BUSHFIRE disasters and pandemic or not, right now governments are deciding how to spend billions of dollars so communities can weather the coronavirus and rebuild better. The decisions can lead to more drought and more climate damage - or towards a better life, where people, rivers and wildlife thrive.
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A recent coal and water report from Australian Conservation Foundation states:
- Coal mines and coal-burning power stations use water to wash and process coal, suppress dust and hose down vehicles.
- The coal industry guzzles 383 billion litres per year. (The equivalent of all Sydneysiders or every household in Queensland).
- It takes 653 litres of water to produce one tonne of coal.
- Burning coal to generate energy uses a lot of water. A typical 1000-megawatt power station uses enough water every year to meet the basic needs of nearly 700,000 people.
- The coal industry sometimes pays much less for water than other water users. Adani's mine was granted a 60-year licence to take unlimited groundwater virtually for free.
- Clean energy solutions are here and ready! Energy from the sun and the wind uses 120 times less water than coal to make the same amount of electricity.
- The coal industry also contaminates water, leaving toxic ash dams and leeching poisonous water into creeks and rivers.
Please consider contacting your local MPs and ask them to choose a sustainable and green future.
Suzanne Duyster, Congarinni North
Freight train on its way
The COVID-19 virus has quickly altered all our lives, forcing us to change our behaviour and causing a great deal of anxiety and financial uncertainty. Life will not return to normal as it appears that the virus will continue to be a threat to people until a vaccine becomes available.
That is the nature of a crisis. It forces us to evaluate what is important in life, and how we live our lives. I can't imagine that anyone who is not vaccinated to COVID-19 would consider international travel in the future. Washing our hands regularly will become a habit that will persist for many for the rest of our lives.
But if COVID-19 has hit us like a hit-and-run driver, coming out of the blue with very little warning, the environmental crisis is coming at us like a freight train with us sitting on the tracks arguing about the significance of the rumbles that grow slowly louder. The Great Barrier Reef is undergoing another bleaching event, we have just had a bushfire season that has burnt even the rainforests that are usually too wet to burn, and yet there are still voices denying there is a problem. "The science isn't in yet" is a particularly ignorant, and incorrect, refrain.
Human psychology plays a large part in our response to a crisis. Buying toilet paper, for example, is a cheap way to attempt to exercise control in a situation that we feel we can't control. We can exercise control over COVID-19 by listening to the experts who advise us to be vigilant about hygiene and to practice physical distancing.
But how do we exercise effective control against this freight train of the environmental crisis, which will be far worse than this virus crisis? We could do far worse than to listen to the experts who advise us to protect our forests. We should certainly not be logging our local native forests which are habitat to so many.
Forestry Corp should abandon plans to log the Nambucca State Forest.
