The continued rampant pillaging of the Darling Downs by the coal seam gas industry will be disastrous for Australia’s attempts to reduce carbon emissions, according to Lock the Gate Alliance.
Media reported that the growing LNG industry was contributing to rises in both industrial and so-called fugitive emissions, leading to increases in Australia’s overall carbon footprint.
At the same time, the Queensland Government announced it had given the go ahead for a $10 billion Arrow Energy (owned by Shell and PetroChina) coal seam gas project that would ravage prime agricultural land and drain farming bores across the Darling Downs.
Lock the Gate spokesperson Carmel Flint said it was disappointing the Queensland Government was taking positive steps domestically on climate change elsewhere but ignoring the impact that CSG exports will have on global emissions.
She said the Federal Government too had completely failed to properly consider the climate impacts of LNG exports, which were now driving up emissions nationally.
“Federal and state governments have both paid almost no attention to the serious carbon emissions from the drilling and burning of gas, and the latest data shows export gas projects are now blowing out our national carbon accounts,” Ms Flint said.
“The threats to Queensland from the burning of fossil fuels are substantial, with the state at risk of worsening droughts, heat waves, bushfires and other extreme weather events.
“The Palaszczuk Government has made much of the state’s renewable energy boom, but it isn’t good enough if the state continues to support carbon belching projects like the Arrow Energy plan.
“If the companies do proceed with the project, it will pockmark some of the richest farming land in the country between Dalby and Wandoan, a distance of more than 150km.
“Lock the Gate condemns in the strongest terms possible the complete failure of the Federal Government to deliver a valid climate change policy nationally and the double standards of the Palaszczuk Government in approving the Arrow project this week.”
ENDS