TAKE A STAND: Say no to fracking.
Together, Australia’s houses could produce more electricity than they use, according to think tank Beyond Zero Emissions. And the transition need not take long. The Australian Energy Market Operators, the organisation that oversees all power generation and distribution in Australia, has acknowledged that the shift to 100 percent renewables will cost no more than ‘business as usual’ over the next 30 years. In the United States, wind energy was recently reported as becoming cheaper than natural gas.
The alternatives to gas and coal are available. And they make a lot of common sense, also economically. This is important to be aware of — in particular in the discussion about the claimed ‘need’ for extracting coal seam gas, shale gas, tight gas, and so on. In short: our community does not need this gas mining. We do not need to pollute our drinking water and flood the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. The message from science is very very clear: What we do need, urgently, is to STOP extracting, digging, mining and burning fossil fuels. So why should we allow drilling for gas? Just because it brings a bit of wealth to those few people who own or have shares in the fracking companies? We say no thanks.
The age of the fossil fuels is over. Some who have not understood this are, unfortunately, our elected leaders – along with the CEOs of this mining industry which is as powerful and clever in manipulating politicians as the tobacco industry was in maintaining that smoking didn’t cause cancer just a few decades ago. It is getting harder and harder to understand how they can defend among themselves to be so irresponsible and greedy on behalf of the welfare of future generations. It took 40 years to get out of the tight grip of the tobacco industry’s lobbyists. Climate scientists are telling us we don’t have 40 years to get you out of society’s fossil fuel addiction. We have just a few years before the tipping points begin to pass.
We can no longer allow this madness to continue. Peaceful public resistance, saying ‘Fossil fuels – No thanks!’, combined with self- financed, crowdfunded and community-financed zero-carbon energy initiatives at all levels is the only sensible way forward now. » Join the movement against fracking in Geelong.