Radical Green plan to sabotage new Australian coal mines, railways and ports

                                                                                                                                                                 

                             Radical Green plan to sabotage new Australian

                                 coal mines, railways and ports

                                                          by Patrick J. Byrne

The radical environmentalist group Greenpeace has spearheaded a push to block the expansion of Australia’s coal export industry, with “generous support from the Rockefeller Family Fund”, a charitable foundation based in New York.[1]

The organisers’ draft plan says that it aims to raise funds in the United States as well as Australia to bankroll the campaign. Other foreign groups involved in the campaign include CoalSwarm and the Pew Environment Group.

After the draft plan was leaked to the media, a campaign spokesman said that, to date, the plan had failed to attract the necessary amount of base funding.

The project originated with an anti-coal-mining alliance, which held the first Australian National Coal Convergence conference in the Blue Mountains last October. Some of its participants are funded by the federal, state and local governments.

The campaign plans to build on the anti-coal-seam gas protests and to inflate concerns that mining will threaten the Great Barrier Reef.

But its overriding objective is to massively reduce the exports of coal to India and China, which import Australian coal to produce low-cost electricity needed to develop their emerging economies. Why? In order to cut carbon dioxide emissions!

The project aims to stall, then halt, mining infrastructure projects in order to “severely reduce the overall scale of the coal boom by some hundreds of millions of tonnes per annum”.[2]

This attack on Australia’s mining industry comes at a time when our healthy economic growth has maintained its momentum during the global financial crisis, mainly because of this country's fast-growing minerals industries supplying the rapidly-growing economies of China and India.

Both nations need to lift hundreds of millions of people out of grinding poverty. Low-cost energy is essential to their economic development, just as, historically, Australia has depended on low-cost coal-powered electricity.

The mining boom, Australian jobs and the livelihood of millions of poor people in India and China are now going to be threatened by this radical environmentalist campaign against investment in Australian coal-mining, rail and port facilities.

If the campaign succeeds in its stated aim of slashing Australia’s coal exports, it will be interesting to see how much this will cut federal and state taxation revenues.

Furthermore, how many jobs will this campaign cost Australian families as the global economic slump continues without any clear solution?

Anti-coal funding strategy

The funding strategy for this campaign was outlined in the campaign’s draft strategy document, Stopping the Australian Coal Export Boom.[3]

On the front page were listed the following names: John Hepburn from Greenpeace Australia Pacific, Bob Burton from CoalSwarm and Sam Hardy from the Graeme Wood Foundation. The document was based on “extensive research made possible by funding from the Rockefeller Family Fund”.[4]

John Hepburn began his environmental career campaigning to stop sand-mining for rare earth minerals on Queensland’s North Stradbroke Island. He was then with the radical environmental group, Friends of the Earth. Now he is with Greenpeace.

According to Greenpeace’s annual report for the 2009/10 financial year, its annual expenditure is around $17.8 million.[5]

Bob Burton is a contributing editor to CoalSwarm,[6] a US-based, online information campaign directed against the coal industry and coal-fired power stations. It has a collection of over 4,000 articles about coal-mining, archived on SourceWatch,[7] an open-source encyclopedia sponsored by the left-wing Center for Media and Democracy.[8]

CoalSwarm is funded by a number of foundations, including the Rockefeller Family Fund, and is a project of the California-based Earth Island Institute, which was founded in 1982 by a prominent American environmentalist David Brower. Affiliation with the Earth Island Institute gives CoalSwarm US tax-deductible status for donations.

The Graeme Wood Foundation is funded by Queensland entrepreneur Graeme Wood AM, who founded the internet accommodation booking website, Wotif.com.

He is estimated to be worth $372 million and made the largest single private donation to any Australian political party — $1.6 million to the Greens for their television advertising campaign at the last federal election. The Greens vote increased more in those states where these advertisements were played in higher rotation.[9]

Wood is described in the media as a philanthropist. He has given to many causes, including $15 million to establish the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute (GCIQ),[10] which covers issues such as population growth, climate change and technology.

