Life goes back to normal. Or will never be quite the same. This morning the Petroleum Exploration License for Metgasco to frack for gas at Bentley was suspended and referred to ICAC.
The system is broken. Absolutely buggered. Two bit tin-pot companies with absentee directors and no money are allowed to take out exploration licenses over vast areas of land that they don’t own, and have no sense of responsibility for. Doesn’t matter if it is prime agricultural or watershed or rural residential or ecologically significant or if the owner disagrees.
There’s a permaculture principle called “Obtain a Yield”. One of the interpretations of it is that if you are never getting to harvest anything from a system, then why are you doing it? If we never get to harvest any labour saving from labour saving devices, then you’d have to think there’s a giant pea and thimble game going on.
The quilt was made for the “350 Day” in late 2009. Squares for the quilt were made by a huge number of individual people, young and old, from around the Northern Rivers region of NSW, Australia, most from the tiny rural town of Kyogle. The quilt was sewn together using solar power.
LPG, LNG, CSG – I don’t blame you if you are totally confused. That’s what the mining companies are relying on. A quick pea shuffle and they will be allowed to extract a quick, large profit and leave a fracked countryside. There is a very, very well funded PR campaign of misinformation going on to rename coal seam gas as “natural gas from coal seams”, shortened to “natural gas”, and…
I feel so much for those who have lost homes, but also, I feel powerless. I’ve had enough years in the Rural Fire Service to know: there are fires you can fight successfully on the ground, and there are fires that you can only fight politically, and it seems we are going backwards in fighting them politically. There are the heroic people who are out there with fire hoses, and…
Let me count the ways: