Rising Tide Australia

This article was written by Rising Tide member Steve Phillips in the wake of the election of a new Labor Government for Australia, for the New York independent media newspaper The Indypendent.

Coal trains have begun to creep slowly back into the port of Newcastle, after the Hunter Region's world-beating export coal chain was crippled by freak weather. It is a good time for us all to be asking some questions: did coal exports contribute to the storm in the first place, and if so, haven't they done enough damage?

This is a speech given by RT member Steve Phillips to a forum at the University of Sydney on March 2nd 2007, put on by the journal Capitalism, Nature, Socialism. The day-long conference was divided into four sections: "Political Economy Perspectives", "Geopolitical Perspectives", "Policy Perspectives", and "Community Perpectives". Steve spoke in the last section. Speakers included academics, business professionals, unionists, politicians, paid and unpaid activists. The conference asked the following questions:

A slightly edited version of this article was originally published in the Newcastle Herald.

I am a Newcastle climate change activist, campaigning full-time against the expansion of the world's biggest coal port. I believe that climate change is the most urgent and important problem facing humankind, and that here in the Hunter Valley, we have a moral duty to begin the move away from coal and into sustainable alternatives, starting now. But neither I, nor any other activist or environment group, has ever laid the blame for climate change at the feet of coal mine workers.

This article was written for the December 2006 edition of the Hunter Community Environment Centre newsletter (which actually comes out in January).

2006 has been somewhat of a turning point for the closely related issues of climate change and the NSW coal industry. Various extreme weather events and tangible changes to the climate, the release of mainstream calls-to-action such as An Inconvenient Truth and the Stern Review, and the ongoing awareness campaigns of many groups and individuals, have culminated in a definite tipping-point in public consciousness of climate change in Australia.

On the 20th and 21st September about one hundred coal mining and related companies descended on Gunnedah, to plot the massive expansion of coal mining in the Gunnedah Basin. The conference was titled “The New Coal Frontier”.

Newcastle currently has two coal export terminals, at Kooragang and at Carrington. With a combined capacity of around 85 million tonnes per annum, they make up the self-proclaimed largest coal export facility in the world. The coal companies operating in the Hunter are now implementing a major increase in exports, with their flagship the proposed third coal export terminal in Newcastle Harbour.

The new export terminal is the project of the Newcastle Coal Infrastructure Group, spearhearded by BHP Billiton. The NCIG was formed to rival Port Waratah Coal Services, which runs the current two loaders and which is controlled by Xstrata, Anglo, and Rio Tinto – the other three members of the “big four” mining companies that dominate the NSW and Queensland coal fields.

The NCIG terminal would increase Newcastle's export capacity by 30 million tonnes per year at it's opening in 2009, doubling to 66 million tonnes later on – an incredible 77% increase in Newcastle's export capacity. This planned increase is utterly at odds with the urgent reality of global climate change, which requires global greenhouse pollution – and therefore coal consumption – to be radically reduced, starting now.

66 million tonnes of coal per year translates into about 160 million tonnes of carbon dioxide – the primary cause of anthropogenic climate change. The emissions from the coal exported through the new Newcastle terminal – were it to proceed to completion – would be comparable to the 268 million tonnes per annum currently pumped out from all Australian power stations combined.

Of course, the coal would have to be dug up from somewhere, and the poor old Hunter Valley, already creaking with the strain of 30-odd mines, would be further sacraficed to feed King Coal. New areas previously outside the clutches of open-cut coal mining are being billed as the new frontiers. The coal companies behind the NCIG – which include the big Australian coal miner Centennial and American giant Peabody – have explicitly linked the new loader to the development or expansion of mines in the Hunter and beyond. These include Centennial's controversial Anvil Hill proposal near Denman, and Felix Resource's massive proposed Moolarben mines near Mudgee, which would 2 of the biggest coal mines in NSW if developed. BHP Billiton have recently won the much-publicised exploration rights for the Caroona coal field in the Gunnedah Basin, containing an estimated 500 million tonnes of coal.

Despite frequently admitting that the proposed new coal loader is essentially the same project as a range of specific coal mining proposals in NSW, the coal companies and the NSW Government insist on assessing the project piece by piece, with no regard for the cumulative impacts on NSW. Not to mention the planet.

Newcastle harbour is an area divided between industry and environmental conservation. Known for being the world’s largest coal exporter, it also exhibits large tracks of nature reserves, State significant SEPP 14 wetlands as well as the internationally recognised RAMSAR wetlands.

20km west of Muswellbrook, at Wybong near the town of Denman, there is something rare: a large, intact and quality stand of remnant Hunter Valley floor bushland. The largest bit left on the Central Hunter Valley floor in fact. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the site is rich in biodiversity, much of it rare and threatened. It is home to at least 178 animal species, including 4 threatened bat species, the squirrel glider, the koala, 14 threatened bird species and many more protected under international covenant. It is also home to at least 420 species of native flora, many of which are threatened and 3 of which are endemic to the area, including one newly discovered species of orchid found only at this site. The feature landform there is the unique Anvil Hill.

Australia has a rich and proud history of environmental activism and public campaigns. Our roots are in the famous Franklin River campaign of the late 70s and early 80s, and the germinal Terania Creek blockade of 1979, which was one of the pioneering forest blockades worldwide. In the postcard issues like nukes and forests we have fought many hard battles and claimed some amazing victories. Yet we seem to be still obsessing over these romantic campaigns in the face of a far more important, though less illustrious issue: climate change.