Major fault lines have emerged in the environment movement over the renewable’s rollout, with peak groups accused of turning a blind eye to “biodiversity-destroying” projects, while a senior campaigner likens its impacts on nature to the industrial revolution. Veteran conservationist and former federal Greens leader Christine Milne said peak environmental non-government organisations were too “frightened” to oppose renewables projects. The massive rollout of renewables – to meet renewable-energy and emissions-reduction targets – is creating tensions across regional and rural Australia, with landowners facing massive fines in Victoria for locking out developers, as communities seek to defend landscapes and treasured bird and other species. Ms Milne said some regional campaigners trying to stop wind farms to protect environments had more credibility than city-based climate “activists” who criticised such campaigns. “I find it incomprehensible that you get this line back (from NGOs) that you can’t oppose renewable energy, when of course you can oppose renewable energy if it is destroying biodiversity,” Ms Milne said.
“The reason that the larger groups have got to this point is because of the right in Australia to oppose renewable energy. “And so the environment movement have been reluctant to stand up and say ‘well, actually, on this particular wind farm or this particular transmission line it’s not appropriate’. They are frightened of being categorised in climate denier (terms) …” Ms Milne’s intervention comes as Wilderness Society national campaigns director Amelia Young quits the group after almost 20 years, citing “intolerable … attitudes and behaviours” – and warning of a dire threat to nature posed by the renewable’s rollout. “The renewables revolution threatens nature in many of the same extractive and colonial ways that the industrial revolution did,” Ms Young told colleagues in a farewell email. Ms Milne, a pioneering environmentalist and Greens politician who led the party federally from 2012 to 2015, has taken a strong stance against the Robbins Island Wind Farm, approved for Tasmania’s northwest.
The patron of the Bob Brown Foundation urged environmental NGOs and Greens MPs to take a case-by-case approach to renewables. “People ought to look at each project on its merits, as we would for any other major development,” Ms Milne said. “We need to recognise that, yes, we have a climate crisis, but we also have an extinction crisis and a biodiversity crisis.” Australian environmental NGOs were lagging a global approach, she said. “Globally, people are saying you can’t destroy biodiversity in the name of climate because you are undermining resilience in ecosystems,” she said. “That level of conversation is not common in Australia amongst the environment movement – and it should be.” From Tasmania to north Queensland, campaigners claim they are failing to get support from regional, state and national environment groups. “Queensland is a case in point with all those ridge lines having been cleared,” Ms Milne said. “If those projects were to log those, the environment movement would have been up in arms. But clearing remnant vegetation on top of ridge lines for a wind farm has led to ‘oh, you can’t oppose renewable energy’.
“The environment movement needs to stand up and say, ‘what amount of energy do we need and how should we best produce that for the minimum cost to the environment and to the community?’” Milne said. Wilderness Society national campaigns director Amelia Young has quit the organisation, citing concerns over values and attitudes. A “slow” response from environmental NGOs was leading to timidity from progressive politicians, she said. “There’s no question that we have to replace fossil fuels … but you can’t destroy biodiversity and send species to extinction in that process – it completely undermines your climate goals,” Ms Milne said. “The environment movement in Australia has been so slow to actually articulate that, in politics there is a real fear that if you come out against any renewable energy project you’ll be immediately labelled a climate denier or delayer, and that will impact your electoral appeal.” Queensland wilderness photographer Steven Nowakowski organised for groups, such as the Queensland Conservation Council (QCC), to visit the site of the since-dumped Chalumbin wind farm.
Nowakowski said that, confronted with the destruction of forest adjacent to a World Heritage area, they agreed to back a campaign against the project but did so “reluctantly” and “half-heartedly”. “They didn’t really do much,” Nowakowski said. It was his small Rainforest Reserves group that successfully stopped the project last year, while he had since failed to persuade the QCC to consider opposing a raft of other “destructive” proposed wind farms, he said. “Chalumbin was just the tip of the iceberg – the entire great dividing range of Queensland, all the high-elevation forests, are all earmarked to get fragmented, smashed and dynamited (by wind farms),” he said. “The QCC … basically told me that Chalumbin was the last one that they’ll actively campaign against and that ‘we need wind farms and that’s the price we need to pay’. “No other conservation groups will step up to the plate … I invited QCC to come up in a helicopter with me on Monday – they won’t come up. They don’t want to see what’s about to be destroyed.”
