Fourth Consecutive Day of Work Stoppage at Australian Coal Mine

Update: 7am Police Search and Res­cue arrive at the scene

MAULES CREEK 5 Novem­ber 2014: Bat­man returned today to shut down Whitehaven’s Maules Creek project. A per­son dressed as Bat­man has scaled Whitehaven’s largest exca­va­tor, the Hitachi Super Dig­ger. This action comes on the heels of Monday’s report from the UN Inter­gov­ern­men­tal Pan­el on Cli­mate Change (IPCC) find­ing that dam­age to the envi­ron­ment caused by fos­sil fuel use con­tin­ues to increase. Today is the fourth con­sec­u­tive day of the Release the Bats Act Up stop­ping work on White­haven sites.

The Hitachi ex8000 Super Dig­ger is a key piece of ‘ultra class’ min­ing machin­ery with an 800 tonne scoop capac­i­ty. This equip­ment is essen­tial if White­haven is to get coal out on their for­ev­er-shift­ing date for first coal.

Lewis Lau­rence, 23, who is on the exca­va­tor said “We want to draw atten­tion to the human cost of cli­mate change, the real cost of this mine to the glob­al com­mu­ni­ty. What hap­pens here affects fish­er­men thou­sands of miles away, who may no longer have homes to return their boats to. Instead of ask­ing our­selves, ‘Where were we? What did we do?’ We need to ask our­selves, ‘What are we doing now?’ ”

The Unit­ed Nations IPCC report sug­gests that we are doing very lit­tle, warn­ing of cat­a­stroph­ic cli­mate change just around the cor­ner if we do not act now. Accord­ing to the IPCC a pre­dict­ed increase in the glob­al tem­per­a­ture of 2⁰C is a thresh­old beyond which impacts would be irre­versibly dam­ag­ing. Whitehaven’s Maules Creek project is increas­ing­ly detri­men­tal to our cli­mate and envi­ron­ment, glob­al­ly as well as on a local scale.

“White­haven have been giv­en per­mis­sion to destroy a large por­tion of the Leard State For­est for open cut coal and will leave behind a ‘void pit’ which will col­lect water and poi­son the local aquifers,” said Mr. Lau­rence

“White­haven will face no charges and will accept no respon­si­bil­i­ty for their destruc­tion unless peo­ple stand up,” said Emi­ly Rose, Leard For­est Alliance Spokesper­son

The Leard For­est Alliance is call­ing for a stop work order on the Maules Creek project while a full and prop­er audit of the plan­ning and approvals process at state and fed­er­al lev­els is con­duct­ed.

“This mine should nev­er have been approved. The poten­tial dam­age to local aquifers and impacts on cli­mate dis­play a sin­gle-mind­ed inter­est in prof­it from our state and fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. We must heed the inter­na­tion­al con­sen­sus, and leave coal in the ground,” said Ms. Rose

This last week has already seen a num­ber of White­haven sites shut down through peace­ful civ­il dis­obe­di­ence includ­ing: the co-owned Idemit­su and White­haven Tar­ra­won­ga Haul road, access to the Maules Creek mine site, the Maules Creek Hitachi exca­va­tor, as well as Whitehaven’s Narrabri North under­ground mine which also halt­ed a sup­ply train car­ry­ing 6000t of coal.

There have been over 270 peo­ple arrest­ed as part of the cam­paign to defend the Leard State For­est.

Fur­ther Infor­ma­tion:

 

Emi­ly Rose Leard For­est Alliance Spokesper­son0401 214 729

Meret Mac­Don­ald Leard For­est Alliance Spokesper­son0402 017 027

 

Twit­ter updates @FLACCoal and #Leard­Block­ade

from Front Line Action on Coal