After media controversy over the draft plan, Wood denied that he was either funding or supporting the campaign.[11]

Campaign strategy

The draft anti-coal campaign strategy document argues that, unless the Australian coal industry is checked, parallel attempts to curtail coal exports from the United States will be undermined. Unless planned exports are slashed, India will construct a new generation of coal power stations with “devastating consequence for the global climate”.[12]

In 2010, Australia exported 300 million tonnes — that is, 30 per cent of the total global trade — making it the world’s largest exporter. Coal exports are expected to triple over the next decade to around 800 million tonnes annually.

Coal from Queensland’s Galilee Basin, west of Townsville, alone would use up around 7 per cent of the total global allowable carbon budget out to 2050 — “creating a global climate tipping point”, the strategy document claims.[13]

It calls for $3.7 million to be raised in Australia and the US in order to orchestrate a massive nation-wide campaign, using the resources of NGOs, community groups, individuals and contractors.

The first priority is to use legal action to slow down and block critical projects, including five new coal port expansions, two major railway lines and up to a dozen key mines. The legal action is designed to create a breathing space to expand the anti-coal-mining campaign.

The draft document declares: “Our strategy is to ‘disrupt and delay’ key projects and infrastructure while gradually eroding public and political support for the industry and continually building the power of the [anti-coal] movement to win more.”[14]

The strategy has six elements:[15]

1) Disrupt and delay infrastructure.

2) Constrain the space for mining.

3) Increase investor risk.

4) Increase the cost of coal-mining.

5) Destroy the image of coal as being the backbone of the economy, particularly by painting it as threatening global climate.

6) Build a movement to win larger victories over time.

In particular, the campaign aimed to stop the dredging of Gladstone Harbour by claiming that this threatens the Great Barrier Reef. Stopping this development would have implications for other Queensland port expansions at Abbot Point, Dudgeon Point, Balaclava Island and Newcastle in NSW.

The campaign also plans to:

• Block the new railway line from the Galilee Basin, west of Townsville;

• Mobilise political activism to influence the outcome of the NSW government’s planning review of land use in the Hunter Valley in order to place curbs on the mining industry; and

• Build on the back of the widespread backlash in Queensland and NSW over coal-seam gas.

Steering groups

Two steering groups were being formed to “advise the program manager regarding allocation of funds and the overall implementation, management and evaluation of the program”.[16]

The Program Reference Group includes Barry Traill (executive director, Pew Environment Group), Bob Burton (CoalSwarm), Carmel Flint (who has represented many environmental groups, see below), Mark Wakeham (campaign director, Environment Victoria), Samantha Hardy (Graeme Wood Foundation), Blair Palese (CEO of global-warming activist organisation, 350.org.au, formerly with Greenpeace and the Pew Environment Group).[17]

The Strategy Advisory Group is yet to be finalised, but it is intended to include Drew Hutton (president, Lock the Gate), Tim Duddy (grazier and member of the Caroona Action Group), Naomi Hogan (Rising Tide), Mark Ogge (Beyond Zero Emissions), Dr Richard Denniss (director of the Australia Institute) and a Greenpeace representative.

Many in the reference and advisory groups are from those organisations involved in the development of the campaign, as noted below. Many of these organisations have tax-deductibility status, and many receive government funding.

Campaign origins

The anti-coal-mining alliance launched this project at its first Australian National Coal Convergence conference, which was held in the Blue Mountains on October 11 last year. The alliance included the following groups:

Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE).[18] One its key personnel, Mark Ogge, as mentioned previously, is on the anti-coal campaign’s Strategy Advisory Group. In 2008, BZE presented its “Transition to a Zero Carbon Future”, outlining its ambitious “coal switch” philosophy, under which the state of Victoria’s greenhouse gas emissions would be slashed by 50 per cent in three years.[19]

GetUp!,[20] the prominent left-wing online campaign website.

