Many of you already know that against all better judgement, the spectacularly audacious Australian Commonwealth government has granted BP offshore drilling rights in our southern waters.
You’d think that with all the evidence that BP is a company that cannot be trusted with this particular form of resource exploitation, we’d be a little bit more discerning when granting exploration permits to them. Apparently not.
In protest and within my rights as an Australian citizen, I wrote to the Minister responsible for the decision, MP Martin Ferguson (Federal Minister for Resources and Energy) to register my protest:
Dear Minister Ferguson,
As an ecologist, academic and citizen, I find it rather astounding that Australia has permitted the deep-sea exploration of oil by BP in our own back garden. The unreasonable environmental risk aside, it simply equates to poor economics – the very real probability of a disaster on the same scale (or larger) than the Gulf of Mexico’s fiasco last year will effectively destroy the commercial fishing and aquaculture industry of our southern coastline overnight. The loss of tourism dollars could arguably exceed even that.
This is most definitely not in Australia’s best interest, and will represent yet another blight on our already poor environmental record (see http://wp.me/phhT4-1cf and http://wp.me/phhT4-Zt). I urge you to reconsider your permission and revoke the licence to drill in our waters. It is a mistake you and your government will regret for decades, and will make the recent flooding disaster in Queensland appear mild in comparison.
Sincerely, Professor Corey J. A. Bradshaw
I certainly wasn’t expecting the Minister to say suddenly “Oh my. You are right, Prof. Bradshaw. It is a bad decision. I’ll revoke that permission forthwith”, but I was expecting a little bit more than the jumbled form letter I received in reply: Read the rest of this entry »
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