Well-known weatherman and environmentalist, Rob Gell, has inadvertently helped Victorian loggers look green and their practices look ‘sustainable’. The Victorian Association of Forest Industries 2005 Sustainability Report was released in late November with the help of Rob. Rob’s position on VAFI’s ‘Community Council’ was used by VAFI and the media to show that a respected …
At 2003, Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions had risen by 23.3% on 1990 levels. This is well above the eight per cent growth limit Australia negotiated as part of the Kyoto Protocol. This was revealed in a report, released by the United Nations ahead of the international climate conference in Montreal held in late November.
Despite the discovery that Bass Strait’s water flushes once every six months, Gunns is still assuring us it is safe to release millions of litres of their pulp mill effluent into the ocean. Gunns’ chairman, John Gay, says the effluent is not a pollutant. “The area has got a water flow fast enough and strong …
The Victorian Liberals have begun to unveil their forest policy. And so far so good. Smaller landowners in rural areas would be offered cash incentives to grow firewood and sawlog crops on their blocks. This would suit many small back-to-the-landers, reduce the impact of large scale plantations on communities and water catchments and lead to …
Very few pure dingoes remain in the wild, but a new program plans to save the dwindling dingo population through artificial insemination. The Norwood Animal Conservation Group (a Monash University-based research group) and the Dingo Care Network have launched the Dingo Species Recovery Program in Melbourne, to save it from extinction. Poison baiting and trapping …
The Australian accreditation body, Standards Australia, has been asked by national environment groups to reject a loggers-own brand of ‘world’s best practice logging’ certification. They call it the Australian Forestry Standard or AFS. The logging industry wants to formalise its destructive operations by having the label formally accepted by a standards body. The ‘standards’ that …
The forestry union’s National Assistant Secretary Michael O’Connor,(see article here) has been promoted to National Secretary. This happened in October 2005 just when the Industrial Relations laws started being thrashed out. Who’s Michael O’Connor? You might remember the loggers giving Howard a rousing applause down in Tasmania just days before the ’04 federal election. Well …
Just improving water conservation would not provide enough water to meet a projected shortfall of 854 gigalitres – the annual consumption of Sydney and Perth – within 25 years. The Water Services Association of Australia predicted this in a new report, saying the amount was needed to maintain people’s increasingly affluent lifestyles. It didn’t believe …
British environmentalist George Monbiot has documented the four stages of denial experienced by the climate change nay-sayers. First they said that climate change didn’t exist. Then that it wasn’t caused by human activity. As the proof of human involvement became overwhelming, they switched to saying that climate change would bring some benefits. Now most are …
Howard secretly promised a $4 million gift to a forestry union group just three days before the last election. This explains why the loggers, with encouragement from the union, rejected an $800 million forest jobs package offered by Mark Latham, for the $70 million package offered by Howard. This and the jubilant response by loggers …
