Just Another Recipe for Disaster

Would you dump rubbish in the Grand Canyon?

"Queensland Premier Campbell Newman has declared "we're in the coal business"."

"The thirst for the project comes from the Queensland government and the coal industry which are brazenly pushing to open up the Galilee Basin."

"Allowing a climate-driving coal-shipping superhighway to go ahead through the Reef will only add to the pressures the Reef is already facing from climate change, land-based pollution and crown of thorns starfish outbreaks."

This article is balanced and well-written and all that, and I congratulate this official Greenpeace Climate Campaigner on getting it published, but it is just so bland and ineffectual.

Let's be perfectly clear about this. Unless large deposits of fossil fuels such as those in the Galilee Basin (and the South China Sea,...and the Arctic Ocean) remain in the ground, this planet faces Catastrophic Climate Change, leading to the probable extinction of most of the present species on the planet, including the human race, and that every further gram of fossil fuel extracted and burnt intensifies this result.

There was a small chance to stabilise a 2 degree world when global warming due to the greenhouse effect entered mainstream consciousness. Remember that a 2 degree change in average surface temperature was all it took end the last ice age and produce our current conditions.

Now that chance has been blown out the window because nothing was done about the problem immediately. We will be lucky if we can stop it at a 4 degree world now and if we keep allowing fossil fuel extraction it won't even stop there.

So full marks for a good piece of journalism, but an official Greenpeace advocate should be advocating much more strongly.