Friends of the Earth Adelaide has a new website!

As of September 2007, this blog will no longer be updated. However, all of its content and much more is now available from http://www.adelaide.foe.org.au.

See you there!

Art Auction!

This Saturday 4 August, Friends of the Earth Adelaide will be holding a fundraising art auction! Held as part of the SALA Festival, the auction features over 40 works by accomplished and emerging South Australian artists, as well as Indigenous artists from around the country, including:

- Tjanpi Desert Weavers: Aboriginal women weavers from the NPY lands, as featured at WOMADelaide 2007
- Mitch: Aboriginal artist and activist from Engawala Community, Alice Springs
- Laura Wills: Winner, 2006 Environment Youth Art Prize; Second Prize, 2007 Environment Youth Art Prize, recently closed a successful solo exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Centre of South Australia and currently on an artist’s residency in Austria, supported by the South Australian Youth Arts Board
- Alisa Teletovic: multi-award winner
- Fleur Elise Noble: multi-award winner, including the 2002 Pro Hart Scholarship, the Vicki Nottage Memorial Youth Art Award, the Mitsubishi Youth Scholarship and the Emerging Artist Award
- Aly de Groot: multi-prize winning weaver, currently based in the Northern Territory
- weaving by Deni Odlum, Judy Grey-Gardner and Amanda King, earthenware by Sam Jeffries, prints by Julia Wakefield and much more.

Date: Saturday 4 August
Venue: North Adelaide Institute, 176 Tynte Street, North Adelaide
Time: Viewing from 4.00pm, Auction from 7.00pm.
Food and drink will be available.

A full catalogue can be downloaded here.
Written bidding forms can be downloaded here.

All funds raised from this event will support Friends of the Earth Adelaide’s ongoing work for a just and sustainable future, in particular, supporting Traditional Owners in the Northern Territory in their campaign to protect their traditional country from nuclear waste dumping.

For more information, feel free to contact Sophie Green on 0422 487 219, or sophie.green[at]foe.org.au - and bring your friends and family!

JAMES LOVELOCK and NUCLEAR POWER
Professor James Lovelock recently visited Adelaide as a speaker for the Adelaide Festival of Ideas, among other things, he spruiked nuclear power as a solution to climate change.



Professor James Lovelock is the originator of 'The Gaia Hypothesis', proposing that all parts of the earth’s biosphere are interdependent on each other and that the planet could be represented as a self-regulating organism. While Professor Lovelock’s work has profoundly shaped our perceptions of the world, when it comes to the nuclear chain, he has got it very wrong.

In the face of catastrophic climate change, Professor Lovelock has argued that nuclear power is an unpleasant but necessary medicine: "I see in the end that we must get our energy from renewable resources but I don't see it happening in under 50 years. I don't see nuclear as the ultimate solution, I see it as a kind of medicine, which is an unpleasant medicine in some ways that we have to take while we're curing ourselves by fossil fuels." (ABC Science Show, 2001.)

Chernobyl
“You get things like Chernobyl but what happens? Thirty-odd brave firemen died who needn't have died but its general effect on the world population is almost negligible." (Quoted in Radford, 2000.)

To describe the global impact of Chernobyl as "almost negligible" is absurd given the myriad of well-documented impacts, not least the permanent relocation of about 220,000 people. Furthermore, applying a standard risk estimate to the collective dose gives an estimated human death toll of 24,000.

"The land around the failed Chernobyl power station was evacuated because it was unsafe for people, but it is now rich in wildlife. We call it nuclear waste and worry about its safe disposal. I wonder if instead we should use it as an incorruptible guardian of the beautiful places on Earth. Who would dare cut down a forest which was a storage place of nuclear ash?" (Quoted in Walsh, 2005.)

While Lovelock describes the area around Chernobyl as “rich in wildlife”, recent studies by biologists suggest otherwise. A University of South Carolina study on birds described a high proportion of those studied as suffering from “radiation-induced sickness and genetic damage”, as well as reduced reproductive rates and high mortality rates. A study from Pierre and Marie Curie University, Paris, also highlights that a third of barn swallow nestlings studied in the Chernobyl area had malformations.

Nuclear Waste
"I have told the BNFL ... that I would happily take the full output of one of their big power stations. I think the high-level waste is a stainless steel cube of about a metre in size." The waste would serve two purposes, Lovelock says: "One would be home heating. You would get free home heat from it. And the other would be to sterilise the stuff from the supermarket, the chicken and whatnot, full of salmonella. Just drop it down through a hole. I'm not saying this tongue-in-cheek. I am quite serious." (Quoted in Radford, 2000.)

