An Open letter to Telstra Super on fossil fuel investments, particularly Santos and Woodside Energy

The following email to one of my superannuation funds, Telstra Super, was partly generated from the latest Market Forces Climate Wreckers Report. It is easy to generate a letter with specific information to your Super Fund. I added substantially more contextual information to my email. But a short personal note with reasons on the necessity for divesting for our future can also have an impact. 

Every Super member has an opportunity to change how their superannuation is invested, divesting away from fossil fuels to clean energy solutions.

To TelstraSuper,

Time to End all investments in the world’s worst fossil fuel expanders

I’m contacting you to demand that you end the fossil fuel expansion plans of companies you invest my retirement savings in, and publicly divest from them if this fails.

I have particular concerns that your engagement with Woodside and Santos to adopt a change in business, has failed. These companies are almost entirely dedicated to Fossil fuel production and expansion. Your continued investment of member superannuation money  in these companies under the rubric that you can engage and get them to adopt net zero emissions by 2050 is fatally flawed and is not in keeping with your fiduciary duty to act for members long term behalf.

Coal train delayed for 6 hours due to #leardblockade civil-disobedience

Photo: Frontline Action on Coal/Twitter

The Leardblockade continues with more coal trains being stopped from transporting coal from Whitehaven and Idemitsu mines to Newcastle port for export in an act of peaceful civil disobedience. Original story published at nofibs.com.au

Environment Officer Anisa Rogers (23), student Linah Winoto (20) and Horticulturalist Jim Kremar (33) occupied a coal train locomotive, stopping all coal trains from reaching the port of Newcastle, shutting down the coal transport line for 6 hours.

Front Line Action on Coal spokesperson, Jason McLean, said of the action that “civil disobedience would not stop until the Government puts the well-­being of its citizens ahead of that of big business.”

Storify: Coal train protest ends 1st week of #Leardblockade action on #coal

"Red alert, red alert, keep the coal in the dirt" the protestors chanted at a blockade of coal haul trucks going to Whitehaven's Tarrawonga coal mine while Whitehaven and Idemitsu bulldozers are lining up to devastate the Leard forest to expand coal mining.

Nofibs reporter John Englart reports on the first week of action - titled the Bats Return - at the Leard blockade via social media. The Bats Return is a six week creative action protest at Maules Creek, north-western New South Wales, that started on February 13. It coincides when the miners are allowed, under their permit, to clear the forest.

Pacific Climate Warriors join the #Leardblockade to protest coal and climate change

Original story published at Nofibs.

Thirty Pacific warriors are currently touring Australia to share their climate message and ask for our support and solidarity. On Monday they brought their message to Narrabri and the Leard Blockade and saw first hand the destruction wrought by Whitehaven Coal's Maules Creek Project and Idemitsu’s Boggabri Coal.

“We are sending a powerful message: we will not stand idly by as the coal industry sinks the future of the Pacific Islands – we are fighting for our god given right to live”, says Mikaele Maiava, for the Climate Change warriors for Tokelau in a brief statement.

Four of the thirty climate warriors come from Tokelau, which transitioned to 100 per cent renewables in 2012. They are only too well aware of the negative impacts of climate change. Read the Ulu o Tokelau, Aliki Faipule Kuresa Nasau statement from 3 October and understand the motivation of not just the four warriors from Tokelau - Avelio Tumua, Dedles Suega Isaia, Aleki Manuele and Mikaele Maiava - but all the warriors from all the countries of the South Pacific.

Countries that are part of the campaign include: Papua New Guinea, Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Tokelau, Niue, Cook Islands, Federated Sates of Micronesia, Marshall Islands, Palau, Tuvalu, Nauru, Kiribati and Fiji.

Whitehaven coal mine offsets not compatible with threatened ecosystems being destroyed

The Whitehaven coal mine at Maule's Creek near Boggabri in north Western NSW involves the destruction of a substantial part of the Leard Forest. One of the requirements for approval was the provision of environmental offsets to balance 'like for like' against the destruction of high biodiversity habitat. But the latest environmental report by Dr John Hunter advises the offsets for critically endangered ecological communities are "vastly overstated".

This shows that the approval under the EPBC Act by former Environment Minister Tony Burke and the continued support given by current Environment minister Greg Hunt are a travesty and likely a dereliction of duty of care for the environment, threatened species and biodiversity.

Related: Front Line Action on Coal | Leard State Forest | Maule's Creek Community | No Fibs Leard Blockade reports

Coal barons and climate change driving Great Barrier Reef destruction

Let's get this straight. Australian politicians are allowing some of the richest Australian billionaires combined with Chinese and Indian power corporations to destroy the Great Barrier Reef, one of the natural wonders of the world and a World Heritage site. Political approval of mining the guts out of the coal rich Galilee basin in Central Queensland destroys sensitive ecosystems like the Bimblebox Nature Reserve containing threatened species, and is forecast to substantially lower the water table impacting rural communities and agricultural productivity with possible repercussions on flow in the Great Artesian basin aquifer.