United Voice,[21] a large services-based trade union affiliated to the ALP. One of its representatives to the anti-coal campaign is Holly Creenaune, an activist with Friends of the Earth (FOE), who co-authored an article promoting a “low-carbon future, focusing on green renewable energy sources and smarter energy use”, in FOE’s Chain Reaction magazine.[22] A second United Voice representative to the campaign is Ellie Smith, who signed an advertisement on the Gold Coast Greens web page in January 2011 calling for volunteers for a “Nature refuge and mining conference organiser … to halt coal production expansion in Queensland”.[23]

The Pew Environment Group,[24] the conservation group associated with the US-based Pew Charitable Trusts, whose Barry Traill is on the anti-coal Program Reference Group.

Lock the Gate Alliance Inc.,[25] partly organised by Drew Hutton, a long-time activist, academic, campaigner and past political candidate for the Queensland Greens.[26]

The Environmental Defender’s Office Queensland Inc., which is part of a nation-wide network of nine non-profit, non-government community legal centres working in the area of public interest planning and environment law.[27] The centre, which is dedicated to fighting “climate change”, receives funding from “Commonwealth and State Community Legal Service Funding Programs and Queensland EPA project funding,” as well as from donations.[28]

The Nature Conservation Council of NSW,[29] founded in 1955, one of whose spokespersons, Armidale resident Carmel Flint, has also contributed to the anti-coal-mining campaign strategy. She appeared before a Senate inquiry into coal-seam gas in Narrabri, representing a diverse coalition of environmental groups including the Nature Conservation Council of NSW, the Wilderness Society and Friends of the Earth.[30] The Nature Conservation Council of NSW is a non-profit, non-government organisation representing more than 100 community environment groups across NSW.

Capricornia Conservation Council, which receives funding from Fitzroy Basin Association, the Queensland Department of Environment and Resource Management, the Australian Department of Environment Water, Heritage and the Arts, and the Queensland Gambling Community Benefit Fund.[31]

Environment Victoria, whose campaign director, Mark Wakeham, is on the anti-coal Program Reference Group. Aside from individual donors, its funders include the Brimbank City Council, City West Water, Victoria’s Department of Sustainability and Environment, Foster’s Community Grants, Ivor Ronald Evans Foundation (managed by Equity Trustees), Moonee Valley City Council, Sustainability Victoria, the ETA Basan Charitable Trust (managed by Trust Company Ltd), and the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation.

Mineral Policy Institute, an Australian think-tank aimed at holding companies accountable on environmental issues.

The Australia Institute, whose executive director Dr Richard Denniss is also on the anti-coal Program Advisory Group.

Climate Action Network Australia (CANA), which is an alliance of over 75 local, state, national and international environmental, development, research and advocacy groups from throughout Australia. CANA was formed in 1998 to be the Australian branch of the global Climate Action Network (CAN), with representative groups in over 70 countries.

CANA’s major international member organisations include Climate Action Network International, Greenpeace Australia Pacific, the Pew Charitable Trusts and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Australia.

Its major Australian members include the Australian Conservation Foundation, Climate and Health Alliance, National Toxics Network, the Climate Institute, the Wilderness Society, Women’s Environment Network Australia, 350.org Australia, Australian Youth Climate Coalition, GetUp! and Sustainable Population Australia.

Aside from numerous environment groups, various NGOs and religious organisations are also CANA members, including ActionAid, CARE Australia, Caritas Australia, Jubilee Australia, Oxfam Australia, Tear Australia, World Vision Australia, Australian Religious Response to Climate Change, Catholic Earthcare Australia, Edmund Rice Centre, Good Shepherd Australia New Zealand, Sisters of the Good Samaritan, the Uniting Church’s Justice and International Mission, and UnitingJustice Australia, an arm of the Uniting Church of Australia.

United Voice and the Mackay Conservation Group also contributed to the campaign strategy.

The green tax-deductibility industry

Many of the organisations listed above are eligible to receive tax-deductible donations under the Australian government’s Register of Environmental Organisations.

