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Join the Climate court case against Shell Petition

Shell is one of the biggest climate polluters in the world. This transnational company has known about the severity of climate change and the impacts of oil and gas drilling for decades, but has not only misled the public on the issue, it continues drilling for fossil fuels. Across the world Shell’s climate wrecking activities are leaving a trail of devastation, from Australia to the Netherlands. We cannot save the climate if large corporations continue to pollute the planet. This is why Friends of the Earth Netherlands is taking Shell to court.

This historic case could set a powerful legal precedent: if we win, one of the world’s biggest polluters will have to stop wrecking the climate.  Join the case against Shell as an honorary co-claimant. 

Petition

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, has told the Business Council of Australia that he wants to ‘overhaul’ environmental approvals for major projects as part of an attempt to ‘further streamline’ the industrial relations system.

History has repeatedly shown that any deregulation government approvals is bad for workers and bad for the environment.

Mr Morrison says the federal government wants to “get major projects off the ground sooner” by reducing the length of time it takes for businesses to navigate environmental approvals.

This is part of an ongoing campaign by his government to cut what they call ‘green tape’.

Major environmental projects always bring substantial ecological or climate costs. Over years Australian and state and territory governments have established approvals processes that seek to find the right balance between approving large projects and protecting the environment.

While we have never had a perfect national approvals system, it is essential we do not lose the processes currently in place.

‘Cutting Green Tape’ is code for ‘let business do what it wants’. In the real world, it will mean large resource companies being given the green light to cut corners and get their projects waved through by government.

This is not an agenda that is acceptable to the majority of the Australian people.

Protect land, water, and climate Petition

A recent review has concluded that national environment laws aren't working: in fact things are getting worse.

Friends of the Earth are calling on Scott Morrison to implement the recommendations of that review which says that we need:

• to rebuild and strengthen the national environment laws
  
  
• legally enforceable national environment standards
  
  
• a strong, independent regulatory body to oversee the laws

Read more about the recent review and why we need to take action.

Open Letter: Prime Minister, Australia Needs Ambition on Climate & Jobs Petition

Governments are now making decisions that will have big implications for job creation in Australia and our ability to tackle the climate crisis. 

Unchecked global warming leaves communities exposed to intensifying bushfires, heatwaves, droughts, and rising seas. 

Communities across Australia are showing incredible leadership by rebuilding after climate-fuelled bushfires and shifting to renewables to cut emissions. It's time for governments to show the same level of commitment. 

Now more than ever, Prime Minister Scott Morrison needs to hear from the community. 

Sign the open letter to call on PM Scott Morrison to increase ambition on climate and jobs. 

When you sign on to the letter, our Act on Climate campaign will contact you with next steps to pressure governments to show greater leadership on climate.

Tell Scott Morrison: We need a national aerial firefighting fleet

Australia’s fires over the summer of 2019/20 were unprecedented in scale and level of destruction. Fuelled by climate change, the hottest and driest year ever recorded resulted in fires that burned through more than 17 million hectares, killed up to 3 billion animals, and affected nearly 80% of Australians. This included the tragic loss of over 450 lives from the fires and smoke.

Aerial firefighting capacity – planes and helicopters - are an essential component of Australia’s ability to respond to bushfires. This was demonstrated in the 2019-2020 bushfire season, when an unprecedented use of aircraft occurred. 

However last summer also showed that we simply don’t have enough aircraft to fight fires in a bad season. This puts landscape, people, towns and houses, and fire fighters at risk.

The recent Bushfire Royal Commission report recommends the creation of a national publicly-owned aerial firefighting fleet, which can then be allocated to the states "according to greatest national need".

Given Australia currently relies heavily on overseas-based aircraft which are leased for the season, this makes sense. The severity and duration of the 2019-2020 bushfire season placed strain on the existing arrangements for sharing aerial firefighting capabilities between the states and territories. Predicted longer northern and southern hemisphere fire seasons is also likely to cause problems, as planes will be needed for longer in each hemisphere, driving up the cost of hiring them.

The prospect of lengthening and increasingly severe fire seasons will only increase the demand for aerial firefighting services in the future.

We need a publicly owned fleet of planes and aircraft suitable for effectively fighting the fires we will continue to see in a warming world.

Please sign the letter to the PM, calling on the government to allocate funds to establish a publicly owned air fleet.

Image: 

By Tech. Sgt. Joselito Aribuabo - https://www.dvidshub.net/image/584330, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=39573336