T Sharples, Tweed Heads
Indian entrepreneur and billionaire industrialist, Gautam Adani, last week got the final environmental ground water ‘go ahead’ from Queensland’s Palaszczuk Labor government which is desperate for coal mining royalties, regional QLD jobs, and most importantly, holding onto power in a bankrupted state: which it ‘aint gonna get’.
Strangely, Labor’s Federal leader, Anthony Albanese has also hitched himself and his party’s future to the same horse, promising, ‘Net Zero (Climate Change) Emissions by 2050’.
Coal is Australia’s second premium export and is about to sky rocket to become our number one because, behind the opening of the mega Adani thermal coal mine, are five others all waiting to go.
The next starter is Clive Palmer’s code-named ‘Waratah’ mine; at 220,000 hectares, it’s four times the size of Adani’s Carmichael mine. That’s larger than the entire extended Gold Coast area. And behind Clive are four more thermal mines, two of which are China First and Fred’s Corner, partly owned by one of Australia’s richest people and Liberal party donor, Gina Rinehart. All are thirsty for operational water in a region that has very limited supplies.
So coal will soon be Australia’s number one export by far. But the cost will be a further 705,000,000 million tonnes of CO2 greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere by coal dug up and exported from the Queensland Galilee Basin each and every year for the next 125 years. How much of this can our planet take?
Once CO2 (from burning coal, a fossil fuel) enters our planet’s atmosphere the science is that our oceans will take about two decades to absorb 75 per cent of it and centuries for the last 25 per cent.
Labor’s sales pitch to ‘trust us, we’ll fix everything’ in 30 years time, is going nowhere.
I think Mr Albanese should read, or reread, Macbeth and the witche’s prophecy; ‘Until Birnam wood Do come to Dunsinane…’
Because if you think the last election was destructive for Labor, just wait and until the next one.
Do our children have something to worry about? I think so.
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. 