These include: Beyond Zero Emissions, the Environmental Defender’s Office Queensland Inc., Mackay Conservation Group, Nature Conservation Council of NSW, Capricornia Conservation Council, Environment Victoria, Mineral Policy Institute, and the Climate Action Network Australia (CANA). Many of their associated organisations also have tax-deductible privileges.

Australia now has 576 environmental groups listed as having tax-deductible status on the Register of Environmental Organisations.

Another 13 are listed in the Taxation Act 1997 as having tax-deductible status in the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997, including the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) Australia and the Australian Conservation Foundation.

It is high time for a review of the tax-deductible status of environmental groups that have gone beyond their original mission to protect the environment and have now embarked on the destruction of the jobs and prosperity of Australians and are threatening to jeopardise the urgent imperative to lift millions out of poverty in nations like India and China.

It is time that the federal Coalition set up a special taskforce to review the tax-deductible status of environmental groups operating in Australia.

Patrick J. Byrne is vice-president of the National Civic Council.

---

ENDNOTES:

[1]    Eleanor Hall and Sabra Lane, “Ministers condemn coal campaign as ‘irresponsible’”, The World Today, ABC Radio National, March 6, 2012.
URL: www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2012/s3446756.htm

[2]    Extract from an anti-coal strategy document quoted in Annabel Hepworth, “Coal activists’ strategy exposed”, The Australian, March 6, 2012.
URL: http://aap.newscentre.com.au/acf/120306/library/forests_and_marine/28045077.html

[3]    John Hepburn, Bob Burton and Sam Hardy, Stopping the Australian Coal Export Boom: Funding proposal for the Australian anti-coal movement (November 2011).
URL: www.newsweekly.com.au/files/StoppingAustCoalExport(Nov2011).pdf

[4]    Ibid. p.2.

[5]    Greenpeace Australia Pacific, Annual Report 2010 (Sydney), p.17.
URL: www.greenpeace.org/australia/PageFiles/333219/Annual_Reveiw_10_Final%20online.pdf

[6]    CoalSwarm (San Francisco), the global reference on coal.
URL: http://coalswarm.org

[7]    SourceWatch (Center for Media and Democracy, United States): Portal: Coal Issues.
URL: www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Portal:Coal_Issues

[8]    PR Watch (Center for Media and Democracy, United States): Reporting on spin and disinformation since 1993.
URL: www.prwatch.org/cmd

[9]    Paddy Manning, “Web millionaire bankrolled Greens”, The Age (Melbourne), January 8, 2011.
URL: www.theage.com.au/national/web-millionaire-bankrolled-greens-20110107-19iw9.html

[10] Global Change Institute (University of Queensland).
URL: http://gci.uq.edu.au

[11] “Apology to Mr Graeme Wood AM”, Australian Financial Review, March 11-12, 2012, p.2: “On March 6 and 8 we published articles concerning a campaign by green groups to disrupt and delay new coalmines. Greame Wood has informed us, and The Australian Financial Review accepts, that neither he nor his Foundation has had any involvement in that campaign….”

[12] Hepburn, Burton and Hardy, op. cit., p.3.

[13] Ibid., p.3.

[14] Ibid., p.3.

[15] Ibid., p.5.

[16] Ibid., p.3.

[17] Ibid., p.12.

[18] Beyond Zero Emissions (Melbourne).
URL: http://beyondzeroemissions.org

[19] Inaugural 'Transition to a Zero Carbon Future' discussion group meeting, Fitzroy, Melbourne, April 7, 2008.
URL: www.oldweb.beyondzeroemissions.org/discussiongroup

     “Zero carbon plan”, Beyond Zero Emissions (Melbourne).
URL: www.beyondzeroemissions.org/zerocarbonplan

[20] GetUp!
URL: www.getup.org.au

[21] United Voice.
URL: http://unitedvoice.org.au

[22] Cam Walker, Ellen Roberts, Holly Creenaune, Rye Senjen and Simeon Scott, “Climate campaigning in 2010”, Chain Reaction (Friends of the Earth Australia, Melbourne), Issue 107, November 2009, p.16.
URL: http://foe.org.au/sites/default/files/CR107.pdf

