Opinion Pieces published in the Newcastle Herald

Those attending the blockade will disrupt coal exports for two days to demand the halt of new fossil fuel projects, and the introduction of a 75% federal tax on fossil fuel export profits…

Crucially, funds recovered from our fossil fuels must be spent on industrial diversification and community transition, especially for ever-neglected yet rightfully proud coal communities… which have powered Australia for more than a century.

Zack Schofield

Newcastle law student and Rising Tide organiser

To the executives of fossil fuel companies profiteering from the destruction of my future, I say this: the People’s Blockade is a warning shot. It’s time to make polluters pay.

If governments won’t act in the public interest then the people need to demand it. Are we criminals for acting on the biggest issue that humanity has ever faced? I say no.

Fossil fuel companies [discovered] as early as the 1970s that continued and increased emissions would have severe environmental impacts.

They’ve knowingly sold our wellbeing for profit.

My hometown in Florida was affected by fossil fuel negligence when BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, killing 11 workers and setting off the largest marine oil spill in history. My father was a clam farmer, and no-one knew how that disaster would affect their livelihoods.

[The Garnaut Review] concluded with a statement that the failure of our generation to act on climate change would lead to consequences that would haunt humanity for the rest of time. That sentence is seared into my brain.

Meanwhile, Australia is the world’s third largest fossil fuel exporter and our governments continue to approve new coal and gas projects and provide fossil fuel corporations tens of billions of dollars in subsidies.

I joined the blockade to support communities like the one I come from: communities that suffer when extractive industries take the money and run.