Relevant other media

Here are a list of articles relating to this action, Hazelwood power plant and coal mining and processing.

Hazelwood protest has support of key greens
The Age - Melbourne,Victoria,Australia
LEADING environment groups have backed protesters planning to break the law during a demonstration at the Hazelwood power station this weekend. ...

Dark clouds gather over coal's future
On Line opinion - Fortitude Valley,Brisbane,Australia
... in the rushed construction of a new security fence around the Hazelwood power station, in anticipation of a community protest planned for next weekend. ...

Aussie Activists Target World’s Most-Polluting Coal Plant
by Leigh Ewbank - Sep 11th, 2009

http://solveclimate.com/blog/20090911/aussie-activists-target-world-s-mo...

Hundreds of climate activists are descending on Australia’s Latrobe Valley this weekend with a message for the owner of the most-polluting coal-fired power plant in the industrialized world: Your social license to continue burning brown coal in dinosaurs like the Hazelwood Power Station has been revoked.

The mass rally and civil disobedience to shut down Hazelwood comes as a new analysis finds Australia has passed the U.S. to lead the world in CO2 emissions per capita, courtesy of its heavy reliance on coal.

Under the banner "Switch Off Hazelwood, the protesters will be delivering a “community decommission order” to International Power Australia, says organizer Louise Morris.
(to read more follow link above).

What Is A 'Community Decommission Order'?
http://newmatilda.com/2009/09/11/what-community-decommission-order

By Louise Morris

Fed up with government inaction on climate change, this weekend Victorians will take matters into their own hands by serving Hazelwood power station with a decommission order.

Australia has sent the international community plenty of signals on climate change over the last few years. Most of them have been smoke signals of some sort, either hazy obfuscation or just good old-fashioned pollution. We're going to Copenhagen in the hope that no one notices we're there; the expensive, oxymoronic trash talk we're hearing about "clean coal" is pure smoke and mirrors, and our power generation, especially in Victoria, is pure filth.

As the saying goes, where there's smoke, there's a coal-fired power station. And given the amount of smoke in the air, it'll come as no surprise to learn that about 95 per cent of our state's electricity is generated by burning dirty brown coal. Victoria's Hazelwood power station is one of the worst in the industrialised world. It's a relic, which by itself puts out 15 per cent of Victoria's greenhouse emissions, and was to be shut down this year. However, in 2005, under pressure from the coal lobby, the state Government extended its licence to pollute for another couple of decades.

Meanwhile, state and federal ALP are backing a new coal-fired power station in Victoria that goes by the name of HRL. If you could summarise the message that sends the world it would be, "We're polluting the world on a massive scale, and we're OK with that."

But the signals being sent into the atmosphere from Hazelwood on 13 September will not be the usual 50-or-so daily tonnes of climate-altering CO2. On Sunday, after the morning fog lifts from the plant's massive wastewater ponds, Hazelwood will be used to send a message of a very different sort up into the international media-sphere. The first of a series of national mass community civil disobediences is about to take place there, in an action to remove the plant's social licence to go on burning coal and registering the community's demand that government take science-based action on climate change.

Hundreds of members of the public will walk onto the Hazelwood site, pass under the shadow of its towering Cold War-era smoke stacks, and serve its owners with a "Community Decommission Order". This Sunday the public will be sending the message that the Government should have been heeding all along: switch off coal, and switch on renewables.

The signal sent will be a historic one for a number of reasons. It's the first event of its kind for a rapidly growing Victorian climate change campaign that's only been a self-identifying movement for about four years. In that short period a highly diverse range of people have come forward to help organise this community action, and participants will be coming from suburbs and towns throughout the state.

There's something powerful about the fact that ordinary people are prepared to step outside their comfort zone and risk arrest to bring attention to the urgency of the situation. "We feel like it's time to get serious about climate change," said Carol Ride, from the Darebin Climate Action Network. "The next few years are critical."

Sunday's Community Decommission Order also sends a message that Australia is ready to participate in a global movement on climate change, but one that doesn't depend on professional lobbyists and the pre-approval of the corporate sector. Worldwide, a grassroots movement of mass protests and civil disobedience campaigns is taking immediate action on climate change.

In the UK, a massive Climate Camp on London's Blackheath has just come to a close, ending a week-long session of protest actions, training sessions, skill-sharing and community action for thousands of members of the public. These camps have been held in places all over the world, including one in Newcastle in NSW last year, and one in Bangladesh next month. Sunday's action signals Australia's intention to take action and join in.

