Memo to ASIO re spying on coal protesters

Today's edition of The Age carries my letter (see "Not cricket, chaps") responding to yesterday's piece by Philip Dorling reporting ASIO's spying on green protesters who are fighting the expansion of coal by Australian State and Federal governments. Here's the unedited version:

MEMO to ASIO: Chaps, I need to give you the nod about some dastardly characters conspiring as part of a secret organisation that poses a direct threat to the interests off all Australian citizens, our allies, and a few billion poor people you may not be too concerned about but it would be nice to look after. This nasty outfit is called the Carbon Party, and draws its global membership from the big polluters and mainstream political parties who think climate change caused by human activities is a lot of rot.

Two of the blighters, federal and state energy and resources ministers, Martin Ferguson (codename "The Fossil") and Michael O'Brien, somewhat carelessly gave a joint press conference earlier this year at a carbon capture and storage launch in Morwell, where an extension to meet its funding conditions was also granted to a rather grubby brown coal-fired power project (since given the "green" light by VCAT).

Usually, these darklings are more careful to veil themselves in talk of their flimsy support for renewable energy and aren't quite so brazen, but they're ramping up their efforts to destroy our climate and collect those dirty coal dollars.

Their Victorian colleagues have abandoned the State 2020 emissions target, removed the cap on emissions from new brown coal power stations, and announced plans to expand the industry, including coal-seam-gas - all to be sold by a publicly funded spin campaign to persuade Victorians that brown coal is good enough to sprinkle on their breakfast cereal.

Their Federal operatives are paying a private company (NOSIC), and now seem to be asking you guys and the Australian Federal Police, to spy on peaceful protesters they want everyone to believe are more dangerous than terrorists.

Hmmm. They're actually not more dangerous than terrorists, and it would be a tragedy if you let some real terrorists through the net while you were wasting your time spying on coal protesters who are working hard to protect the national interest.

You should also seriously consider looking into the organisation and support of the Carbon Party in Australia - they're well funded, well connected, and seem to have the run of the place as our carbon emissions climb endlessly higher. That's not cricket, chaps. They have to be stopped. Get on with it!

Related media

• Intelligence officers make home visits to green activists, The Age, 13 April 2012
• Protestor visited by "intelligence", 774 ABC Melbourne, 12 April 2012

Comments welcome.

Ferguson claims "neutrality" as he shores up HRL brown coal

Updated 14/2/12

In a move to "shore up" brown coal rather than properly support genuine clean energy alternatives, resources and energy minister Martin Ferguson yesterday announced that HRL has yet a further six months to get its long-flailing Latrobe Valley brown coal power plant together and meet funding conditions before it loses a $100m Federal Government grant. Ferguson also announced $100m for CarbonNet, a carbon capture and storage project, also in the Latrobe Valley and part of the $1.68b CCS Flagships Program.

The HRL announcement follows concerted community action to stop the polluting brown coal power plant, the tabling in Federal Parliament of a petition of nearly 13,000 signatures opposing it, and a recent public rally at which Labor's Federal Member for Wills, Kelvin Thomson MP, spoke against the project, on which he also addressed the Parliament in tabling the petition.

The announcement has been met with dismay and a commitment to sustained action by community campaigners opposing the project because of its dangerously high carbon emissions, the availability of abundant and genuinely clean alternatives such as solar, and a promise by Prime Minister Julia Gillard not to build more dirty coal-fired power stations in Australia.

Here's the unedited version of my letter published in today's edition of The Age responding to Katharine Murphy and David Wroe's report of the HRL project extension.

In throwing a "lifeline" to HRL's brown coal power project and more money at carbon capture and storage in the Latrobe Valley, Martin Ferguson comes clean in at least one respect - he's aiming at "shoring up the value of Victoria's brown coal resource".

Ferguson can imagine no low-emissions solution that leaves coal in the ground. Unfortunately exploiting coal and lowering emissions are essentially contradictory aims.

Ferguson claims a "technology neutral" approach to clean energy solutions, but those he favours with so-called neutrality in fact serve private coal interests and escalate dangerous carbon emissions despite empty claims of technological advancement.

If Australia is to contribute to a safer global climate, the selection of clean energy solutions cannot be neutral in assessing projected emissions.

Ferguson knows there are jobs in genuine clean energy, but prefers coal at the bidding of coal interests who have no monopoly over energy from the sun and the wind.