[23] Ellie Smith, “Volunteer role: Nature refuge and mining conference organiser”, Gold Coast Greens (Queensland, Australia), January 13, 2011.
URL: http://goldcoastgreens.org.au/volunteer-role-nature-refuge-and-mining-conference-organiser

[24] Pew Environment Group.
URL: www.pewenvironment.org

[25] Lock the Gate Alliance Inc.
URL: http://lockthegate.org.au

[26] Queensland Greens”, Wikipedia.
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queensland_Greens

[27] Australian Network of Environmental Defenders Offices (ANEDO).
URL: www.edo.org.au

[28] Environmental Defenders Office (Qld), Inc.
URL: www.edo.org.au/edoqld/index.html

[29] Nature Conservation Council of NSW.
URL: www.nccnsw.org.au

[30] “Narrabri gas inquiry stirs up emotions”, Northern Daily Leader (Tamworth, NSW), August 3, 2011.
URL: www.northerndailyleader.com.au/news/local/news/general/narrabri-gas-inquiry-stirs-up-emotions/2246089.aspx?storypage=0

[31] Capricorn Conservation Council.
URL: www.cccqld.org.au

From: The Courier Mail / Herald Sun

Brown abroad, selling us into slavery

Andrew Bolt –, Friday, March, 30, 2012, (12:05pm)

Greens leader Bob Brown has taken his crusade for a world parliament to Senegal, for the Global Greens conference of green parties. The draft resolution:

Greens recognize that the need to strengthen democracy and participation in the system of global governance has become urgent…

The Global Greens Congress reaffirms its support of the creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA) as a parliamentary body within the UN system that is complementary to the UN General Assembly. As a first step it should be composed of representatives of national parliaments but ultimately it should become a body that is directly elected by the world’s citizens.

As representation of the world’s citizens, we believe that a UNPA, among other things, should be involved in all important intergovernmental treaty negotiations.

This would be a parliament in which Australia was always outvoted on matters affecting its sovereignty. It would surrender our freedom to a foreign governing body we could never dismiss or sanction.

The Global Greens also want to scrap the coal industry:

Greens in coal producing nations (China, US, India, Australia, Indonesia, Russia, South Africa, Germany, Poland, Kazakhstan, Colombia and Turkey) and coal consuming nations (Japan, South Korea) agree to work together on a campaign to phase out the production and use of coal. 

This is a resolution drafted by the Global Greens Coordination, on which sits an Australian Greens representative.

So how does that resolution sit with Bob Brown’s denial:

I’m not going to shut the mining industry down, Chris. You’re sounding like a Liberal propagandist. I’ve never said that, and nor would we. 

                                                                                                                                                                  

 
                                                     AUSTRALIA  DAY.

Australia day is one of the most respected days in our yearly calendar.

It is a day when all Australians show their respect for our country and how proud we are of it.

Australia is not one of the greatest countries in the World. It is THE greatest country in the World. Free of the terrorism that we see in Europe. Free of the gun madness of the USA and almost free of mass immigration of middle eastern ‘financial refugees’ that are sucking the life blood out of the U.K. with their desire to stay on welfare handouts.

Australia was created from very poor beginnings and has grown with a steady flow of migrants, mainly from Europe, and some from Asia. That came after the Second World War and through to the present day.

We all had the same desires, whether we were British, French, Polish, Russian, American, German, Italian, Greek and many other countries. Those desires were the same; to start a new life in a new country that offered hope, opportunities, promises and most of all peace.

Many had come from World War 2 with nightmares beyond comprehension to the modern generation. The horrors they have suffered or seen,  were to be pushed away to the back of their minds and replaced with a new dream and a new life.

They ALL wanted the same:-

Live together in peace and harmony.

Find a job and work hard.

Build a home for their children including a nice garden.

Start a small business.