Weapons Proliferation
Lovelock rarely comments on nuclear weapons proliferation, yet when he does his remarks are inaccurate. On ABC’s Lateline in 2006, he commented that "Modern nuclear power stations are useless for making bombs". Yet former US Vice-President Al Gore recently remarked, “For eight years in the White House, every weapons proliferation problem we dealt with was connected to a civilian reactor program, and if we ever got to the point where we wanted to use nuclear reactors to back out a lot of coal ... then we'd have to put them in so many places we'd run that proliferation risk right off the reasonability scale."

- A typical power reactor produces enough plutonium each year for about 30 nuclear weapons. There is no serious dispute that this 'reactor grade' plutonium can be used for weapons.
- Most of the technologies used in support of nuclear power programs can also be used in support of a nuclear weapons program.

Links to the nuclear industry
According to Nuclear Spin (http://www.nuclearspin.org) Lovelock has long-standing ties to the nuclear industry and its supporters. He is Patron of the British organisation Supporters of Nuclear Energy (SONE), with links to nuclear power organisations British Energy and British Nuclear Fuels Limited. In addition to promoting nuclear energy in the UK, SONE has also actively opposed the development of renewable energy.

Nuclear power and climate change
Because electricity generation only contributes to around a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, replacing coal-fired electricity generating plants with nuclear energy would only make a small dent in carbon emissions. Even if nuclear power could be doubled by 2050, greenhouse emissions would only be reduced by 5%. This is less than one-tenth of the reduction required to stabilise atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. Nuclear power is no solution to climate change:
TOO SLOW: climate change demands an urgent response, yet it would take an estimated 15 years before a nuclear reactor could power a single light bulb in Australia. Renewable energy could be delivering energy within a year and energy efficiency technologies can cut pollution tomorrow.
TOO DANGEROUS: nuclear power carries the risk of a serious accident like Chernobyl and, in an increasingly unstable would, the uranium and nuclear power industries both increase the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation and are themselves a real terrorist threat.
TOO DIRTY: uranium mining and nuclear power create highly toxic waste that remains dangerous for hundreds of thousands of years. For example, BHP Billiton’s Roxby Downs uranium mine in SA already has a radioactive waste stockpile of over 70 million tonnes, and at the Beverley mine in the state’s north-east, radioactive waste is simply dumped into groundwater. Uranium goes on to become high-level nuclear waste at reactors around the world, and there is still not a single repository on earth for the long-term disposal of this waste. Nuclear waste means permanent pollution.
TOO EXPENSIVE: even after more than 50 years of massive government subsidies around the world, nuclear power still can’t pay for itself. Its requires billions of dollars to build and run a plant and more to manage the radioactive waste produced and to decommission the reactor itself when it reaches the end of its life.

MORE INFORMATION
Nuclear Power: no solution to climate change
http://www.foe.org.au/campaigns/anti-nuclear/issues

James Lovelock and Patrick Moore
http://www.foe.org.au/campaigns/anti-nuclear/issues

Reasons not to glow, Orion Magazine
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/316

Northern Territory traditional owners with local activists at the Living Kaurna Cultural Centre, Warriparinga

FROM THE HEART, FOR THE HEARTLAND


Mt Everard traditional owner Audrey McCormack

In mid-June, the Northern Territory Traditional Owners Speaking Tour, "From the heart, for the heartland", kicked off in Adelaide. Hosted by Friends of the Earth Adelaide, the main event of the speakers 3-day stay was a speaking event attended by a 100 people, and co-hosted by the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre at UniSA.


Muckaty traditional owner Dianne Stokes

The speakers, Audrey McCormack from Mt. Everard, Mitch from Harts Range, Dianne Stokes from Muckaty, Donna Jackson (Larrakia Nations) and Natalie Wasley from the Arid Lands Environment Centre in Alice Springs, described their campaign to protect traditional country from Federal plans to impose a nuclear waste dump on the NT.


Donna Jackson, Larrakia Nations and Top End Aboriginal Conservation Alliance

The speaking delegation met with members and representatives from the local Kaurna community, non-government organisations, politicians and federal candidates, before continuing their journey to Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney.


Mitch, Harts Range



Recordings of the speeches are available for radio or private use, contact Friends of the Earth Adelaide for more details. All photos by Kathy Whitta.

More information at http://www.no-waste.org/

=============

Owners warn of tremors at nuclear waste dump site
Andra Jackson, The Age, June 20, 2007

TREMORS have twice been felt in a proposed Northern Territory site for a nuclear waste dump site, according to Aboriginal owners.

"The last one registered 2.5 on the Richter scale," traditional owner and Warramunga-Warlmanpa woman Dianne Stokes from the Muckaty Land Trust told a meeting of non-government organisations in Melbourne on Monday night.

Two weeks ago, the other members of the trust — with the backing of the Northern Land Council — secretly negotiated a deal under which the Federal Government would pay $12 million to use the 2241-square-kilometre Muckaty Station as Australia's first national nuclear waste dump.