He should also know that the public campaign to stop his climate destruction - a broad-based campaign driven not only by Greens - will only grow stronger.

 The published version can be read in today's letters (scroll to "Minister shores up coal").

See also the ABC's investigation of clean coal, Cloud hangs over Rudd's clean coal vision, for which Ferguson refused to be interviewed.


Comments welcome.

We're gonna stop HRL, fellas, so pull the $100m now

A great line-up of speakers and more than 400 nearly 500 people turned up at Victorian Parliament at lunchtime today (Wed. 1 Feb.) to call for an end to the HRL brown coal power station in the Latrobe Valley. (Why?)

Protesters obviously found it not only acceptable, but highly worthwhile to highlight that the project does not stack up economically and would be a disastrous misstep for action towards a safer climate.



The rally was organised by Greenpeace, Environment Victoria, and the wonderful Quit Coal campaign of Friends of the Earth.

Federal Labor Member for Wills, Kelvin Thomson MP, focused on the inconsistency of the project with Victoria's legislated 20% emissions reduction target by 2020 (not to mention federal targets).

He also noted the $100 million federal grant made by the Howard Government could be much better spent (I suggest redirection to renewables), as could the $50 million of State funding in Victoria - for example, by contributing to undergrounding powerlines in high-risk bushfire areas, a measure recommended by the Bushfires Royal Commission.

Kelvin also noted the lack of any private funding for the project, and a recent UN report calling for the phasing out of fossil fuel subsidies by 2020 (see also this post on subsidies). For the full details of Kelvin's speech, visit his blog.

New Federal Green for Melbourne, Adam Bandt MP, also did a great job arguing for renewables over emissions-intensive (i.e. dirty) fossil fuels.

It was good to see some cross-party cooperation on this important issue, especially when it still seems to internally divide the Labor Party - it's a pity, for example, that Martin Ferguson can't seem to change tack from his current fossil-fuel-lobby cooperation.

There were three other speakers, and more about them will hopefully be written or posted as video on the web pages of the organisers.

(A wrap-up is now available from Quit Coal, including Ten News footage, and details of the tabling of a 13,000 signature petition against the HRL project in Canberra are available from Environment Victoria)

I was holding up the main banner with lots of other people, so I'm sorry I could only manage a hasty 40 seconds or so towards the end as Julien Vincent from Greenpeace vowed to continue the campaign even if efforts to end the $100 million federal grant were unsuccessful in the short term - which we are all hoping like hell they won't be.

The 40 seconds shows two things. First, the great crowd reaction, and, second, the difficulty of filming on a "smart" phone with big hands while holding a banner doing its best to demonstrate the abundance of wind energy in Victoria. Green Screen entry it is not.

Where to now?

Finally, there's going to be an action to maintain the pressure to end the HRL project next Thursday 9 February from 12.00-2.00pm in which we're all encouraged to ring, email, tweet and/or connect via all available or about-to-be-launched social media with prime minister Gillard, Finance Minister Penny Wong, and our respective local members (oh dear, that's Martin Ferguson in my case). I'll be in that (that is, it's in my diary as instructed, dear protest groups).

See also Rally says no to HRL coal power station in Victoria (from @takvera)

Comments welcome.

Making coal protest "acceptable"

Tomorrow (Wed. 1 Feb) an important coal protest will take place at 12.30pm on the steps of the Victorian Parliament to call for the end of a brown-coal gasification power station proposed by HRL in the Latrobe Valley.

Such protest should be a commonplace - as acceptable as protest about job security and conditions, the availability of affordable child care, or safer level crossings - but coal protest has been blackened in the eyes of ordinary people.

That's due in part to the governments and coal interests ranged against it. It's probably also due to the remoteness for many of coal-fired power generation - in Victoria, primarily in the Latrobe Valley.

Perhaps its arrival through long overhead lines seems for some to have cleansed coal-fired power of its carbon emissions, airborne pollutants, and other environmental impacts. By the time it reaches our lights and fridges, where it is undeniably needed, what could seem cleaner? How could anyone protest that?

Yet, before we dismiss as "radical" or extreme the growing and peaceful protests against the generation of electricity from coal, before we allow to pass unchallenged the documented surveillance of coal protesters, we should imagine this.

What if the burning of coal to meet our domestic energy requirements could only be undertaken house-by-house?