Raise their children to be good and successful people.

The final result is the greatest country in the world.

NO ONE expected handouts or charity to be paid by someone else so that they can sit on their behinds.

NO ONE wanted to force their ideologies or religions on someone else. You could pray or have whatever religion you liked.

NO ONE wanted to complain and harass people who are trying to make this country great through Business, Industry, Mining, Agriculture, Commerce and Manufacturing.

Then the GREEN scourge came along.

These parasites of our modern generation, who use any excuse to disrupt our achievements and drag us down to a caveman level.

 They have not achieved one good thing. They are incapable of achieving anything good.

I mean the GREENS only, not the great work that the wonderful Sea Shepherd organisation has done. They themselves do not in any way align with the Green radicals.

Many Greens are illiterate, unemployed, long haired, unwashed dole bludgers who have little else to do and the latest show of stupidity and ignorance highlights this and what thugs and criminals they are.

They plan to disrupt our Australia Day with aggression and violence including burning the flag.

It is time Australians stood up to this scum and got rid of the Greens altogether. The World will be a much better place without them.

See or copy web link;

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/australia-day-anarchist-greens-call-for-the-flag-to-be-burned-in-sick-antioz-campaign/news-story/3fcedd240edb50535f717bbd7d241659

They have caused the death of many people including those caught in bushfires of Victoria in 2009. They are the ones thanks to the biggest con man of them all, Tim Flannery, who caused five states to waste over ten billion dollars on useless desalination plants that have never worked and are still sucking millions of dollars out of State coffers.

The collapse of the South Australian Power industry is another example that will occur again and again. The S.A. Green government is desperate to build another transmission interconnector to N.S.W. to try and drag them out of their disaster.

The Greens are the con men and liars who having been predicting disasters for the World in the name of Global Warming. The World temperatures didn’t go up so now it is Climate Change.

You can’t go wrong on that—the climate changes every day.

Since the mid 1970’s or even earlier, NOT ONE of the predictions by these instant ‘scientists and instant Researchers’, and weather forecasters, etc, using graphs, modelling, remodelling, etc. has ever eventuated.

Not ONE FACT has been produced to show our weather change is caused by mankind.

But one FACT does stand out; the U.N. and the Greens are raking in billions of your dollars and laughing all the way to the bank.

Here is another web link that makes it even clearer how corrupt they are.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/rendezview/miranda-devine-foreignfunded-green-groups-could-take-whole-swathes-of-australia-out-of-the-productive-economy/news-story/016e5d9ff252f2444790d05269f4ed90

The truth is our weather is caused by that big yellow ball in the sky that the Greens cannot see. Even a child can tell you that.

The weather is extreme at times, good or bad, but no matter what man does he cannot change it. We are insignificant against nature and the power of the sun.

Simple mathematics and basic science can show you that it is nothing to do with mankind’s puny efforts.

It is time for ALL Australians to stand up and say—NO MORE! and get rid of the GREENS scourge and take many parts of the U.N. with them.

Terence Cardwell

www.secondtonone.com.au

www.terrycardwellsblog.blogspot.com.au

R      How Hillary And Julia helped green                       alliance destroy our future.

Miranda Devine ( Sunday Mail)

Hillary Clinton and Julia Gillard have a lot in common — and it’s not just the ladylike shoes and matching pearl earrings.

Apart from the friendship between Hillary Clinton and Julia Gillard, what does Australia get from the Clinton Foundation for donating all that cash? A whole lot of trouble is what. (Pic: AFP Photo/Pool/William West)

They both love to play the gender card, turning their immense privilege into victim status and ­dividing the electorate by sex.

Thus, Gillard nobbled Tony ­Abbott with her fabled misogyny speech and Clinton’s machine manages to drown out every Wikileaks embarrassment with a new Donald Trump bimbo eruption.

The other thing the two ladies have in common is the Clinton Foundation, which Wikileaks emails now show is an influence-peddling political slush fund.

