No New Gas in Victoria

From 2011 until 2017, the Victorian community, especially regional communities in the south of the state, campaigned hard to win the ban on fracking and the moratorium on onshore conventional gas drilling.

While fracking (unconventional gas drilling) was banned permanently, a moratorium was placed on onshore conventional exploration and drilling. This has been in force since 2014, has been extended once, and will expire on June 30, 2020.

Having a ban and moratorium has given certainty to farming communities, who can feel safe from the negative threats of local gas production. It has also stopped new fossil fuels from being developed in a time where climate science makes it abundantly clear that the time for new coal, gas and oil is over.

Now the community faces the prospect of the moratorium being lifted and exploration and conventional gas drilling starting again.

Send an email to Daniel Andrews demanding that he extend the moratorium and protect Victoria from new fossil fuels.

There is a huge appetite for more public transport in Melbourne – when the Suburban Rail Loop was first announced the public celebration was enormous. People want public transport to be prioritised. But will the Suburban Rail Loop meet expectations?

Responding to the announcement that a Victorian Parliamentary inquiry will investigate the suitability of nuclear power, Dr Jim Green, national anti-nuclear campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia, said: “Nuclear power has priced itself out of any serious debate about Australia’s energy options but it has become part of the culture wars driven by conservative ideologues.”

Friends of the Earth media release. August 6, 2019.

The Federal Government has stepped up its attempt to bully NSW and Victoria into opening up new gas fields.

“This is part of a long running campaign by the fossil fuel industry and conservative MPs, with the support from some conservative and business media outlets” said Friends of the Earth co-ordinator Cam Walker.

“These groups continue to push the argument that the moratorium on onshore gas drilling and ban on fracking in Victoria are driving up gas prices for consumers. However, what we have is a failure of the market and government policy, not a lack of supply.”

Victoria is feeling the impacts of the climate crisis now. In 2019 alone we have experienced dangerous heatwaves and bushfires across the state, crushing droughts, severe weather, and coastal erosion already eating away our beaches. The science is settled and there is no doubt left that we need to take urgent action in accordance with IPCC recommendations to keep warming within 1.5 degrees, or we face climate catastrophe. 

We currently have a state government that is saying and doing a lot of good things on climate on one hand, but on the other hand supporting the continued growth of fossil fuels and hoping we don’t notice the discrepancy. 

A ‘green new deal’ proposal for a Fair and Just Transition from Friends of the Earth

There is an urgent climate imperative to transform our economy. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report (2018) argued that, by 2030, global emissions must drop by 45% from their 2010 levels if we are to avoid exposing hundreds of millions of people to serious climate-related hazards. A growing body of mainstream climate science says that we need to achieve deeper targets earlier if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Transforming Victoria – creating jobs while cutting emissions.

The Victorian economy is changing rapidly, and unless we have a plan for managing the transition, it will be people in affected industries who will bear the cost of the change.

The Latrobe Valley has produced our energy for 90 years. Now that change is coming to the energy sector it is essential that we have a planned transition to ensure communities are not left behind.

FoE has released a report outlining what we think the transition could look like. It covers the energy sector and transport and starts to consider urban form and the native forest industry. As we say in the report, ‘This document is not an endpoint. It marks our focus on – and commitment to – achieving a Fair and Just Transition for all communities affected by the changes that are coming.’

We will update it in the coming months based on the feedback we have been receiving.

You can read a summary of the report here.
The full report is available here.
You can endorse the report here or sign on as an organisation here.
 
 

Last Monday's episode of Four Corners revealed how tens of millions of taxpayer dollars are being used to expand irrigation systems for major agribusiness instead of preserving water for the environment. More than $4 billion intended to protect the Murray-Darling Basin has been handed out, but corporations have been exposed using this money to build new dams to water cotton fields and nut groves. This shocking misuse of public funds for private gain is yet another case of corruption and maladministration by the government. 

We are facing a climate crisis... 

Australia's emissions are rising due to the Federal Coalition's failure to act on climate. And this failure leaves Victorian communities exposed to intensifying impacts such as heatwaves, droughts, bushfires, extreme weather, and rising sea levels.

Victoria has an opportunity to put the country back on track.

For the first time, the Andrews government is about to set an Emissions Reduction Target for 2025.