Australia, It's Time to DO Something About Coal
- av: Susan V
- mottagare: Australian Government
With wildfires already raging across the country, temperatures near 122 degrees Fahrenheit (50 C) are expected to rise even higher, and 50,000 acres of farmland and forest have been destroyed in Tasmania alone. Author Anna Rose told Democracy Now that people have been evacuated, and some have lost their homes.
Rose says the Bureau of Meteorology has described the duration and ferocity of this heat wave as unprecedented, and what’s even more disturbing is that this and the last two years of extreme weather conditions, including massive flooding, are no longer considered freak - they’re the new norm.
Australia, the world's largest coal exporter, can no longer afford to ignore that carbon emissions are a major cause of climate chaos. It can no longer afford to open more coal mines.
Tell Australia, it’s time to do something about coal!
We, the undersigned, believe that Australia can no longer afford to support coal as an energy source or continue with its plans to open new mines in Queensland.
The Hindu’s recent report on climate change is sobering, citing several examples supporting the reality of climate change, despite claims by skeptics, and making it clear enough that carbon emissions are the predominant avoidable cause of global warming.
The report quotes Australia's Prime Minister, Julia Gillard's acceptance of climate change as a reality, even though it should seem more than obvious at this point. "'While you would not put any one event down to climate change,’” she told The Hindu, “we do know over time that as a result of climate change we are going to see more extreme weather events and conditions."
The Hindu reports scientific predictions saying that “Mega-heat waves,” like these occurring now in Australia, will “become five to 10 times more likely over the next 40 years, occurring at least once a decade….” And most important, Hindu points out that, although “there are uncertainties of course…the basic physics is that carbon emissions are trapping more energy in the atmosphere, increasing climate chaos.”
Australia and the US, the two places where climate-change skeptics protest the loudest, notes Hindu, have both been hit by record heat waves and extreme storms.
Both continue to support coal, but Australia’s plan to open nine new Queensland coal mines “would be in line with the International Energy Agency's model of a 'catastrophic' 6C rise in temperatures,” Greenpeace told the Guardian last September. The Guardian adds that the government had also abandoned plans to shut down its dirtiest coal-fired generators.
The question now, given the current crisis, is what does Australia plan to do about it?
We request that the government take immediate action to reduce carbon emissions and take the opening of proposed mines off the table.
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