Diane Hart, Mullumbimby
A friend of mine recently asked Tanya Plibersek (deputy leader of the Labor Party) this question at the Byron Writers Festival: ‘What are you going to do for my grandkids and your children re climate change and stopping Adani?’
Her reply was a very measured articulate response but, as usual, stopped short of saying that Labor will withdraw from supporting this disastrous project before the next federal election.
Why will Labor not find the moral fortitude and compass to show true leadership and end fossil-fuel production and embrace alternatives? While polls show that the people want to move away from polluting fuels and invest in renewables our politicians seem to be deaf and blind to the facts.
Fossil fuels are killing us and our planet.
While Australia is facing another heartbreaking drought I read that we are already halfway towards a planet that could become uninhabitable for humans
ANU professor Will Steffen chillingly states that with current government policies, ‘Sitting on our hands means we are at risk of driving the earth – and human wellbeing – beyond an irreversible point of no return’.
This is in the same week that our Gladys (NSW Liberal premier) announces a coal-exploration licence in the Sydney Basin – the first since 1993.
Why? I ask myself. Are these people really stupid or know something I don’t?
In a recent conversation with an ex-CEO of a major Australian energy company he said the reason the price of electricity is so high is that the major players built infrastructure across this wide brown land – read grid, power poles and lines – that was so excessive and expensive, that we are now all having to pay for it.
He said, ‘It was like building a 28-lane highway across the Harbour Bridge in the eventuality that one day it might be needed’.
What actually happened is consumers started to take the power back by installing solar and becoming self-sufficient (god forbid) and made the need for all the infrastrucutre redundant. But we still have to pay for it.
I got involved with our local Stop Adani group when my 14-year-old granddaughter asked me, ‘Will the Barrier Reef still be there for me to visit when I am an adult?’ and the awful truth occurred to me – probably not. Evidence from Professor Steffen alarmingly supports this.
How many mountains of damning statistics will it take before our government takes action?
We are drowning from all the political prevaricating and hand wringing. Where is a commitment to humanity – to global human rights, to protection of our soil, air, sea and water, to upholding land rights – to bloody common sense? It is time to do something before it really is too late.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
