ALERT: Protest Australia's Ancient Forest Logging and Climate Change Eco-Hypocrisy
TAKE ACTION: Dramatic efforts required to stop the expansion of Tasmanian old-growth forest logging by construction of a massive new pulp mill by Gunns Ltd
Tasmania, Australia's woodchipping giant Gunns Ltd. is poised to be granted fast track approval by the Tasmanian government to build a massive chemical pulp mill in northern Tasmania. This forest-hungry pulp mill will be a disaster for Australia's ancient forests, climate, wildlife and future. If built, the US$1.4 billion project would need four million tonnes of logs a year. It would double Gunns' current rate of clearcutting in Tasmania's native forests. It will also dump thousands of tonnes of poisonous waste into Bass Strait every day, threatening marine life, tourism and the fishing industry. For way too long Tasmania's ancient forests - some containing massive eucalyptus trees - have been clearcut to produce paper pulp, mostly for the Japanese market... Continued markets for paper pulp from ancient forest liquidation depend upon this disastrous pulp mill being forced through the Australian legal system... the impact of this massive pulp mill on Tasmania's ancient native forests, much less regional and global climate, have not been considered. Additionally Minister Turnbull has acknowledged there is insufficient data available to assess the impacts of 64,000 tonnes a day of poisonous waste being released into Bass Strait... (the) Gunns had already signed a contract with construction firm John Holland to start building the pulp mill "in the first week of September"... At a time when Australia's federal government is proposing funding ancient forest protection and conservation internationally as a measure to a combat climate change, it is hypocritical and repulsive that Australia continues industrially clearing its own native forests. Australia's ancient forests will still be logged, even clearcut, for throw away consumer products; even as the Australian government calls upon less developed and poor nations to protect their forests for the climate. TAKE ACTION.
Comments
What are you thinking? Stop this project!
Posted by: John Davis | August 25, 2007 11:29 AM
Greetings,
There is a wide diversity of choices available to our society for the creation of paper and building supplies, such as industrial hemp and bio-cretes. There are many options to create economic growth with old-growth forests, such as offering 'carbon-neutral' conservation investments and tourism activities.
Expanding infrastructure to support the logging of old-growth forest and the intoxication of the environment is a choice that is unsustainable for future generations and the biological diversity necessary to maintain the Earth's ecological balance.
Please, include environmental impacts in your business analysis, and focus on creating enterprise that will support our communities and the Earth
Posted by: Scott Fraser | August 25, 2007 12:09 PM
Please let not big dollars win again against common sense and the protection of the envirnoment for future generations.
Posted by: clive mann | August 25, 2007 12:27 PM
Hypocritical politicians! Keep your hands off what doen't belong to you.
Posted by: stephen copley | August 25, 2007 1:25 PM
the world is watching
Posted by: vincent rees | August 25, 2007 2:38 PM
We have to stop cutting down the forests every where as the tree provide oxgyen and many other things.
Posted by: Regina marino | August 25, 2007 4:32 PM
As a Victorian, we don't have it as bad. What really is bad is that Gunns is renovating the State leader of Tasmania's (the equivilent of the governer) private mansion. That's what I call vested interest.
Posted by: Reuben van Bemmel | August 26, 2007 1:08 AM
The politicians in Tasmania are going to get this one past the keeper unless the global community act. God help the trees, seems like no one else is!
Posted by: Alan Hill | August 26, 2007 4:36 AM
How come bamboo is not grown for paper products? It reproduces without replanting. It is absurd and reprehensible that anyone would destroy old forests for paper!
Posted by: Vivian Farmer | August 26, 2007 2:00 PM
so how can we stop this?
HOW?
Posted by: gosling | August 27, 2007 5:57 AM
If "old growth" forest cannot be protected because of inherent worth, then perhaps we can now see that forests are the lungs of the Earth.
The IPCC tells us that we are pumping too much CO2 into the atmosphere. Well, trees ingest CO2. Why finance expensive means to remove CO2 when the forests do it for nothing?
We need an international law against forest destruction. Meanwhile people from around the world must protect this forest.
Posted by: Sky McCain | August 27, 2007 8:51 AM
Stop logging the ancient forests. Stop Llogging!!!!!
Posted by: Susan Wolf | August 27, 2007 6:32 PM
Dear Dr Barry
Thank you for your email about the pulp mill proposed by Gunns in the
Tamar Valley. The Australian Democrats agree with you that this mill is
environmentally unsound and we agree that our old growth forests should
not be logged for this or any other purpose. Unfortunately the practice
by state and federal governments of 'fast-tracking' projects that are
contentious is becoming routine and another example of governments
ignoring proper processes and their own laws.
Your efforts in emailing will, I am sure, be useful in pressuring
government members of parliament, particularly as we are close to a
Federal election.
Yours sincerely
Senator Lyn Allison
Leader, Australian Democrats
www.democrats.org.au
The Australian Democrats stand for a fair society that values justice,
democracy, individual freedom and diversity. We work for a prosperous,
environmentally sustainable and equitable economy; good, accountable
governance and responsible, peaceful engagement in the global community.
We are honest, compassionate, beholden to no interest group and we
provide a voice for the voiceless.
Posted by: Senator Lyn Allison | August 27, 2007 7:05 PM
Thanks for taking action on the Tassie Gunns Ltd. pulp mill proposal.
Global response to local issues shows so clearly how naked the emperor is in his new clothes,
yours
Mary
Posted by: Mary Rogers | August 27, 2007 9:45 PM
Outrageous if this is allowed to happen.. Tasmania has some of the last pristine wilderness left in Australia. The Wilderness Society is also
campaigning daily to try and get this stopped.. thanks for the link
Kind Regards
Julie
Posted by: Julie | August 29, 2007 9:29 AM
Thank you for writing to the Greens Members of Parliament with your concerns about Gunns' proposed pulp mill. The Greens are also strongly opposed to this development, and to the undemocratic fast-track approval process underpinning it. The four Greens Members of the House of Assembly have been consistently speaking out against the proposal in Parliament, and will be voting against the mill today.
Thank you for your support,
On behalf of the Tasmanian Parliamentary Greens.
Posted by: Tasmanian Greens | August 30, 2007 3:04 PM
Cutting down Tazmania's forests for money is disgusting. Please don't let it happen!
Posted by: Estella | September 1, 2007 12:02 AM
This decision has led my decision on who I should be voting for in the next election.
As a Australian, I am disgusted that our society has reverted to old economic growth measures, rather than advanced new, innovative ways of economic development. Nor to mention the environmental disasture that this will have on Australia.
Already we are leaders in environemtal damage per capita of humans, and yet we continue not to learn from our mistakes.
Posted by: J.Bates | September 2, 2007 7:32 AM
This site indeed deserve to appretiated. Being global issues we should form an association worldwide to agitate the issues at country level and manage to arrange international protests. And most importanly this association in approval with UN to excercise the jurisdiciton of International Court of Justice to raise these issues directly at this FORUM.
Posted by: Mohammad Azhar Siddique | September 3, 2007 10:21 AM