In some cases we might even imagine "fortunate" households sitting atop their own coal reserves. To the choking airborne particulates - implicated by medicine in cancer, heart attack and stroke - to the carbon emissions driving climate disruption, those "resource-rich" individuals could then add the ground-water pollution and environmental damage of mining itself - coal or coal seam gas, take your pick.

That at a trivial level these problems are seemingly concentrated elsewhere fails to negate the health and environmental impacts of coal-fired power in the Latrobe Valley, or the pumping of emissions into a global atmosphere we all share, an atmosphere that does not care about the geographic location of an emissions source.

When they protest, it is coal's dark and central role in this process that campaigners oppose.

Australia is the world's largest exporter of coal, and is set on the headlong expansion of coal exports. Despite a wealth of renewable energy sources that could slash Australia's total and per capita emissions, we also persist in our heavy reliance on coal for domestic power generation.

Yet scientists consider the end of coal essential if we are to seize the fading opportunity for a safe climate future.

Some may be tempted to reply that we now have a carbon price, a modest 2020 emissions reduction target and a seemingly substantial but very distant 2050 target. They may argue that Australia is doing what it can to take "economically responsible" climate action.

Unfortunately, our efforts are more show than substance, with the Australian Government entered in two contradictory races - one the public relations race to persuade us it is doing its bit to "save" the climate; the other, the coal-driven race to destroy it.

In this race, the climate is losing, with the coal barons racing off 50 metres and the protesters heavily handicapped.

To make matters worse, a recent report in The Guardian suggests that not only are fossil fuel interests starting a long way ahead, but they are also being boosted by "performance-enhancing" subsidies.

The report considered modelling by the International Energy Agency on the effect of ending global fossil fuel subsidies - currently some 500 per cent greater than those available to renewables.

By 2035, the modelling projects a saving of 2.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, or around half the estimated emissions cuts needed to keep global average temperature rise within two degrees Celsius.

While this "guardrail" temperature limit is now considered unsafe by leading climate scientists, the modelling gives some indication of the impact of ending subsidies alone - not to mention the potential benefits of redirecting them to renewable energy technologies.

In Australia, fossil fuel subsidies have been estimated by the Australian Conservation Foundation at around $12 billion annually. It's also not hard to scratch beneath the surface to find large nuggets of support for coal from public funding.

In Victoria, HRL's Latrobe Valley "dual gas" power station project - combining brown coal gasification and natural gas - has $50 million in State funding and $100 million in Federal funding, the latter now under review.

The review follows the Environment Protection Authority's qualified 2011 project approval (subject to appeal at VCAT), which cut the output of the power station from the proposed 600 megawatts to 300. Unmet funding conditions for the Federal support have also played a role.

It is this review that Quit Coal and other climate groups will be highlighting tomorrow at 12.30pm on the steps of Victorian Parliament as a vital opportunity to end the project and the unacceptable growth in emissions it would otherwise threaten for decades to come.

Protesters will not be arguing for mass power black-outs - just that we finally begin as we must continue, by choosing proven renewable energy sources and technologies that offer not only energy security, but climate and job security as well.

It would be naive to suggest this will be an effortless transition, but we can share that effort fairly to avoid climate impacts that will otherwise be felt where they fall - in terms of more frequent and severe bush fires, for example, particularly in south-eastern Australia.

Sir Nicholas Stern and Professor Ross Garnaut have consistently highlighted the economic benefits of early intervention. However, beyond the figures, we must acknowledge that the need for climate action is a matter of science as surely as emergency surgery is a matter of medicine. A vital part of that action is to leave coal safely in the ground - the only existing form of carbon capture and storage we know to be safe.

Governments at State or Federal level cannot defend inaction because they consider action politically difficult, because they have failed in their obligation to plan a future we can sustain, or, more damningly, because individuals such as Federal resources and energy minister Martin Ferguson are too close to powerful coal interests.

It is further reprehensible that any government should seek to veil inaction by demonising coal protest.

Protest against coal is an act of citizenship in the Australian and global interest. That's why I will be at Parliament tomorrow in my lunch break joining the call to stop HRL - it's acceptable because it's high time we Quit Coal.


For further information:

Read Environment Victoria's Eight Good reasons to cut HRL's government funding.

Updated 8.47am Wednesday 1 February 2012

Comments welcome