Environmental groups staged a snap protest at Parliament House today, Thursday October 22, in response to moves by Energy Minister Peter Batchelor to compound the disastrous impact of Victoria's brown coal industry by exporting millions of tonnes of the stuff to India and other developing nations ...
FOE: Community tells Premier: world does not need our dirty coal | Video of Protest |
Photos from Environment Victoria
An opinion piece in the Age by Mark Wakeham,campaigns director with Environment Victoria, gives the backgound:
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/exporting-brown-coal-puts-doll...
In spite of the awkward time and short notice around 200 people of all ages joined the protest. Taegen Edwards of Yarra Climate Action Now was MC, introducing speakers including Mark Wakeham of Environment Victoria, Barrie Pittock, who led the Climate Impact Group in CSIRO until his retirement in 1999, Lou Morris, coal campaigner at Friends of the Earth - and Greg, who explained how he took the initiative of placing Victoria's brown coal reserves, all 13 billion tonnes of it, on ebay ...
Video extracts from the protest on EngageMedia - http://www.engagemedia.org/Members/pc/videos/220ct09-brown-coal.mp4/view
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This Saturday, 24 October, there will be events across Victoria as part of the 350.org International Day of Climate Action - see notice on this site http://indymedia.org.au/2009/10/18/350org-international-day-of-action
and the website http://www.350.org/ - Melbourne events are listed here: http://www.350.org/action-list?country=au&city=Melbourne
Friends of the Earth will be holding a community bbq on the same day, at Batman Park - details http://indymedia.org.au/community-bbq-in-batman - as part of its anti-nuclear and clean energy campaign (Federal Energy Minister Martin Ferguson, a determined advocate for the coal and nuclear lobbies, is member for the electorate of Batman).
Comments
Re: No to brown coal exports - Environmental groups protest ...
Well done. I laughed like most present with the Brown Coal on E-Bay joker.
Note after speeches we all got to chant "Quit Coal" twice.
Just so Channel 10 could record a version, which may or may not be on New at 5pm tonight.
Wonder if the Corporate media tools will be there to cover the Mildura Solar solidarity protest next Friday too ?
Whatever the rich do it is great that Melbourne Indymedia has the front line coverage like the Hazelwood protest.
This Saturday's 350.org events will bring even more folks together, there are 4,000 + events around the globe.
The activists build up for the December climate change conference in Denmark in December is making the end of toxic industries like coal and oil be visualised by millions. The community wants to go with renewables
now. Keep up the good work and stay PLAYFUL !
Re: No to brown coal exports - Environmental groups protest ...
its great to find news about those topics, we here in venezuela fight against coal extraction too. the goberment of hugo vhavez promote coal extraction even against the resistance of indians (indigenas) comunities.
fuck him!
jp.