"Lock the Gate wants your support, against Coal Seam gas fracking proposals in general, and the current AGL proposal for CSG mining in the Camden area.

As a member of the public, you are entitled to make submissions.  An easy to use, editable submission form, and sample issues, is available here.

http://lockthegate.good.do/dont-sacrifice-greater-western-sydney-to-coal-seam-gas/make-a-submission/

The proposals to mine city or country environs for Coal seam gas is wrong on so many levels, the fact that the State and Federal Governments even allow for such proposals, says volumes about the serious corruption of legislation, regulations, politicians and public servants, and business, who serve their only god of short term profits.

The fossil fuel energy industry puts profits ahead of everything, including public health and happiness, and long term environment health and habitability. Each proposal by this smallpox of a fracking industry to destroy part of our global commons is considered by government as a separate entity. Nothing about permanent, cumulative, and long term damage to the whole landscape and environment matters, because its only a small bit, and it helps government keep its financial rating, and helps pay for $13 billion dollar freeways we do not need.

Given such behaviour, contrary to current environmental wisdom, I wish there was a magic Royal Commission Inquiry, into this unseemly promotion of the Coal Seam Gas industry, and the threat to ignore local public health concerns. Its part of a long term pattern of overriding public health and welfare, for the benefit of mining industry, leading to long term damage to air, land and water safety. Its a deliberate promotion of global warming by policy, with or without a carbon tax weighed down by the EU, and a resources tax that can't. Both Australian Labor Party and Liberal parties are hoping for the next Federal Election that they can win enough to govern, without needing Independents and Greens, so they toss or legislate environmental restrictions for mining into non-existence.

There is no guarantee that massive public submissions will be enough to halt these projects of greed.

It is in the public interest, for such projects to be prohibited, in the light of doubts about their wisdom. Precautionary environment principles should strictly apply. Do no long term harm just to serve only few years of short term corporate profit.

Due to several findings of significant methane emissions from both natural gas, coal seam gas and shale gas fracking, from multiple well leaks, and a high green house warming potential of methane, it could be that this industry overall is causing more global warming than the coal industry, for the same net energy supply delivered.

At Australian current high per capita carbon emission levels, not even including carbon emissions of coal and gas exports, a shift from coal to gas of itself, is insufficient magnitude in emissions reduction to fulfill current and future greenhouse emission targets. As a large proportion of gas industry is or will be soon foreign owned, and aimed at export markets, any planned transition is actually a sham. Plans to double Australian coal exports also indicate the sham the Australian Government is allowing to occur on the Australian public, for the benefit of multinational business.

Shame on the Australian and State governments for allowing this to happen, and being too well satisfied with themselves for not demanding better environmental behaviour.

All this is generally known, in many instances of folk wisdom, and writings that are publicly available, and in the experiences of people who have suffered the impacts of fossil fuel mining, but not of course, in the monetary profit-loss, and financial statements of corporations, which ignore all external costs, and ignored in the hearts of politicians too easily swayed by promises of economic growth and employment.

The Sydney area, and its surrounds , happen to be part of the global commons upon which we live. That is we, your taxpayers, the people who elected you, and you are legally obliged to look after our interests, and the interests of the environment in which we live.

Here are some referenced articles in the online public domain, that indicate the folly of our ways. I do not have to look very far, because these are from a long line of antecedents and stories of these environmental horrors are being published all the time, (except in the Australian Newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, and the Fairfax Financial mining  media stables) and indeed the authors voice increasing alarm, as our global and local situations worsen.

"Hell is Truth Seen Too Late" : The Parable of the Frogs. Morris Berman.

Our species characteristics of intelligence and technology, give some individuals and social groups an advantage. This is good up to some optimum level of application and impact, but when pushed by each competing group or individual to ever increasing levels, with no limits applied, this leads to disadvantages beyond optimum. In the case of fossil consumption, its leading  to resource exhaustion and complete system breakdown. In a complex system, there is a need to distinguish between optimal level and maximum level, for the good and sustainability of our living systems. A metaphor of addiction is used, the example of frogs that will keep pressing a bar to stimulate their pleasure centre of the brain through an electrode, even after their back legs are cut off. What is rational or motivating on individual and small group levels may be irrational on the collective level, leading to a systemic collapse.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/01/18/the-parable-of-the-frogs/

Scientific Study Links Flammable Drinking Water to Fracking

http://www.propublica.org/article/scientific-study-links-flammable-drinking-water-to-fracking

Links natural gas drilling and hydraulic fracturing with a pattern of drinking water contamination so severe that some faucets can be lit on fire.

