- 2024
- April
- 23
- Green on Green: Wilderness Protection Laws and Indigenous Rights are Derailing Renewable Energy Projects
Magnificent Brood Frog. CarlyStarr, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
CLIMATE POLITICSCLIMATE SENSITIVITYINTERMITTENT WIND AND SOLAROPINION
Green on Green: Wilderness Protection Laws and Indigenous Rights are Derailing Renewable Energy Projects.
Essay by Eric Worrall
Laws protecting Koalas and “the magnificent brood frog” have prevented a renewable energy company from clearing 500 acres 500 hectares of native vegetation in the Australian tropics.
Federal environmental laws ‘single biggest challenge’ for delivering renewable energy projects in Australia
By national regional affairs reporter Jane Norman
In far north Queensland, traditional owners, clean energy developers and conservationists had spent three long years sweating on this decision.
Depending on which side you believed, this development would either supply 150,000 homes with clean, green energy or destroy the forest habitat of threatened native species.
Late on Friday, the wait was finally over.
An email from Ark Energy landed in inboxes, announcing the company had “withdrawn the Wooroora Station Wind Farm proposal from the federal environmental assessment process.”
In other words, the proposed project was dead.
The Korean-owned developer had planned to clear more than 500 hectares of native vegetation next to the Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Area, home to animals including the koala and magnificent brood frog.
This isn’t the only wind farm in trouble in Australia’s far north, WUWT recently reported on the Aboriginal campaign to block the Chalumbin wind farm, which would have despoiled part of the beautiful Australian Atherton Tableland.
Aboriginals are also playing their in other places to derail the green revolution, by demanding fair compensation from any infrastructure which intrudes onto their sacred lands. All those empty looking deserts where entrepreneurs hoped to install vast solar arrays are actually full of protected Aboriginal sites and places of special cultural and spiritual significance.
And let’s not forget farmers and rural people, who have spooked renewable developers with their ferocious campaign to prevent power lines from crossing their land.
I think when the dust settles we’ll all owe a vote of thanks to all of these groups, for their determined effort to stop greens from ruining the landscape with their ugly mechanical monstrosities.
We have to stop these green developers from exploiting the wilderness. The lesson is, if you don’t want a beautiful part of your landscape to be despoiled by greens, and you can’t find a local indigenous group who are prepared to fight for their sacred claims, nesting boxes for rare and endangered species and perhaps a few livestream webcams are your next best line of defence.
Update (EW): Click here to see Ark Energy’s description of Wooroora Station, along with a map showing the location – right in the middle of one of the most beautiful sections of the Atherton Tablelands. Ark Energy claims to have the support of locals for their project.
Correction (EW): 500 hectares, not 500 acres (h/t Tombstone Gabby).
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