But more than anything, Sunday's event will make a point about the nature of power generation in the political sense. This commitment to a mass community civil disobedience is proof that we have matured into a strong campaign made up of people ready to do more than change their light-bulbs, have four-minute showers and trust those in power to do the right thing.

In spite of worldwide scientific consensus about the urgency of the problem, governments, corporations and vested interests have hidden behind a smoke-screen of economic jargon and the absurd fantasy that the market will magically fix the problem. Instead, people are skilling themselves up, educating themselves, and going directly to the source of climate change in Victoria with a strong agenda for switching to renewables.

The message being beamed out from Hazelwood over the weekend of 12-13 September is all about how we can take action on climate change by generating real power within and for the Australian community.

Punting on coal is a loser, tell the Government

* David Spratt
* September 10, 2009
The Age - Oped.

Everyone else can see the folly of propping up polluting industries.

THERE'S an irony in the rushed construction of a new security fence around the Hazelwood power station, in anticipation of a community protest this weekend.

The Government, it seems, is more in interested in protecting Hazelwood from protesters, than protecting our climate from Hazelwood.

Victoria has been shamed as the least climate-friendly state, running three of Australia's four dirtiest power stations. And Hazelwood is one of the dirtiest in the developed world, scheduled to close this year but in 2005 given a lifeline by the State Government to 2031.
To read full article go to link below:
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/punting-on-coal-is-a-loser-tell-the-gov...

Bid launched to close coal power station
Ninemsn - Sydney,New South Wales,Australia
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/858909/bid-launched-to-close-coal-po...
Community organisations will protest at Victoria's Hazelwood power station next Sunday in a push to close the station and encourage the Latrobe Valley ...

Bid launched to close coal power station
September 7, 2009 - 10:09AM
http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-national/bid-launched-to-close-coal...

Anti-coal activists have taken their concerns to the Victorian Parliament steps, with about 40 of them gathering on Monday to launch a campaign to close one of the state's coal power stations.
AAP

Climate Camp hits London: live.

Climate Camp descends on London today with the police promising to take a low-key approach to the climate change protests to avoid the trouble that flared during the G20 summit. Follow live updates from our reporting team as they follow developments across the city.

Climate Disobedience

Is a New "Seattle" in the Making?

By Mark Engler
TomDispatch
August 11, 2009
http://tomdispatch.com/post/175105/mark_engler_protesting_at_climate_gro...

In the early morning of October 8, 2007, a small group of British Greenpeace activists slipped inside a hulking smokestack that towers more than 600 feet above
a coal-fired power plant in Kent, England.

While other activists cut electricity on the plant's grounds, they prepared to climb the interior of the structure to its top, rappel down its outside, and paint in block
letters a demand that Prime Minister Gordon Brown put an end to plants like the Kingsnorth facility, which releases nearly 20,000 tons of carbon dioxide into the
atmosphere each day.

The activists, most of them in their thirties and forties, expected the climb to the top of the smokestack would take less than three hours.

http://tomdispatch.com/post/175105/mark_engler_protesting_at_climate_gro...

Pollution pays off for HK billionaire
MARIAN WILKINSON AND BEN CUBBY
August 11, 2009

A HONG KONG billionaire will receive millions of dollars in compensation under the Rudd Government's emissions trading scheme - but would get almost twice as much under the Opposition's plan.

The tycoon and philanthropist, Michael Kadoorie, is the chairman of CLP Holdings, formerly China Light and Power. The company, partly owned by his family, has power stations in Hong Kong, China, India and Thailand but one of its most heavily polluting plants is Yallourn in Victoria.

Under the Government's scheme, Yallourn would share in $3.9 billion in free permits and assistance allocated to electricity generators to help them when companies and consumers begin to pay for emissions from 2011.
http://www.watoday.com.au/environment/global-warming/pollution-pays-off-...

Geothermal industry 'left on the shelf'
http://www.theage.com.au/national/geothermal-industry-left-on-the-shelf-...
Adam Morton and Tom Arup, The Age, August 21, 2009
THE fledgling geothermal industry - described by the Federal Government as a potential competitor with coal-fired power - has warned that the design of new renewable energy legislation could set its development back two decades.

