People who don’t want to live in glass houses should throw stones
People who don’t want to live in glass houses should throw stones
All right, two letters in the Herald last week mean I have to spell it out. Alan Miller is right to wonder how “an air-conditioned apartment with two car spaces in the basement has a smaller carbon footprint than the single storey bungalow and garden it replaced”.
He is also right to query whether “the four-to-six storey beige boxes along the Pacific Highway are the best solution for the sensitive context of Ku-ring-gai”. Just as Di Haskell is right to argue the “brutal reality of modern day medium density” is every bit as evident (and depressing) in European exurbia as in Sydney.
Both are right, but both are just expressing how badly Sydney has been let down by its architects, its planners, its politicians, and by modernism in general.
Govt accused of paving way for pulp mill pipeline
Govt accused of paving way for pulp mill pipeline
The Premier David Bartlett has been forced to reaffirm it is not his government’s policy to buy land for the Gunns pulp mill.
Land the Infrastructure Department has acquired for the Dilston bypass includes areas that farmers had refused to sell to Gunns for the mill’s pipeline.
Palm oil plantations could be classified as forests
Palm oil plantations could be classified as forests Ecologist 8th February, 2010 European Commission guidance would allow biofuels to be labelled as sustainable even if forests have been destroyed to make way for the palm oil plantations EU plans to allow palm oil plantations to be classified as ‘forests’ have been strongly criticised by environmental Continue Reading →
Gunns abandons legal chase
Gunns abandons legal chase ABC January 30, 2010, 2:26 pm Tasmanian timber company Gunns has dropped legal action against a group of conservationists. The company took action in 2004 against 17 environmentalists and three organisations, claiming they had hurt its business by protesting, trespassing and damaging machinery. Now Gunns has announced it will pay Continue Reading →
Gunns 20 Case Goes to Trial
gunns 20
28 Jan 2010
Gunns 20 Case Goes To Trial
By Liesel Rickarby
Should a corporate bully be allowed to silence criticism using the courts? Next week’s Gunns 20 trial should be watched closely by anyone who cares about free speech, writes Liesel Rickarby
After more than five years, the Gunns 20 case finally goes to trial next week. It will be the biggest case of its type in Australian history and is an excellent example of a SLAPP suit, or Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation.
In December 2004, Tasmanian logging company Gunns issued 20 writs against three environmental organisations and 17 individuals, totalling almost $6.4 million. The 20 defendants included the Wilderness Society and its executives, Senator Bob Brown, Tasmanian Greens leader Peg Putt, two filmmakers, two university students, a doctor, a dentist and a grandmother who builds kitchens. You can read about the background to the case here and here.
Garrett axes forest ecology and solders up greenhouse trigger
Garrett axes forest ecology and solders up greenhouse trigger
Environment Minister Peter Garrett has axed the Hawke Review’s
recommendation of an independent watchdog over native forest logging
with the power of sanctions for environmental destruction, Australian
Greens Leader Senator Bob Brown said in Hobart today.