Methane leaks erode green credentials of natural gas

http://www.nature.com/news/methane-leaks-erode-green-credentials-of-natural-gas-1.12123

Leaks of up to 9% found. For the switch to natural gas from coal-fired generators to have a climate benefit, its leakage must be less than 3.2%.

Gas is not clean energy.

https://sites.google.com/site/gasisnotcleanenergy/home

Calculations for Australian examples, show that a 2.6% leakage makes a gas fired power station, roughly 2 times as dirty as Hazelwood power station.

Methane is 105 times worse than carbon dioxide (CO2) as a GHG on a 20 year time scale and major systemic gas leakage from the hydraulic fracking of shale formations has led Professor Robert Howarth, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, to conclude that “The large GHG footprint of shale gas undercuts the logic of its use as a bridging fuel over coming decades, if the goal is to reduce global warming. We do not intend that our study be used to justify the continued use of either oil or coal, but rather to demonstrate that substituting shale gas for these other fossil fuels may not have the desired effect of mitigating climate warming”

Aerosols make methane more potent: Nature News.

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091029/full/news.2009.1049.html#B1

Coal to gas: the influence of methane leakage.

Models the substitution of methane to replace coal. Methane interacts with aerosols. Loss of sulphate aerosols from coal burning mean that even their is no net leakage (not true), there is at least no benefit. Results show that the substitution of gas for coal as an energy source results in increased rather than decreased warming for many decades, - out to the mid 22nd century for the 10% leakage case.

Tom Wrigley (2011), Climate Change, 108:601-608

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-011-0217-3

There is thus reasonable Climate System evidence, based on best available models and experts in the area, that that a switch from coal to gas is of no benefit or worse, for our climate.

Lack of long term benefit

There is no benefit at all, to the people living around Camden, nor to the people of Sydney as a whole, whose health will be endangered, whose estate property values will fall. The strata underlying the Sydney water catchment area will be damaged. Homes and businesses undermined. Unverified quantities and kinds of long lived toxic agents will be blasted underground. Large amounts of public supplied water will be used by the fracking companies for gratis. Methane leakage will not be credibly monitored, past the point of profitability. Large amounts of returned water will be filled with toxins, whether injected, or dissolved from underground minerals, and kept on the surface. Residents of Sydney near and far can expect a legacy of abandoned wells, smashed strata, poisoned aquifers, toxic ponds, and spillage from extreme rain events into our water supplies. And what for? Each well, after doing its permanent damage and poison, will be abandoned after short period of production, lasting from months to years. Because of the smallness and shortness of life of each well, the entire Sydney basin is to be peppered by this smallpox of an industry. Yet every well proposal gets approved. Coal Seam Gas fracking is a "Dis-investment"  We pay, if AGL gets its fracking way. We do not need their fracking money.

So who benefits? NSW government gets some money from mining royalties and corporate taxes, which would not be able to restore even partly peoples health and environment to their pre-fracked up condition. Liberal politicians, following the tradition of their corrupt State Labor government predecessors, get to be petted and funded by corporate mining lobbyists, as they sacrifice the general public on the altar of being "good for business".

Consequent to hearing of this proposal I will bring forward the replacement of my instantaneous gas water heating system, with a passive solar water heating system. The loss of domestic customers will not deter AGL, as their plans to ruin the environment are based on an export profits model, such that even domestic industrial users will need to pay export parity prices.

Far better long term, real investment alternatives exist

Renewable energy technologies are available. These are proven in distributed energy supply, and their capital costs continue to fall with total installed capacity of each type, due to the "learning curve" and scale of production.

Rising costs of fossil fuel energy will make energy efficiency technologies "winners". Choosing capital expensive renewable energy options, will help bring capital costs down, will bring Australian carbon emissions down fastest, and put a halt on life destructive coal and gas mining and emissions.

Gas burning technology is a "Loser", like the politicians that promote this insane choice.

The pressing nature of carbon emission limits, the growing production and environmental costs of oil, gas and coal, mean all of these life destructive technologies need to be terminated urgently. In this case , its us or AGL.

The coal seam gas proposals are environmentally cracked-up insane, which sums up the present NSW state government.