MULTIPLE ACCIDENTS ARE A GRAVE WARNING
http://www.savethekimberley.com/
June 16th, 2010
OIL SPILLS: Cable Beach. The Timor Sea. The Gulf of Mexico. As we digest the daily updates on BP’s oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, those of us considering the impacts of the potential industrial development on the Kimberley coastline see more and more reason for great caution.
Even the President of the United States is now heralding a new era equal to the impact of September 11 in which the environment is not put at such risk because the world will no longer tolerate it.
This would seem to spell significant delays if not abandonment of the Woodside proposal to bring gas onshore in the Kimberley because it conflicts with basic good sense in the light of these recent events.
Why? Well, the last twelve months saw the WA and Federal government pushing so hard for greenfield industrial development on the Kimberley coastline that indigenous permissions, critical to its go-ahead, were plagued by their indecent haste.
Now, it appears there was never any valid agreement from Aborigines to sign off on the deal.
And the Federal Court is hearing an action against the KLC that Premier Barnett has said will prevent an ILUA being signed (for use of the land) by his previously confident June 30, 2010 deadline.
Throughout, Woodside and the WA government has appeared to stubbornly resist consideration of viable alternatives.
Then came disturbing hints that all is not safe and sound in the world of offshore mining.
In the same 12 months, oil spills have affected the Kimberley, the Great Barrier Reef and now the world’s greatest economy, with the worst-ever oil spill offshore southern USA.
These accidents have caused concern due to an apparent lack of accountability and the absence of fix-it-up engineering to battle what industry previously boasted about as state of the art technology — their wizardry now gone horribly wrong.
Woodside has constantly trumpeted “latest technology” for its Kimberley projects. But what good is cutting edge technology to enable such exploration and exploitation of the world’s resources if an error results in a devastating disaster of international proportions?
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& moot cynicism will go a long way towards remedying the situation, ..yeah. (Wouldn’t it be something if this is the BIG oil industry’s last gasp (like a vampire with a stake in open heart), if poisoning all this ocean real-estate is actually a boon? ….naaaahhhhhh…no way…couldn't be true....)
It is NOT a crisis brought on by ONE nation. Nomatter how good it makes you feel about yours, mate.