Big Oil wheels in climate-policy protesters

HARD on the heels of the US health-care protests, another citizen movement seems to have sprung up, this one to oppose Washington's attempts to tackle climate change. But behind the scenes, an industry with much at stake - Big Oil - is pulling the strings.

http://www.theage.com.au/world/big-oil-wheels-in-climatepolicy-protester...

Graham Readfearn: Only in Australia could fossil fuel be classed as renewable energy
WHEN is renewable energy not renewable energy? When it’s a fossil fuel.
http://blogs.news.com.au/couriermail/greenblog/index.php/couriermail/com...

Study links drought with rising emissions.

http://www.smh.com.au/environment/global-warming/study-links-drought-wit...

Melissa Fyfe

August 16, 2009

DROUGHT experts have for the first time proven a link between rising levels of greenhouse gases and a decline in rainfall.

A three-year collaboration between the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO has confirmed that the drought is not just a natural dry stretch but a shift related to climate change.

Scientists working on the $7 million South Eastern Australian Climate Initiative said the rain had dropped away because the subtropical ridge - a band of high pressure systems that sits over the country's south - had strengthened over the past 13 years.

Last year, using sophisticated computer climate models in the United States, the scientists ran simulations with only the ''natural'' influences on temperature, such as differing levels of solar activity.

The model results showed no intensification of the subtropical ridge and no decline in rainfall.

But when human influences on the atmosphere were added to the simulations - such as greenhouse gases, aerosols and ozone depletion - the models mimicked what has been observed in south-east Australia: strengthening high pressure systems and the significant loss of rain.

Coalition ups the ante on ETS compensation.

THERE was so much talk of "coupling" and "decoupling" in the Coalition partyroom yesterday it sounded like a cross between a sex show and a rail yard.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25950411-5017906,00.html

To read ful article go to;
http://tomdispatch.com/post/175105/mark_engler_protesting_at_climate_gro...

The Age
Sun and wind power struggle
Adam Morton
August 12, 2009.

DOUBTS are emerging about whether the Government's renewable energy bill will do what it is supposed to do - trigger immediate investment in cleaner power plants.

Energy analysts had expected wind power to be the clear winner from the proposed legislation, which would require 20 per cent of energy to come from renewable sources by 2020.

But, an investment bank analysis warned, the scheme's design - the subject of a Senate committee report to be released today - is likely to direct most spending in the first five years to rooftop solar panels.

The target ramps up in the second half of the decade, but is less than 10 per cent by 2015.

A recent report by investment bank UBS said: ''On our estimates there is every chance of that being met by [photovoltaic] solar power''.

Critics say this is due to a design flaw: to encourage rooftop solar power, the Government proposes initially giving households that install panels credits worth five times the energy generated.

These ''phantom credits'' do not represent actual energy generation but count towards the renewable energy target when cashed in.

Environment Victoria campaigns director Mark Wakeham said less renewable energy would be generated in the early years than the target suggested.

'It means large-scale projects that have been ready to go for a number of years, but have been waiting for a higher renewable energy target and price signal to invest, will remain on the back burner,'' he said.

The bill was delayed in June due to Opposition objections. . A Government spokeswoman said it would consider amendments supported by the Opposition to pass the bill.

UBS analyst David Leitch said some wind farms would be built in the first years of the setting of the target, pointing to AGL's plan for more than 210 turbines at Oakland Hills and Macarthur in western Victoria to balance energy use of the state's desalination plant.

But, he added, ''Wind farms that come on line prior to 2016 won't earn the sort of returns in the early years you would have expected six months ago.''

Government spokeswoman Laura Anderson challenged the UBS analysis, saying there would be sufficient demand to support both roof-top solar and large-scale generation.

CPRS: now is the time to be heard (and seen!)

In Canberra there is a feeding frenzy about the CPRS legislation which hits the Senate this week. Whilst one side wants to call the other dinosaurs, they are all back in a climate policy Jurassic as far as I can see.

The CPRS and the proposed opposition plan simply ignore the climate science and what it tells us we must do, and instead propose appalling-constructed policies that will lock in the brown economy, legislating pollution rights for the big emitters for decades to come rather than driving us quickly to a safe climate, a clean economy and preserving a planet fit to live on.

