Community campaign wins permanent #fracking ban in Victoria

Article first published at nofibs.com.au

To ensure it's clean green reputation of it's agricultural sector, and to guarantee the health of rural farming communities Victoria became the first Australian state officially banning fracking. It was motivated by a strong community lead campaign for a ban on gas exploration from 2011.

Legislation was passed in the Victorian Legislative Council, the upper house of the Victorian parliament, for a permanent legislative ban on fracking. Victoria’s agriculture sector employs more than 190,000 people and relies on it's clean and green reputation.

The legislation was passed without amendment. The Coalition parties and Shooters and Farmers Party sought to amend the legislation regarding the onshore conventional gas exploration moratorium, but were defeated 20 votes to 18. Sex Party MLC Fiona Pattern and Western Region independent MLC James Purcell gave crucial support, along with the Greens, for passage of the bill.

California targets 50 per cent renewables by 2030 while fracking continues

California Governor Jerry Brown announced at his inauguration that Climate Change action would be prominent for his next 4 years of his administration. But all is not well in California with large public opposition to shale oil fracking championed by Governor Brown, and the state still being in the worst drought in 1,200 years exacerbated by high temperatures due to climate change. Fracking Opposition groups have adopted the slogan "Governor Brown: Climate Leaders Don't Frack"

Already California is on track to meet it's target of a third of electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Brown announced that this should increase to 50 per cent of electricity generation by 2030, plus a 50 per cent reduction in petroleum use in cars and trucks, and to double the efficiency of existing buildings, and use cleaner heating fuels.

"And we must manage farm and rangelands, forests and wetlands so they can store carbon." said Governor Brown.

He emphasised the enormous need for collaboration between scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs businesses and officials, "I envision a wide range of initiatives: more distributed power, expanded rooftop solar, micro-grids, an energy imbalance market, battery storage, the full integration of information technology and electrical distribution and millions of electric and low-carbon vehicles. How we achieve these goals and at what pace will take great thought and imagination mixed with pragmatic caution. It will require enormous innovation, research and investment."

But under Jerry Brown fracking by Big Oil will continue in California. In fact, new reguulations for fracking in California have already been written, six months before the mandated scientific studies have been completed, according to environmental journalist Dan Bacher in this San Fransisco Bay Area Indymedia story. “California has essentially reversed the regulatory process when it comes to fracking,” said Jackie Pomeroy, spokesperson for CAFrackFacts. “State regulators have finalized California's fracking rules a full six months before any of the mandated scientific studies have been completed."

Fracking is just a glimpse into the dark side of Brown's poor environmental record revealed by Dan Bacher. See his June 2013 article in CounterPunch: Jerry Brown: Worse Than Schwarzenegger on Environment?, and his September 2014 article: Big Oil’s Favorite Governor: Jerry Brown.

Coal Seam Gas fugitive emissions monitoring to be tightened

Updated: 17 April, 2013.
The Minister for Climate Change, Greg Combet today unveiled proposals for better monitoring of emissions from coal seam gas (CSG) production. A discussion paper sets out proposals to introduce new CSG-specific measurement and estimation methods into Australia’s greenhouse gas reporting framework.

This comes at a time of rising widespread concern on fugitive CSG emissions of methane released during CSG extraction and production. Methane over short time periods of 20 years is 100 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas contributing to climate change, while for longer time periods it is about 21 times as powerful.