And guess which country was one of its biggest donors? Australia. Yep, we’re up there with Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The Australian taxpayer shovelled at least $88 million into the Clinton Foundation and associated entities from 2006 to 2014, reaching a peak of $10.3 million in 2012-13, Gillard’s last year in office.

On the Clinton Foundation website, AusAID and the Commonwealth of Australia score separate entries in the $10 million-plus group of donors, one rung up from American teacher unions.

In 2009-10 Kevin Rudd handed over another $10 million to the foundation for climate research, part of $300 million he squandered on a Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute.

Gillard also donated $300 million of our money to the Clinton-affiliated Global Partnership for Education.

Lo and behold, she became chairman in 2014 and has been ­actively promoting Clinton as president ever since — in a campaign video last December slamming Trump, in opeds trumpeting the next woman president and in appearances with Clinton spruiking girls’ education.

The Abbott government topped up the left-wing organisation’s coffers with another $140 million in 2014, bringing total Australian largesse to $460 million, according to a press release from Foreign Minister Julie Bishop.

illary Clinton and Julia Gillard share a lot in common — peal earrings, playing the gender card ... and the influence-peddling political slush fund that is the Clinton Foundation. (Pic: David Caird/News Corp Australia)

And yet, apart from the beautiful friendship with Gillard, what did Australia get from the Clintons for all that cash?

A whole lot of trouble is what.

The latest treasure trove of Wikileaks emails released last week shows that Australian green groups have been secretly funded to destroy our coal industry by environmental activists connected to the Clinton campaign.

The email account of Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta reveals extraordinary details of the sabotage of the $16 billion Adani coalmine in Queensland, which has damaged Australia’s national interest and denied cheap electricity to millions of poor Indians.

Last August John Hepburn, former Greenpeace activist and founder of Australian anti-coal group the Sunrise Project, sent a crowing email to his American paymasters, the Sandler Foundation, which is also a major donor to the Clinton Foundation. (Founder Herb Sandler and mate George Soros funded another Clinton-aligned progressive group, the Centre for American Progress, previously chaired by Podesta.)

“The Adani Carmichael mine and the whole Galilee Basin fossil fuel industrial complex is in its death throes,” Hepburn wrote in the email forwarded to Podesta.

“I am going to buy a few bottles of bubbly for a celebration with the (Environmental ­Defenders Office) legal team, our colleagues at GetUp, Greenpeace, 350.org, ECF, Australian Youth Climate Coalition, Mackay Conservation Group, Market Forces and the brilliant and tireless Sunrise team.”

Sunrise Project anti-coal agitator John Hepburn. (Pic: Supplied)

Hillary Clinton's campaign manager John Podesta. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

In another email forwarded to Podesta, Hepburn panics about an Abbott government inquiry into environmental charities and discusses hiding Sunrise’s sources of funding to safeguard its charitable tax status.

Hepburn boasts about the latest legal blow to Adani, when the Federal Court overturned its approval and the Commonwealth Bank quit the project.

In it he now wants to “escalate the campaign ­towards the other 3 big Australian banks”.

And he mocks miners who “try to claim that there is some kind of foreign-funded and tightly orchestrated conspiracy to systematically ­destroy the Australian coal industry. (I seriously don’t know where they get these wacky ideas from!)”

As if it’s not bad enough that foreign-funded activists are meddling with our largest export earner, Podesta’s emails also detail their insidious influence on indigenous land owners who blocked the Adani mine using powerful native title rights.

This alliance of green groups with native title owners is a frightening development detailed in a new book by historian Keith Windschuttle, The Break-up of Australia: The Real Agenda behind Aboriginal Recognition.

He reveals the imminent expansion of native title claims, either ­approved or quietly being processed, stretch across a whopping 60 per cent of the Australian continent, an area twice the size of Western Europe.

Anti-Adani mine protesters. (Pic: Anna Rogers/News Corp Australia)

Already 6000sq km of the Kidman cattle empire in the Kimberley has been given, via native title, to green activists to be converted from productive cattle country to a wildlife conservation area.

