of $28.2m in the same period.
Pay farmers/landowners to keep/maintain/improve nativeforests.
"Living landscapes are a form of infrastructure in the sense that forests, for example, clean our water and our air."
"...It is not enough simply to restore natural systems to their former condition. “There is no ‘pure nature’ that’s outside of us, untouched up there in the foothills somewhere...We’ve ‘made’ the world what it is already, so now we need to take a very, very strong hand in the remaking. … A big part of climate adaptation may simply be unbuilding what we’ve already built.”
"A big part of climate adaptation may simply be unbuilding what we’ve already built. Rather than thinking of design as something merely additive or “beautifying,” we need to think about undoing our environmental mistakes, like damming rivers, bulkheading our shorelines, and concretizing streams. We need to start making room for rivers and floods."