Rising Tide Australia

Winners announced this morning - see below.

The Environment and Community Scam Awards, attended by members of coal affected communities from around NSW, will be held outside the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Terrigal this morning, to recognise and denounce the irreversible impacts of coal mining on communities and the environment.

The awards ceremony is a protest against the NSW Minerals Council’s Environment and Community Conference, which will be held inside the hotel, for $1000 per ticket.

The Iemma Government's decision to approve the massive Anvil Hill coal mine shows that they have no intention of fighting climate change, and are incapable of saying 'no' to the coal lobby; said the Newcastle activist who took the mine proposal to court and won, Peter Gray.

“The Iemma Government has conducted 10 months of consultation with the community about the Anvil Hill coal mine proposal, and then ignored it all. They have received thousands of public submissions demanding that the Anvil Hill mine be rejected due to the major amounts of greenhouse pollution it would create – the equivalent of the entire NSW transport sector. They were told by the horse breeding and wine making industries that the coal mine should not go ahead, because it would threaten other industries in the Hunter. They have ignored all these concerns, because they are too gutless to say 'no' to the coal lobby.”

This year will see the beginning of a rolling direct action campaign to pressure the State Government to take control of the coal industry, stop the acceleration of greenhouse gas emissions from export coal, and lead NSW forward into a post-coal economy. In Sydney this month, major NSW and international environment groups resolved to take a series of actions to stop the expansion of the coal industry in NSW, and the grassroots movement against export coal has been steadily building momentum over the last two years.

The Hunter Community Environment Centre has revealed that if the NSW coal industry continues to expand at the rate it has for the last 10 years, the coal reserves will be exhausted in just 35 years. At that time, so-called "clean coal" technology will still be in its infancy .

Clearly, the promise of "clean coal" is irrelevent to the debate about the future of the NSW export coal industry.

The NSW Minerals Council (NSWMC) has backed away from threatened legal action against Rising Tide Newcastle.

Rising Tide Newcastle has hit out at the Labor party this week for what it says is misleading and cowardly greenhouse emissions policy that will condemn NSW to accelerated climate change.

NSW is directly responsible for 150 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent entering the atmosphere every year. Carbon dioxide released from exported NSW coal which is burnt overseas, comes to an additional 220 million tonnes per year. Neither figure shows any indication of falling in the foreseeable future.

“The trajectory NSW is following is going to devastate the ecology of this state. The Labor Government’s plan does not cut emissions by anywhere near the degree necessary to avoid a 2ºC warming scenario, which will lead to nearly 80% loss in coral reef systems globally and an up to 70 per increase in forest fires in the coming decades.

There's an election on in NSW this month, and the major parties are both telling us that they are doing what it takes to tackle climate change. So, since coal exports from Newcastle are our state's biggest contribution to climate change*, that must mean that the major parties have a plan to cut back coal exports, right?

A satirical website created by climate action group Rising Tide Newcastle has twice been shut down this fortnight by powerful coal industry lobby group, the NSW Minerals Council.

The website was conceived as a response to the Minerals Council's “Life. Brought to you by Mining” advertising campaign. The Minerals Council campaign, which argues that mining is inextricable from modern luxury can be viewed at www.nswmining.com.au. Rising Tide members created a parody website at www.miningnsw.com.au in order to present the other side of the story and address the damage wrought by mining to the local and global environment and to the local community.

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.

Rising Tide Newcastle expects most people will see straight through the coal industry's new spin campaign to sell the alleged benefits of coal mining to the people of NSW. The Newcastle climate change action group has called on the industry to spend its money elsewhere.

“The coal industry could be spending their billions of dollars on a sustainable future for NSW – a future without coal, with sustainable jobs and a livable climate. With the money they've exploited from the Hunter Valley, they could help avert climate disaster, and kick-start a sustainable future. Instead, they are wasting a fortune on a spin campaign to spread disinformation about their dangerous product. They want to dupe the public into accepting an industry that threatens us all,” said spokesperson for Rising Tide, Steve Phillips.