The revised CPRS is leisurely in its timing, delaying implementation for a year and setting a nominal first-year carbon price of $10 a tonne with unlimited number of permits, meaning no effective action for another three years. It has increased permits to the biggest polluters from 90 per cent to now start at 95 per cent, and preserves the outsourcing of Australia's national responsibilities by allowing the unlimited purchase of permits from overseas, so that the scheme has no mechanism for ensuring that Australia's emissions (as opposed to domestic permits) will drop by even one tonne by 2050. The Treasury modelling assumes no decrease in Australian emissions for another 25 years!! Nor will the CPRS produce an avalanche of "green jobs" because it is not designed to close down the brown economy or build a clean, renewable-energy sector.

My views at greater length are available here:
http://newmatilda.com/2009/05/05/sweethearts

Now is the time for all of us who don't want the Senate to lock in a disaster, and who demand that climate policy be based on climate science rather than appeasement of the fossil fuel industry, be heard.

And here's an opportunity. The Greens have prepared a television ad on the CPRS:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5EfEZfQXEE
OR
http://www.youtube.com/AustralianGreens

The Greens want to raise $30,00 to put the ad on TV, and in just one day they have raised almost half. They need to raise the rest in the next day, so that the ad can hit the TV stations this week. I am making a contribution, and would urge everyone who wants an effective voice of opposition to the CPRS and a voice for real action on climate to think about contributing:

This is one of those moments where your action can help make it happen.

Thank you

David Spratt
Co-author "Climate Code Red"

Protesters disrupt coal Champion

Tuesday, August 11.

Climate change protesters disrupted a speech by Rio Tinto Coal Managing Director Bill Champion in Newcastle today.

Half a dozen protesters from Rising Tide Newcastle were removed from the premises by police after arriving at the speech with banners and a megaphone.

Spokesperson for Rising Tide Newcastle, Steve Phillips, said: “The social licence of the coal industry has been withdrawn. The coal industry, led by Rio Tinto, is destroying the health of communities in the Hunter, destroying the land and the waterways of our region. Through climate change, the coal industry is destroying the health of all people and ecosystems around the world.

“Last week, representatives of Pacific Island nations were in Australia pleading for meaningful cuts to greenhouse pollution. In the Pacific, communities are already being forced to flee their homelands due to rising sea levels and other impacts of climate change.

“Australia contributes significantly to this problem through our massive coal industry. For us to be rapidly expanding our coal industry in this time of climate crisis is a slap in the face to our Pacific neighbours. It is a death sentence for communities around the world already feeling the impacts of climate change.”

Bill Champion was expected to use his speech to support the Rudd Government's proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

“A Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme that allows the coal industry to actually expand is a failure. If we are serious about avoiding catastrophic climate change, we will immediately stop the expansion of the coal industry, and begin the urgent transition to sustainable and renewable alternatives.”

Ditch coal, says climate change expert.
BY NICK HIGGINS
The Courier Mail.

MARK Diesendorf believes that individuals acting collectively could bring about a shift away from a dependence on coal-fired energy.

Dr Diesendorf said marches, consumer boycotts, corporate shareholder campaigning, and withdrawal of deposits from environmentally irresponsible financial institutions could allow renewable energy to flourish and become mainstream.

"We have this portfolio of different technologies and already most of them are commercially available unlike coal carbon geosequestration, which is a long way from being commercially viable," he told the forum.

"So we've got wind, bioenergy _ burning sugar cane waste in Queensland _ we have solar in homes, solar hot water, we have solar power, flat face and concentrated and coming up very soon we will have hot rock geothermal power," he said.

"Last year in Europe wind power was the technology that installed the most power generating capacity.

"I think the principal hope for change is through private action," he said.

Dr Diesendorf praised the efforts of BREAZE and similar groups in Ballarat, Castlemaine, Bendigo and the Hepburn shire.

to read the full article click
here

ABC Gippsland radio.

August 4, 2009

Organisers of a rally in the Latrobe Valley, calling for civil disobedience, have defended the event.

Environment groups have posted news of a major rally, at the Hazelwood power station next month, on the internet.

Spokeswoman Louise Morris says organisers have spoken to police about the event.

She denies references to civil disobedience could encourage criminal behaviour.

"Some of it will involve peaceful mass civil disobedience, so the keyword is it's going to be peaceful, it's going to be mums and dads, so it's something everyone can come along to," she said.

"You don't have to put yourself in any mass civil disobedience role, and it's something everyone can get involved in who cares about climate and does want to see a transition away from coal."