Thank you, Jeff Smith. The Bill has now been passed by the Senate - Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act. According to theage.com.au 7/12/06 “The Environment and Heritage Legislation Amendment Bill (No.1) 2006 reduces processing time and costs for developers, relaxes environmental assessments and simplifies development approvals for large projects like the controversial liquefied natural gas scheme on Western Australia's Burrup Peninsula. The bill also allows the government to make decisions on different development approval stages simultaneously, The bill also allows the government to make decisions on different development approval stages simultaneously.... The legislation contained an amendment designed to allow the controversial Gunns pulp mill in Tasmania" It is pretty clear that this legislation is yet another example of the Howard government's commitment to polluting industry, at the expense of Australia's environment. So, no surprise that it makes no attempt to tackle greenhouse gases. Christina Macpherson www.antinuclearaustralia.com

- regret that I have duplicated one sentence in my previous post. Dunno how to edit this again - or even if that is possible? -
Christina Macpherson www.antinuclearaustralia.com

We do not travel in an empty Universe. Therefore, the hypothesis of a self-contained Earth with a stable pre-industial climate - disturbed only now by people burning fossil fuels - seems implausible to me. So does the mainstream belief in only more and more warming in the century ahead - WITH NO COLD PERIODS. The alternative hypothesis has an ever-changing climate externally-driven by solar/planetary inertial, resonant and electromagnetic effects. The warming trend since the Maunder Minimum cold period (1645-1715, a time of terrible human misery)is over; and the giant 1997/8 El Nino may already have marked the warmest time between 1650 and 2050. The next Little Ice Age cold period should be obvious well before 2020, with the Landscheidt Minimum fully developed by 2030. No one yet knows which is right, of course; but time will surely tell. In the interim, should not the precautionary principle apply BOTH ways?

Thank you for this article. I was unaware of this legislation. I was involved in the opposition to a proposal for a magnesium smelter just north of Pt.Pirie some years ago; I remember contacting the Federal Office of the EPO as to progress, and was delt with summarily by the public "servant" handling the matter, "you greenies just want to stop everything" was his comment. The greenhouse gas emissions from the plant were horrendous, as well as dioxins furans and other toxic substances covered by an International Treaty to which Australia is a signatory. Then we have the orange bellied "pollie" as Minister. I suspect nothing much has changed. The support we received from the EDO in South Australia was outstanding and unstinting. The "money miner" involved is still trying to get it off the ground in the Middle East, so far I believe without success, but the Directors still draw handsome remuneration I understand.

Richard42

What turns you on?
It seems to be lusting after "matters of national environmental significance" for the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Protection Act.
As it is with demanding a teenager to "control your urges", so it must be for the Environmental Defender in urging the Government to control the fundamental enemy of Environment and Diversity: continuous exponential growth of human numbers and of their rates of consumption.
How can the Defender be expected to persuade his Government to get rational, and incorporate secondary school mathematics into its deliberations; how - after all these years of deliberately ignoring it?
How can he be expected to get simple arithmetic elevated in the Government's concerns, to above those imperatives demanded by both parties' most important political campaign supporters - business and property councils, housing, fossil fuel groups, etc.?
If he can not address that hurdle, how can he successfully defend against environmental pressure doubling in about two generations due to Government's determination for about 1% steady yearly increase in population. Or defend against doubling such pressure in less than one generation due to increasing consumption.
All this growth of population and GDP (consumption) depends upon equivalent rate of growth of energy, which impacts upon the atmosphere, and therefore upon climate, which - as fosbob correctly says, is never stable.
Climate is undoubtedly a restless beast - confirmed by everything I have read from the IPCC, CSIRO, and other specialists in climate matters. I must confess to never having come across "the hypothesis of a self-contained Earth with a stable pre-industrial climate". The tortured contortions of Earth's climate due to its wrigglings while wandering around the sun, its precession and nutation, its immodest philanderings in relation to its orbit, variation in solar flux: all of these have been considered by climatologists contributing to IPCC. I am genuinely interested in the origin of "the hypothesis". But, I am mostly concerned by the constraints imposed by simple mathematics of exponential growth. While that continues, the Environmental Defender will always be fighting a rearguard action - a defence in continuous retreat.

Howards sponsors want a climate trigger in the EPBC Act precisely so his Ministers can pre-empt, stall and derail any real consideration of the impacts of their decisions. Theres any number of Liberal/Nat/Lab hacks around (a brace just being flushed by AWB, many have been parachuted into public service management) willing to read out the scripts for " full and transperant inquiries". The EPBC climate trigger simply greases the chute for neoliberal business as usual (the War on Terra).
I thank Howard for making plain just how cactus governance and representive democracy are in this country.