The Colong Bulletin is the journal of the Colong Foundation and is
published five times per year. It gives in depth coverage of wilderness issues as they
affect NSW and elsewhere. Also featured are general conservation stories,
especially those on population and development threats that impact upon the
natural environment.
A selection of recent stories are listed below:
More Plans for a Newnes Expressway - by Keith Muir
There have been many super-highway schemes proposed through the Blue Mountains . One was through the Blue Labyrinth, another for a tunnel and a third for a road passing north behind the towns through the National Park. A $3 billion plus superhighway along the Bells Line of Road with a diversion over Newnes Plateau was rejected as too damaging and expensive.
Now a new 40 kilometre by-pass north of Mt Victoria village is being considered by the Roads and Traffic Authority (RTA) that would traverse the headwaters of the World Heritage listed Grose Wilderness and then pass over Newnes Plateau. The spectacular scenery of the Grose Valley would be blighted by massive road works. Where the proposed highway crosses the Newnes Plateau it would impact upon nationally endangered shrub swamps, Lithgow's water supply and significant pagoda landscapes.
At the Federal election last year, the candidate, now Federal Member for Macquarie , the Hon Bob Debus, MP promised a Mt Victoria by-pass. So it was inevitable that the long-running push to waste huge sums of money duplicating the highway from the Central West to Sydney would again heat up. In July the RTA commence its community consultation on a proposed corridor between Mt. Victoria and Lithgow that would avoid Victoria Pass and the River Lett.
During the recent community consultations, the residents of Hartley Vale naturally called for the RTA to examine the possibility of an alternative route over the Plateau, and that being what the RTA agreed. The RTA say that no specific route has been developed, while it has detailed engineering plans for the super-duper road, just like the Tasmanian Hydro-Electric Commission.
The Newnes route appeals to those in the Central West, like Bell Line super-roader Ian Armstrong because it could be the western end of the hoped road. The super-road proposal is taking on the characteristics of cult, where all politicians have to do to keep hope and power alive is promise a bit of superhighway.
The super-road would cut the Plateau in half, ruin the Gardens of Stone, as well as drawing a concrete line across the western side of the Grose Gorge to the south. Efforts and millions spent to restore the Grose River by removing sewage pollution would be drowned in millions of tonnes of sediment.
If a not in my backyard approach continues to be advanced, then all groups risk being played off against each other. If that is allowed to happen, the RTA and its super-road boosters would get their own way at everyone's expense.
The best solution is for all groups to co-operate in development of a joint position. An approach that could see money spent on an upgrade rail and road access where people live, rather than an obscene engineering monument that blights scenery.
The proposed super-road would enable the increasingly uneconomic road freighters (B-double trucks) to traverse the Mountains rather than going north to the Hunter Valley or south through the Southern Highlands . Instead of a super-road, these large trucks could be loaded onto an integrated road-rail system to reduce traffic and energy use. Bigger and bigger dinosaurs heralded their extinction. Our transport thinking should not go the same way.
RTA map in flyer to householders, July 2008
Note: "Hardey" should be "Hartley"
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Climate Change... The Defining Moment
- by Alex Colley
The UN International Panel on Climate Change, which consists of several thousand scientists, has confirmed, with 99% certainty, that global warming is caused by the increased emission of several gases caused by the burning of fossil fuels and the clearing of vegetation. About 6000 million tons of carbon is added to the atmosphere every year, from the burning of fossil fuels, and 1000-2000 tons from the clearing of vegetation. Any burning will emit carbon dioxide, but fossil fuels are the main source. Carbon stored underground some 300 million years ago is being released.
Concentration in the atmosphere has risen from 285 parts per million in pre-industrial times to about 380ppm. Today, other gases entering the atmosphere are methane, nitrous oxide and chlorofluorocarbons. Methane emissions are about a quarter of carbon dioxide emissions. Their source is mainly domestic animals and rice paddies and some is emitted from coal and natural gas fields. Nitrous oxide is emitted by the burning of fossil fuels.
These emissions have increased the amount of carbon dioxide and other gases located in the upper atmosphere. This has a blanketing effect, reducing the radiation of heat from the surface of the Earth and raising world temperature by nearly one degree.
Because carbon dioxide stays aloft for some 80 years, the blanketing effect can only continue to increase. It has been estimated that temperatures will eventually rise by two to seven degrees. It is impossible to estimate with any certainty how much of how soon the rise will take place, but everyone has experienced rising temperatures, reduced rainfall and the resulting shortage of water. Nor can there be any doubt that these symptoms will worsen as temperatures increase. The climate might eventually become unbearable.
Sir Nicholas Stern, the world's leading economist on climate change, has forecast that we have only 13 years to cut emissions. He has forecast that we face continuous future of droughts, storms, sea level rises and the collapse of the Great Barrier Reef . He believes that Australia should slash its output of greenhouse gases by 30% by 2020 and 90% by 2050.
The IPPC has flagged the threat of “an abrupt and inevitable climate change” The chairman of the IPPC, Rajendra Pachauri, said: "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment"
(in SMH, 17/12/07).
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