With a new Labor government in place, urgent action is needed on the climate crisis. Friends of the Earth's Federal Climate & Environment Policy Platform 2022 outlines 5 priorities.

Since the early 2000s, FoE Australia has raised awareness about the impacts of climate change on the peoples of the Pacific Islands region. Our research, publications and events have highlighted the effects of more frequent and more extreme weather events, sea level rise and ocean warming and acidification - and the threat of displacement and forced migration.

In early October, yet another science report was released by the World’s leading climate body, the IPCC, confirming that climate change is well underway, and that under current estimates warming will reach 1.5 degrees in the next few decades.

An increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius will make the climate much more unstable; bigger storms and cyclones, harsher droughts and heat waves.

However, 2.0 degrees hotter is much, much worse and would cause very serious social, economic, and environmental problems. Destruction of coral reefs, rising sea levels, collapsing food supplies are all real and happening now.

Limiting warming to 1.5 degrees would require a complete reduction of greenhouse gasses to zero by 2050 or sooner.

This requires fundamental change to energy, agriculture, transport systems and pretty much everything that humans do – and on a global scale. A few solar panels and wind farms is only a start.

But we all know this – scientists have been telling us with increasing alarm for decades that the planet is getting cooked – and we, its inhabitants, are facing a very uncertain and unstable future. The IPCC report is optimistic that governments across the world will see the light and quickly move to phase out fossil fuels and start planning to adapt to the uncertain future.

Unfortunately, this optimism seems misguided. The Paris Climate Agreement signed in 2016 will not limit global warming to 1.5 degrees – actually it will do very little because the commitments are too weak and the United States has run away.

Most governments and industry either don’t care or far worse are staging a huge deception campaign to undermine climate science, and any real efforts to limit greenhouse emissions.

The public has been duped by the likes of the coal and oil industry, by their slick marketing companies, and by dodgy scientists and lobby groups funded by these interests. For example, Tony Abbott and his colleagues have happily pushed the coal industry’s agenda, undermining energy reform and dumping real climate action.

These people and the industries they support are a minority, holding humanity to ransom for their own political or financial gain. Let’s stop being hoodwinked by big industry and demand immediate and far reaching action to reduce greenhouse emissions to zero.

ACTION:To move Australia beyond fossil fuels, the climate movement must grow to an unprecedented scale and size. Join FoE Australia's Tipping Point team of national volunteers: email [email protected] to find out more.

Toolbox for Sustainable Development

What is sustainable development?

Perhaps the most complete definition is development that meets the needs of the current generation without degrading the ecological inheritance of future generations.

Is this what we are seeing in our region?

Over the last few decades, there has been an onslaught on the recovering rainforest and bush in Kuranda and the wider region. Cassowaries and other endangered wildlife have been killed by loss of habitat, traffic, feral animals and domestic cats and dogs. Just recently, large numbers of paperbarks have been cut down in the centre of Mareeba to evict flying foxes.

As habitats shrink, the clashes between humans and wildlife will increase unless a more collaborative and sustainable planning approach is taken. With this vision in mind, the Kuranda Region Planning Group (KRPG) has been set up. See www.kurandaregion.org for further information. This is a network of local residents, environmental groups and wildlife experts that aim to work with government at all levels. FoE FNQ is a member of this network.

ACTION: Support KRPG's Wet Tropics World Heritage Vital Corridor Buy Back Scheme email [email protected] for further information.

Opposing environmentally destructive development

We have various options:

Engaging with the official governmental planning system at local, State or Federal level

We can put in submissions to Mareeba Shire Council about potentially environmentally destructive developments that conflict with the Mareeba Shire Planning Scheme 2016 For a list of current development applications, see https://msc.qld.gov.au/building-planning/development-applications/

If the development is still approved, we can then appeal in the Planning and Environment Court against the approval – but only if we were submitters. The Environmental Defenders' Office (EDO) offers legal advice, fact sheets and community handbooks prepared by legal experts. However court cases can be lengthy and expensive. Mediation is another option to achieve a better outcome.

Very large developments are assessed by all three layers of government – and this is the case for the mega resort KUR-World.

ACTION: Write a submission to the Coordinator General about KUR-World. Email [email protected] to find out more.

Nonviolent direct action

In the 50^th year after Martin Luther King was killed, this remains one of the most powerful tools we have. The Daintree Blockade in the 1980s was a local example of people risking their lives to protect the rainforest. Though it failed to stop the Bloomfield track being bulldozed through, it helped to save the Daintree and kick started the listing of the Wet Tropics World Heritage Area. This inspiring local history has been chronicled in the new book The Daintree Blockade: the battle for Australia's Tropical Rainforests by Bill Wilkie.

It is well worth the read with the added bonus of name spotting local eco-heroes who still live in the area. As Bob Brown said ' The sheer energy and commitment of those campaigners on the ground- that was the core to saving the Daintree itself' As we battle mega resorts and huge subdivisions and find out how weak and woolly the planning law is in Queensland, this may be what it takes to save the Kuranda region.

Protesters buried in the path of bulldozers in efforts to stop the Daintree road.

Photo by Cliff Frith.

Bryan Law and others up to his chest in mud blocking the Daintree Road.

Chain Reaction is the journal for Friends of the Earth Australia.

The August 2016 edition had the following two articles written in the Far North by FoE FNQ president John Glue and Margaret Pestorius.

Will militarism block the climate change movement?

At the start of the election campaign Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt visited Cairns to re-announce $50 million in new projects to boost water quality, including efforts to keep sediment, fertilisers and pesticides off the Great Barrier Reef. This re-announcement was partly to allay concerns over research showing 93% of the Reef had been bleached and dire predictions that the Reef will be terminal in as little as 5 to 20 years.

Read More

The Queensland Labor Party is backtracking on pledges it made before the last election to repeal water reforms which deregulated the use of groundwater by resource companies, giving big mining operations rights to billions of litres of water without the need for a licence.

Gas Pipelines Planned For Cape York and Across Northern Queensland

Two members of FoE Kuranda and CSG Free Kuranda along with 120 people from around the country attended a Lock the Gate conference in Lismore. Some of the new gas proposals for our region that were discussed was the gas pipeline from New Guinea through Cape York as well as the gas pipeline coming across from the Northern Territory and on down to export facilities at Gladstone. These pipelines would also enable gasfields to be developed all along their route. Currently over half of Queensland and Australia is covered by coal and gas licenses and could be turned into gasfields.

A innovative new way to protect and preserve the environment is to bestow legal personality to significant ecosystems.

Legal personality means that a person or entity has rights and duties in law. These rights commonly include the right to be free from unlawful interference, and the rights to exist, persist and reproduce. Where the rights of a legal person or entity are breached, they have the right to seek enforcement and a remedy through the legal system.