Ms Stokes, an elected spokeswoman for the Warramunga and Warlmanpa tribes, said the deal was made by just one of the 16 family groupings represented on the trust.

The Northern Land Council failed to listen to the other families, she said.

Ms Stokes, a mother of six, was one of four traditional owners of four proposed nuclear waste sites in the Northern Territory who spoke at a public meeting at Melbourne's Trade Hall Council on Monday night.

"I came here with all my spirits from my ancestors to keep my country alive," she said.

Ms Stokes, who lives just half an hour's drive from the site of a proposed nuclear waste dump at Muckaty, said it would kill the area environmentally and culturally.

The surrounding country was a source of bush tucker and a place of burials in both the ground and trees, which were home to ancestral spirits, she said.

Priscilla Williams, a member of the Hart Range community, the site of another proposed dump, said the community closest to Muckaty Station had a primary school that got its water from a river which ran around the proposed site.

While the Federal Government had insisted there had never been an accident with a nuclear waste dump anywhere, "we're worried about what will happen if our water gets poisoned because we get it from under the ground", Ms Williams said.

The delegation briefed the Wilderness Society and called on state premiers to oppose a national nuclear waste dump.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/owners-give-nuclear-waste-dump-warning/2007/06/19/1182019116363.html

CALLING ALL ARTISTS!!

Friends of the Earth Adelaide are seeking your artwork for an ART AUCTION to raise funds to support Indigenous traditional owners from the Northern Territory in their campaign against the Federal government’s attempts to impose a nuclear waste dump on their traditional lands.

All works are accepted (including sculpture, weaving, glassblowing, jewelry, framed and unframed paintings, new and old works etc), and specially produced works are particularly welcome.

Works are needed before 20th July 2007.

To register your interest and find out more, contact Sophie at sophie.green@foe.org.au or 0422 487 219.

Expose your work to new audiences!
Support Friends of the Earth!

www.foe.org.au
http://cleanfutures.blogspot.com

Friends of the Earth Benefit Party!

On Saturday 12 May, McLaren Vale's Singing Gallery hosted the first-ever Friends of the Earth Benefit Party, featuring Musical Sherpa, DJ Jimi, Chefism, a raffle, chai, cakes, excellent company and much dancing! A massive thanks to Greg, Sarah, James, Bert, Elly and all those who helped in pulling this amazing event together!

Pedal Australia for Clean Energy

Friends of the Earth Adelaide


MEDIA RELEASE – 27 April 2007

Cycling across Australia for a Clean Nuclear-Free Future


On the first day of the ALP National Conference, Pedal Australia for Clean Energy and Friends of the Earth Adelaide call on ALP delegates to retain their long-standing no new uranium mines policy and move to phase out the uranium industry.

In the final stretches of their bicycle circumnavigation of Australia to educate about clean and renewable solutions to climate change, PACE emphasises Australia’s positive role in exporting clean energy technologies to the world, rather than uranium with its attendant, unresolved issues of weapons proliferation and long-lived radioactive waste.

“It’s ironic that the ALP should be contemplating an expansion of Australia’s uranium industry only days after the 21st anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe. Labor recognises that nuclear power is not a safe or responsible path for Australia’s energy future, yet many delegates are willing to dump nuclear risks and problems on communities overseas for short-term economic gain,” said Friends of the Earth Adelaide campaigner Sophie Green.

“In the best case scenario, more uranium mining in Australia will lead to the production of even greater volumes of high-level nuclear waste overseas for which there is still no safe disposal method. In a likely scenario, more uranium mining here will increase nuclear weapons proliferation given the emergence of a nuclear black market and clandestine nuclear programs. In the worst-case scenario, we could see more nuclear catastrophes and ‘near-misses’ such as that of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island,” said Ms. Green.

PACE cyclist Melanie Szydzik stated “The majority of the public remains concerned by uranium mining. A May 2006 Newspoll found that 66% of all Australians and 78% of all ALP voters are opposed to any expansion of uranium mining. As we have cycled around the country we have engaged with communities, schools and individuals and have listened time and again to serious concerns about the uranium industry.”

Ms Szydzik continued “The real solution to climate change lies in energy efficiency and renewable power technology. Australia is uniquely positioned to make the most of exciting opportunities presented by these technologies: We are able to benefit from our natural abundance of renewable sources to power this nation, and to reap the economic rewards of exporting clean energy technologies overseas.”

Pedal Australia for Clean Energy (PACE) are circumnavigating the continent powered only by pedal power (bicycles). They have cycled 9000km and have arrived in Adelaide this week.

Contact and Photos:
Sophie Green 0422 487 219 sophie.green@foe.org.au
Melanie Szydzik 0412 145 003 info@pedalaustralia.org.au
Severin Staalesen 0428 293 597 info@pedalaustralia.org.au