Lock the Gate Alliance calls for urgent changes to close loopholes in Federal Govt Water Bill

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Facing strong community pressure, with many networked and organized anti-CSG  movements, an exemplar being "Lock the Gate Alliance", (which ParraCAN actively supports), the Labor Government has promised to pass immediate legislation (18th-19th March 2013), that will subject future mining development applications, to tests of harm to water supply for people and wildlife, dependent on assessment by an expert scientific committee. The real test will be if it manages to stop even one future or current mining development going ahead.

Only a threat of imminent electoral defeat, combined with pressure from the Greens and independents like Tony Windsor, have the ALP felt the need to search for another fig leaf to cover yet another vulnerability of its scant environmental credentials.  CSG corporations have been ransacking the Queensland gas fields without heed to water, agriculture or environmental conservation, throughout the term of this government.  The Greens already proposed a strong protective bill in November 2011, which was rejected by the ALP. (http://larissa-waters.greensmps.org.au/content/media-releases/greens-act-protect-water-coal-seam-gas)

Both the National Water Commission and the CSIRO have voiced their concerns about the long-term impacts of the CSG industry.

The Sting

The fracking industry is a short term, boom-bust industry.  To continue to pay off its high costs,  and deliver continued supplies of gas, from short lived wells, requires a continued onslaught of damage from newly drilled wells, creating an expanding area of damaged landscape, disturbed ecosystems, ruined livelihoods, poisoned acquifers and leaking greenhouse gases.   If the industry had to pay for its ongoing damages, it would be entirely un-economic, creating liabilities far into the future.   Because it doesn't have to pay, because the banks seem ready to blank cheque an endless progression of new wells, and state and federal governments approve new areas regardless of sensitive location, there has been no accountability.

This swindling, environmental madness, gold rush, money grubbing boom, by the energy hungry fossil fuel companies, is a global phenomena.  We are addicted to burning these fuels recklessly.  Their fuel energy is the power to do work, and make money. Like any addict, we cannot imagine how will we could continue to live without our machines energy inputs, and we have rigged our lives and institutions to get more at any cost.

All the happy talk about peak oil being pushed far into the future, is likely to be delusional happy talk. Its the corporate investment promoters talking to get money for their projects.  The pushing of a future gas boom on the government is a swindle, made by fossil fuel drug pushers on all too eager government addicts for energy and mining royalties.

No doubt recognizing the desperate, addicted nature, and doubting the sincerity of the ALP, by reading the draft of the proposed legislation, the "Lock the Gate Alliance" has identified fatal shortcomings and loopholes, that would render it as effective as a Carbon Price tied to a wimpy emissions trading scheme. 

If ALP failure of purpose results in loss of government to an outright Liberal Party majority, there is no doubt that the environment and climate change denying Liberal Party will give all fracking privileges back to the fossil fuel drug pushers.

The legislation needs to be set in stone, as much as possible. The energy income addicts cannot be allowed to set there own drug supply agenda.

To quote Drew Hutton, President of Lock The Gate Alliance. :

" . . . There are several fatal flaws in the water Bill and, unless they are addressed by the Parliament, the much-vaunted water trigger will be little more than a shabby act of political grandstanding

. . .This Bill will mean nothing if the Commonwealth retains the right to simply hand the water powers back to the states after the election.  We want to see these changes future-proofed, so our communities can have confidence they will deliver in the long-term.

. . . The gaping loopholes in the Bill also need to be fixed. As it stands now, the Bill provides so many exemptions that many of the most controversial coal and gas developments won't be covered by it.

. . . Another gaping loophole is the failure of the Bill to address shale gas and tight gas mining - which means that plans for massive shale gas development in the Northern Territory and Western Australia will not require assessments of water impacts.

. . ."

No fossil fuel drug is an energy saviour

The mining of tight oil and gas is not the peak oil saviour us energy addicts have all been hoping for. Its not the Climate Change saviour.  Its just another energy addiction drug. Like any addict we pin our hopes on what promises to give the most supply. The financial and stock markets fear the truth.

The IEA forcasts that assume that tight oil and gas will be a reasonable saviour have quite a few critics. But that is a more complex story, and its easier to sell the simple saviour story.

IEA Oil Forecast Unrealistically High; Misses Diminishing Returns - Gail Tverberg

The Great Shale Oil Swindle - NAFEEZ MOSADDEQ AHMED

The economics of fracking are horrid,” writes US financial journalist Wolf Richter in Business Insider  “Drilling is destroying capital at an astonishing rate, and drillers are left with a mountain of debt just when decline rates are starting to wreak their havoc. To keep the decline rates from mucking up income statements, companies had to drill more and more, with new wells making up for the declining production of old wells. Alas, the scheme hit a wall, namely reality.”

Dirt Cheap Natural Gas Is Tearing Up the Very Industry That's Producing It  - Wolf Richter

Shale Gas Will be the Next Bubble to Pop - An Interview with Arthur Berman

In the meantime, Australia's abundant solar and wind resources go begging with a long term investment in a sensible plan, including economics of scale, integration, increasing returns of training and expertise, long term freedom from fossil fuel costs, and climate change friendly. Beyond Zero Emission  points to the only possible way, whatever its going to cost, and all the fossil fuel addicts continue to look elsewhere.  Some energy advocates say they would support a switch to big nuclear, as if to point out that fossil fuels are still cheaper.  But all we have in the long run is that big nuclear reactor at a distance of 93 million miles away, that will be making us hotter, because we keep burning more and more carbon.