This coal will be exported through Queensland ports, but substantial dredging is required with the dredge spoil to be dumped in the marine park waters damaging the reef. The increase in ship movements will also imperil the reef. The increased CO2 emissions when the coal is burnt will also cause ocean acidification and climate change both of which are, you guessed it....damaging the coral reef systems and the Great Barrier Reef.

Related: WWF:Fight for the Reef | Australia courting danger with the Great Barrier Reef : Greenpeace - Abbot Point Dredging – Who’s really to blame? | Greenpeace petition at SavetheReef.org.au

Whitehaven Tarrawonga coal mine disrupted by protest

Frontline Action on Coal in the Leard State Forest claimed today that production at Whitehaven's Tarrawonga coal mine was disrupted due to a protester sitting on a tree platform with ropes attached to the front gate. Another twenty people supported the protestor.

The person up the tree was Jonathon Moylan who issued the ANZ hoax letter in January to garner attention on ANZ Bank financing to the tune of $1.2billion the Maule Creek coal mine.

The group claimed in a media release that all coal output and worker access to Whitehaven's Tarrawonga Mine this morning has been stopped. According to a report in the Herald a spokesperson for Whitehaven said that haulage of coal to the company's coal preparation plant had been stopped but production inside the mine had continued normally.

Front Line Action on Coal is one of the many community groups backing the "Call to Country" campaign by the Lock the Gate Alliance, calling for a federal moratorium on new coal and coal-seam gas projects and a Royal Commission into state government coal mine approval processes.

Environment Minister approves fossil fuel projects increasing carbon emissions 8% per year

Maules Creek and Boggabri coal mines, and the Gloucester CSG Field in New South Wales get conditional go ahead from the Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke increasing Australia's contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change and strongly condemned by the local community and conservationists.

Environment Minister Tony Burke has conditionally approved the Whitehaven Maules Creek open cut coal mine near Narrabri in the Leard State Forest as well as the four fold expansion of the neighboring Idemitsu Boggabri coal mine, and a major Coal Seam Gas field near Gloucester being undertaken by AGL.

The decisions were brought forward after the NSW State Government leaked that the Minister had already decided last year to approve the projects. "Unfortunately the decision of the New South Wales Government to leak commercially sensitive information has caused me to have to bring these decisions forward today with the remaining work to be resolved directly between the company and myself." Tony Burke said in a press release.

The decision came just a few days after an announcement that the Minister would delay a decision on the Maules Creek mine until the end of April.

According to a report in the Age newspaper the three projects have a huge carbon footprint of 47 million tonnes of greenhouse gases a year. This amounts to 8 per cent of Australia's emissions and contradicts the work of the Climate Change Department and carbon price in aiming to reduce Australia's emissions by just 5 per cent by 2020.

A Greenpeace report by environmental consultants Ecosys - Point of No Return - published in January 2013 highlighted the danger of 14 global 'carbon bomb' projects which would increase global carbon emissions by 20% and lock the planet in to worst case business as usual climate change scenarios of 4 to 6 degrees centigrade of global warming this century. Fossil fuel extraction projects in Australia and China top the list. The approval of the Maules Creek coal mine and Boggabri coal mine extension are part of Australia's substantial contribution to this 'carbon bomb'.

Greens Leader says 'Look at the damage to humanity being caused by people who bankroll coalmines'

Jonathon Moylan's ANZ Bank hoax letter over the Maule's Creek Project open cut coalmine continues to produce reverberations. Greens Leader Christine Milne has now come out in his support arguing that we are in a climate emergency and we need to have a very serious 'Look at the damage to humanity being caused by people who bankroll coalmines'. Independent Economist Rod Campbell implies that the real hoax being perpetrated on small and institutional investors in Whitehaven coal is by Gillespie Economics and NSW Planning Department who massively overestimated the benefits and underestimated the social, environmental, health and climate costs of the project.

Jonathon Moylan may become Australia's first high profile climate civil disobedience activist jailed as a result of an ASIC investigation. A somewhat similar case ocurred in the USA in 2011 when climate activist Tim DeChristopher was jailed for two years and fined $10,000 for climate civil disobedience for exposing the rorts in an auction of public lands for mineral exploration. Clive Hamilton on The Conversation website article - ANZ imposter takes up new climate tactic - also draws our attention to the parallels with the Tim DeChristopher case.

Take Action: Sign the ANZ Stop the Loan e-petition