“In return, the Yulumbu people get a paltry $50,000 a year royalty,” Windschuttle writes.

“As a flora and fauna sanctuary it is economically defunct for the foreseeable future.”

At worst, writes Windschuttle, the upcoming referendum for indigenous constitutional recognition, proposed by Gillard in 2012, could pave the way for a separate Aboriginal state on native title land, funded by taxation, royalties and lease payments — passive welfare in another guise.

At the very least, the ­alliance between foreign-­funded green groups and ­indigenous owners gives ­environmentalists the opportunity to take whole swathes of Australia out of the productive economy and shut down industries they don’t like, from coal mines in Queensland to cattle farms in Western Australia.

Thanks for nothing, Hillary and Julia.

       

The South Australian Blackout.

1.                  I predicted this would happen back in 2009/10 in my article “On Coal-fired & Other Power Electricity Generation”.  This is NOT a once-off event - it will happen again in the not too distant future, and what’s worse, will continue to do so.  Why?  Because of the continual instability created in the grid system by the constantly-changing wind generators producing insufficient stable and reliable power generation, thus requiring reliance on power from Victoria, in order to continually get South Australia out of its' insane situation.

2.                  Any change in power generation from the wind generators has to be compensated by thermal power generation units trying to ‘chase’and maintain a stable supply.  This decreases their efficiency substantially, more than obviating any gain from wind generators!  These severe load changes can create a power wave within the grid system that can create instability as the thermal units chase the wind generators' severe load changes.

3.                  Because the winds were so severe on this occasion, the wind generators would have been non-operative and locked – an automatic protection in wind turbines.  So 40% of the power was already out of service before the blackout.  So, YES!  The wind generators DID cause the blackout by increasing the load substantially on the Victoria to S.A inter-connector.

4.                  If the wind generators were allowed to operate in such severe winds they would have torn themselves apart.

5.                  I have since learn that the wind generators were supposedly operating in which case the storm was NOT that severe or anything like a 50 year storm. From BOM records it was gusting 87 kilometres per hour and in some places 115 kilomtres/hr.

 In Queensland (with our cyclones) we would refer to that as a steady sea breeze. So which lie are they choosing to tell?? The wind generators erratic behaviour could not be controlled causing instability in the grid or they were not operating because of the severity of the wind. You can’t have it both ways.

6.                  It is the first time ever in the history of power generation in Australia that transmission towers have fallen over; yet we have seen far more severe weather elsewhere than that which occurred recently in South Australia.  I have personally operated units in such weather with no blackouts or instability in the grid system, even though we lost two units.  One of them being mine!  (The unit transformer was hit by a 20ft sheet of roofing aluminium torn off in a storm.)

7.                  Even though the towers had collapsed, the grid system would not have gone out because the line protections covering those towers would have tripped within 6 cycles: i.e. one tenth of a second, isolating them from the grid and protecting the rest of the grid system.

8.                  The total hypocrisy and stupidity of the South Australian Government is unbelievable.  Because they blindly and stupidly knocked down the black bituminous coal-fired thermal power stations they had insufficient power.  Thus, they have to import it from Victoria through the state inter-connector which was never intended for that purpose.  So when it exceeded its maximum load capacity it tripped, as it was supposed to do.

9.                  Guess where the power imported from is generated? Yes, Victoria!  The Victorian brown coal-fired thermal power stations have a thermal efficiency half of that of the black coal-fired power stations which the idiots in South Australia knocked down, just to pander to the Left-wing loony Greens who could not lie straight in bed.

10.              The average price for electricity in South Australia with its ‘40%’ “renewable” energy is over $300 per megawatt hour.  On the other hand, the average cost of electricity in Queensland, NSW, Victoria, and Tasmania is around the $75.00 to $80.00 mark.  That is about only 25% of the South Australian price!

11.              To those gullible people who are so ‘passionate’ about so-called ‘clean energy’ you can expect, without doubt, the same problem if the other states ever got near to the S.A. insane “renewable” energy program.