Paradise saved - for now?

Greenpeace divers protesting against the planned oil shale mine

Australia has stepped back from the brink of madness and decided to shelve plans to mine oil shales right on the doorstep of the Great Barrier Reef.

Proposals to extract millions of tonnes of oil shales from the Whitsunday Islands threatened to drain precious water supplies, and to risk toxic leaching and air pollution - as well as increasing Australia's greenhouse gas emissions.

Fortunately, following a strong protest campaign led by the local Save Our Foreshore group, common sense has prevailed and last week Queensland premier Anna Bligh announced a 20-year moratorium, effectively ending the threat for the immediate future.

The ban has been welcomed by just about everyone but the Queensland Resource Council whose proposal was set to mine millions of tonnes of shale rock each year on a site just 10 km from the sensitive ecosystems of the reef (seen from the air at left).

Shale oil production is extremely greenhouse gas intensive – emissions from this project, combined with the company's other planned operations, would have raised Australia's current total emissions by 30 per cent within 20 years.

This is a great win but it is madness that such a project could have even been considered. Faced with catastrophic climate change we urgently need to cut emissions, not increase them. We don't need to endanger the Great Barrier Reef or anywhere else by mining fossil fuels, and there are better energy sources that are ready to go right now. If Anna Bligh can block this proposal for climate reasons, we look forward to her blocking other major fossil fuel projects in the state, including export coal expansions, for the same reasons.

Greenpeace joined Save Our Foreshore in their fight against the shale oil mine last month, when renowned coral scientist Dr Charlie Veron joined our divers in an underwater protest and issued a dire warning about the fate of the reef if the mining plans were to get the go-ahead.

Later the Esperanza sailed into Airlie Beach flanked by a flotilla of 90 local vessels to support SAF as part of its six-week energy [r]evolution tour.