The weekend state meeting of the NSW Greens in Newcastle has supported the people's blockade of Newcastle Harbour on Sunday 28 March 2010 to highlight government inaction on a shift to renewable energy production.
Now, more than ever, we need to be turning up the heat on the coal industry, and their friends in government. The export coal industry is Australia's single biggest, and fastest growing contribution to the global climate crisis.
Newcastle, already the world's biggest coal port, is opening a major new coal export terminal over the course of this year, bringing the export capacity of the Hunter Valley coal chain to an incredible 178 million tonnes of coal per annum. That's the climate change equivalent of 30 Bayswater Power Stations. Within ten years, the coal corporations plan on exporting more than 300 million tonnes of coal per annum - a tripling of current export capacity.
Tripling coal exports means tripling coal mining. As Newcastle coal exports boom, more precious bushland will be razed, more waterways polluted, more communities ripped apart as the transnational coal companies carve their way westwards into the Liverpool Plains. The profits will be exported, but the devastation will stay here in the Hunter. The catastrophic effects of climate change will hurt all around the world.
This madness has to stop. The climate crisis is deepening, and time is fast running out. Politicians are failing to take action against the rampant coal companies, so we have to do it ourselves.
Hundreds of people will be doing just that in Newcastle on 28th March, and we'd love you to join us. We'll be taking to the harbour in a big way, occupying the world's biggest coal port with a mass of people, and demanding:
- an immediate ban on the expansion of the coal industry in Australia,
- a swift phase out of coal, replacing all coal industry jobs with jobs in renewable energy and other sustainable industries.
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