The gas industry has power and freedom to wreck the world
Jul 15, 2024
By now many citizens of our planet recognise that the destructiveness of climate change is moving faster than they imagined, leaving our defences at serious risk and even the money men are concerned about the burgeoning costs and possible economic collapse.
Scientists worry that we are moving far too slowly in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions to protect us from catastrophic climate change, rapidly shutting the window of safety.
However those in control of America’s and Australia’s development decisions disregard the International Energy Agency’s global energy road map (2021) requiring no new oil, gas or coal to reach net zero by 2050. The UN Secretary General has repeatedly pleaded with nations to tear “out the poisoned root of the climate crisis: fossil fuels”, calling on leaders to “drastically up their game now, with record ambition, record action, and record emissions reductions”.
The 2024 UN Sustainable Development Report ranks Australia’s climate action fourth from the bottom out of the 168 countries, above only Qatar, Brunei and the United Arab Emirates.
Few Australians recognise that Australia is by choice, an elite member of the fossil fuel emissions export club. For every tonne of emissions produced at home, Australia exports the equivalent of 3 tonnes of greenhouse emissions. Furthermore, most of Australia’s domestic gas consumption is used to produce and export Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) – very little is consumed by households.
And Australian taxpayers help foot the bill – according to the Australia Institute, in 2023–24 Australia’s subsidies to fossil fuel producers and major users totalled $A14.5 billion. This is despite the knowledge that climate change impacts of Australian exported gas cause thousands of deaths.
Meanwhile, across the Pacific, the Biden government’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 is a US$370 billion investment in the US transition to renewable energy, aiming to reduce carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2030. The IRA includes grants, loans, tax provisions and other incentives to accelerate the deployment of clean energy, vehicles, buildings and manufacturing.
However, the USA also recently began ramping up LNG export capacity, becoming export leader in 2023 over Australia and Qatar. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which does not consider climate impacts, just approved the development of the country’s largest LNG export hub in Louisiana.
Concerned about economic and climate consequences, President Biden placed a moratorium on licenses of new LNG facilities, only to have it declared illegal by a US District Court Judge who declared it “without reason and logic”.
The democratically elected US leader also had to bear witness to the weakening of its painstakingly rebuilt EPA. The recent Chevron ruling by right wing US Supreme Court judges reduced the authority of federal agencies to interpret ambiguous laws, affecting regulations on emissions and benefitting fossil fuel and petrochemical industries over people.
This ruling could hinder efforts to mitigate climate change by increasing legal barriers to environmental regulation, potentially slowing down policies aimed at reducing greenhouse emissions and other pollution.
Australia, like America, has steadily curtailed its environmental laws to allow gas developments to proceed without impediment. After a promise in 2020 to overhaul Australia’s Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act following a scathing review, we still await legislation of any kind requiring new development approvals to meet transparent, science-based water and climate impact limits with the power to reject those which do not.
Nowhere are these battles more real than in the Northern Territory where the government is pushing for shale gas fracking in the Beetaloo Basin. The Federal government is providing $1.5 billion to assist in developing the Middle Arm Industrial Precinct in Darwin Harbour.
The promise is for Darwin to become a “renewable energy hub” that will help decarbonise the economy and “create the jobs of the future”. The reality is that Middle Arm would host more LNG production and petrochemical manufacturing from Beetaloo’s gas, along with some renewable energy activities.
Australian doctors, aware of the many serious health risks associated with the gas industry, extensively documented in peer-reviewed publications and summarised in a recent report by health experts from Sydney University. Aboriginal leaders and panels of health professionals, marine ecologists, school teachers, Parents for Climate Action and others gave evidence at two Senate Inquiry hearings into Middle Arm. They urged attention to the development’s potential for unacceptable impacts on the Territory’s climate, water, Darwin’s marine and land environment, air quality, health and cultural heritage. During the Inquiry, Senator David Pocock quoted examples of leading studies highlighting health risks from Yale, UCLA Berkeley and Harvard University.
These concerns were dismissed by Tamboran Resources chief executive Joel Riddle who argued that there was nothing at all to worry about regarding the safety of gas developments. He stated that over a million wells have been drilled safely in the US and that “some of these reports are littered with disinformation”.
The annually updated, now 637 page Compendium of Scientific, Medical and Media Findings demonstrating risks and harms of fracking and associated gas and oil infrastructure compiled by Concerned Health Professionals of New York and Physicians for Social Responsibility and others chronicles a very different story.
The head of the NT’s Environment Protection Authority (NT EPA), Paul Vogel told the committee the watchdog had decided Tamboran Resources Beetaloo Basin gas field expansion plans did not need the scrutiny that would have been provided by an environment impact statement process.
The Environment Minister has yet to use the water trigger to examine the safety of withdrawing of up to 375 million litres of environmentally extracted water and storage of 34 million litres of contaminated wastewater in open ponds. These outcomes fit with federal government strategy of reducing environmental laws which might stop development on health grounds .
In this decision, the NT EPA did not appear to heed the detailed, evidenced concerns in over 400 pages of public submissions from organisations and individuals who warned of unacceptable consequences.
The quandary we face is that oil, gas and coal are damaging all life support systems, our previously stable climate, our supply of water and ecosystem services which we need to produce food. We urge both the US and Australian governments and judiciary systems to make their protection the highest priority now.
David Shearman is Emeritus Professor of Medicine at Adelaide University and previously held senior academic positions at Edinburgh University, where he qualified in Medicine and Biological Science, and at Yale University. He is author of many books on climate change and related issues. He has served on the IPCC, has been President of the Conservation Council of South Australia. With the late Professor Tony McMichael he founded Doctors for the Environment Australia in 2001. He is author and co-author of several hundred scientific and medical papers.
Dr Melissa Haswell is the Professor of Practice in Environmental Wellbeing, Office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous Strategy and Services) and an Honorary Professor in the School of Geosciences at University of Sydney. She is also a Professor of Health, Safety and Environment at Queensland University of Technology. She has been teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students, researching and advocating for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health and wellbeing, the epidemiology and control of infectious and chronic disease, environmental toxicology and planetary health for over 40 years.
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