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“Quarry Vision: Coal, Climate Change and the end of the Resources Boom”
By Guy Pearse
Quarterly Essay, Issue 33
Black Inc, 2009
129 pages, $16.95

A public meeting on April 21 organised by the Beyond Nuclear Initiative and the Sydney Nuclear Free Coalition, at the University of Sydney, attracted 100 people.

Attendees at the World at a Crossroads conference, held in Sydney on April 10-12, remarked that the conference could not have been better named.

The April 2 G20 summit brought together the leaders of some of the world’s most economically significant countries. They were intent on working out a rescue plan for the capitalist system, the very system that is killing the planet and condemning billions of people to poverty and oppression.

A group of community activists marked Earth Hour with an occupation of the Hazelwood Power station in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley on March 28.

A forum held by the University of Sydney environment collective and the Political Economy Students’ Society attracted 70 people on March 31.

The tiny Indian Ocean nation of the Maldives will become carbon-neutral within 10 years. This was the pledge made by Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed on March 15. The low-lying country will be among the first in the world to be inundated by rising sea levels caused by human-induced climate change. The highest point in the chain of 1200 islands and coral atolls is just 1.8 metres above sea-level.

The scientist appointed by the federal government to monitor the environmental impact of the Northern Territory’s Ranger uranium mine, Alan Hughes, confirmed at a March 12 Senate hearing that contaminated water was leaking into rock fissures beneath Kakadu National Park.

The Maldives government has announced the country will transform its economy to become carbon neutral by 2020.

A debate is underway in the Australian Greens about how the party should respond to the Rudd government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS).

When the federal industry minister Kim Carr announced the ALP government would give the car industry $6.2 billion in taxpayers’ money in November, he declared that it amounted to a “new beginning”.

The free market has got us into this mess, and the free market will get us out of it.