Letter to:
Mark Dreyfus,
Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency,
Shop 6, Parkmore Shopping Centre,
Cheltenham Road,
Keysborough. 3173.
Dear Sir,
The State Liberal Government abandoned the closure of one of Australia’s dirtiest brown coal power plants thus abandoning the legislated state target of a 20% cut in carbon dioxide emissions this decade. The State Government has also embarked on an aggressive expansion of exploration licenses for the brown coal industry into some of Victoria’s most spectacular natural environments – Ninety Mile Beach, Gippsland Lakes and the Strezlecki Ranges.
We urge you, as a member of the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee, to introduce the strongest possible price on Victoria’s polluting brown coal industry – and also on the environmentally destructive coal seam gas industry which is destroying valuable farmland in Queensland, plans to mine a State forest in Narrabri, NSW and will destroy rare dinosaur footprints along 80 kms of coastline north of Broome, WA at James Price Point – traditional land of the Goolarabooloo and Jabirr Jabirr groups.
The coal seam gas industry uses millions of litres of water, sand and a battery of chemicals including carcinogens, such as BTEX (benzene) injected at pressure to fracture rock and release gas. As a result the water table, wells and aquifers have become polluted, unfit for human or cattle consumption. Farmers report a drop of up to 10 metres in the water level of the Great Artesian Basin – Australia’s greatest underground water resource. Can Australia afford the loss of productive farmland, farmer’s income, pollution of finite water resources and loss of significant paleontological features such as dinosaur’s footprints providing a unique glimpse of an ecosystem that existed 130 million years ago?
How much would the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee orice carbon to adequately compensate Australians for depletion of finite water resources, environmental and agricultural destruction resulting in greenhouse emissiona massively in excess of the 20% reduction required in Victoria if our present lifestyle is to survive?
Yours sincerely,
Mary Rimington,
Secretary,
MBCL
c.c:
Adam Brandt, Australian Greens
Tony Burke, Federal Minister of Environment
Martin Ferguson, Energy Minister