Photographer Steven Nowakowski accuses peak environment groups of ignoring destructive renewables projects. He said regional conservation groups had told them him they would not oppose wind farms because they feared losing funding funneled via QCC. “The environment groups are now the ones losing social license, because they’re not helping their communities trying to protect forests and bushland,” he said. QCC director Dave Copeman denied the group had decided not to oppose any more wind farms nor sought to withhold funding or otherwise influence regional groups. “It’s not true,” Mr Copeman said, adding he was unsure if the QCC had received an invitation to view wind farm sites via helicopter. “We haven’t said we won’t oppose other wind farms. It depends where they’re proposed. If they’re in critical habitat we will oppose them.” He said QCC was pushing government to improve planning for renewables, including identifying areas of high wind but low conservation value. However, it needed to focus on the big picture. “Grazing is overwhelmingly the main destroyer of habitat in Queensland,” he said.
“Wind farms are a small fraction of 1 per cent. We put submissions in on renewables projects outlining our concerns. But we also know that one of the biggest threats to threatened species and nature in Queensland is climate change. The main driver of that is our energy sector and we’ve got to transition.” Locals fighting the Robbins Island Wind Farm, approved for globally important wetlands and a unique Tasmanian devil refuge, said environmental NGOs had rejected pleas for assistance. Alice Carson, chair of the Circular Head Coastal Awareness Network, said: “I tried everyone – but they didn’t get involved because it was a wind farm.” She added that only the foundation pioneered by veteran environmentalist and former Greens leader Bob Brown lent support. “It’s a cop out. It might be renewable but it’s still got to be well planned and well thought out,” Ms Carson said. “If you’re killing the environment to save the environment, what’s the point?”
Ms Milne said some regional activists trying to stop wind farms to protect environments had more credibility than city-based climate “activists” who criticised such campaigns. “A lot of these rural communities are far closer to their environment, to their ecosystem, to the species that live in them than many other people who would declare themselves to be strong climate activists,” Ms Milne said. “To denigrate those people as just Nimbys or anti-global action on climate is just wrong, and it just alienates people.” Ms Young’s resignation email to Wilderness Society colleagues cited a “dissonance between my values and standards, and the attitudes and behaviours of some people in the organisation”. Some people were “MIA in role”, others were operating “outside their roles”, while the society “struggles for accountability to and for itself”. Society chief executive Matt Brennan rejected the criticisms as “normal” debate. “Debate in an organisation like ours about how we’re doing is pretty normal,” Mr Brennan said. “The organisation is united around its passion and its purpose but it is a federation and we have from time to time different views.
Debates such as renewables are really tricky, big concepts in a big, passionate environmental movement where people really care a lot.” WWF and Australian Conservation Foundation said they were actively pushing for a better planned renewables rollout. “WWF has been clear that renewable energy projects should target degraded land and must be built away from high conservation value areas,” said Rob Law, WWF-Australia energy transitions chief. ACF and WWF earlier this year published a report calling for no-go zones for renewables and a focus on using degraded land. Mr Law said federal environment reforms were “key to how we get the right renewables in the right places”. “National environmental standards, and definitions of unacceptable impacts, will help ensure we get better climate and nature outcomes,” he said. However, other conservationists, including Ms Milne, have no faith in national reforms and recent promises to establish ‘no go’ zones. “I have zero faith in the idea of no-go zones,” Ms Milne said. “The whole impetus and driver now for the new nature laws is … the big business energy sector.
They are all arguing they could just have more of their developments up and running if the communities would just get out of the way. At the same time, they’re talking about no-go zones they’re also approving mega transmission lines and mega transmission corridors and things like Marinus Link.” ACF acting chief executive Paul Sinclair said building energy projects on disturbed land was a “no-brainer”. “There’s about 50 million hectares of degraded land in Australia – there’s no need to harm wetlands, rainforests of threatened species habitat,” Dr Sinclair said. “We are working with researchers from the University of Melbourne on mapping to identify areas where renewable energy projects can be constructed so they don’t damage Australia’s threatened wildlife and ecosystems.” Some environmental NGOs believe activists misunderstand their role, which does not include fighting individual projects on the ground. However, Ms Milne suggested they could lend more support to communities battling multinational energy companies.
“They NGOs are never ever coming out and getting stuck in and backing local communities against these multinational energy corporations,” she said. “Climate and renewable energy had the same focus back in the early days. But once it became big business, once it became so profitable and once it became so attached to the public purse, forget any notion about environmental consideration. It’s all about profit. Not one wind farm in Tasmania would be viable if they weren’t relying on generous power purchase agreements from Hydro Tasmania and totally subsidised transmission lines by the public purse.” Milne said.
Source: Compiled by APN from media articles
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