All articles
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The coal industry’s Great Illusionist Brief
Here’s a question for you: how much of a masterpiece can you remove, before it loses its value and beauty for which it is recognised? That’s the question the Australian government is wrestling with as the coal industry makes greater and greater inroads into the masterpiece that is the Great Barrier Reef. This blog first…
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The Australian Government approving more destruction of the Reef
In the fight to save the places we love there are always swings and roundabouts, but the last two weeks have felt more like a wipe-out than either a swing or a roundabout. Last week the media focus was on the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, doing deals with India so they could import our uranium…
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Cooking the climate: Wrecking the reef
Everything about the Galilee Basin is epic. Its name, its size and sparse beauty, the enormous amount of coal buried just under the soil and the scale of mining being proposed to dig it up. But eclipsing all of this are the epic consequences if this coal is dug up and burnt – and that…
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Mega mine, mega catastrophe
When Minister Burke described the environmental assessment of Gina Rinehart’s controversial Alpha Coal Project as “shambolic”, he wasn’t joking. But now he has given his own rubber stamp to the project, revealing the profound failure of the regulatory system in Australia. Blogpost by John Hepburn The project is big by global standards, with a 30…