Climate change: Beware green swans with fat tails!

Written by: Nick G. on 1 February 2020 

Sometimes human language fails to find adequate expressions to accurately and scientifically describe phenomena beyond our lived experience.

At the two extremes of matter in motion, where observations require extremely precise mathematical calculation, scientists fall back on metaphor and poetry to describe phenomena. Particle physicists attribute to a range of sub-atomic particles known as quarks the properties of “charm”, “colour” and “flavour”. Astrophysicists have given us “white dwarfs”, “black holes” and more.

In Capital Marx revealed in painstaking detail the economic laws of motion of modern society derived from his analysis of the production, distribution and exchange of commodities and embedded in the various circuits of capital.  Bourgeois economists have spent 150 years distorting and denying Marxist political economy. Part of that distortion and denial is the creation of terms which capture surface appearances while obscuring the underlying laws. They develop their own language in the process, for example, “naked shorts” and “dead cat bounces” in the share markets and “deep pools” in the murky world of under-the-counter derivatives.

Fat Tails

The economic and financial crisis of 2007-8 shocked and scared the economic observers of the ruling class.  Instead of using scientifically correct Marxist terminology, they gave us “fat tails” and “black swans” (see below) amongst others.  A fat tail describes an aberration in the bourgeois belief that the economy (profits and losses on the stock market in particular) follows a fairly predictable rise and fall over time.  A horizontal graph will therefore have movement above and below the line within an understood range. Investors try to “read” this movement to buy and sell shares at the most advantageous moments.

However, the law of uneven development does not allow such “normality”. Crises of overproduction (including overproduction of speculative capital, of capital with fictitious values unrelated to the production of commodities) conspire to disrupt the imaginary normality of capitalist activity.  A fat tail is therefore a major spike either above or below the normal range of rises and falls on our horizontal graph line. Fat tails on the “loss” side of the horizontal axis are the stuff of financial nightmares. They are, however, required for a periodic destruction of over-inflated values within the circuits of capital.

Black Swans

2007-8 was such a major nightmare that finance capitalists awoke to the use of a new term: “black swan”. Black swan events were said, post-2007 when the term was coined, to have three characteristics: (i) they are unexpected and rare, thereby lying outside the realm of regular expectations; (ii) their impacts are wide-ranging or extreme; (iii) they can only be explained after the fact. The existence of black swans was based on the proven inability of central banks (such as Australia’s Reserve Bank) to predict and control through regulation and supervision, the desired state of financial stability.

Green Swans

The more perceptive analysts of finance capital are now acknowledging that climate change, as a consequence of the search by fossil fuel corporations for endless and expanded accumulation of capital, is looming as a threat to the capitalist classes of the world as a whole. One such analyst is the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the central banker to the world’s central banks (eg the Reserve Bank in Australia). The BIS has credibility – in their June 2007 Report they warned of an impending crash. The Great Financial Crisis followed. Now the BIS has just released a paper called “Green Swans”.  A green swan event is one arising from global climate change and is qualitatively more dangerous than a black swan event. The authors of the paper argue that green swans are different to black swans in three regards:

1. “there is certainty about the need for ambitious actions despite prevailing uncertainty regarding the timing and nature of impacts of climate change.”

2. “climate catastrophes are even more serious than most systemic financial crises: they could pose an existential threat to humanity, as increasingly emphasized by climate scientists”

3. “the complexity related to climate change is of a higher order than for black swans: the complex chain reactions and cascade effects associated with both physical and transition risks could generate fundamentally unpredictable environmental, geopolitical, social and economic dynamics.”

The BIS is yet to convince itself that the system, post-2007, has returned to anything like the textbook equilibrium of bourgeois economics. It is honest enough to admit that it doesn’t really understand what is going on, that a new black swan event could be hidden under the near-zero, or even in some countries, minus interest rates, or the unusual phenomenon of bond and share values going up at the same time. It has no idea of the severity of a crisis in which a black swan is crossed with a green swan beyond already conceding that green swans “pose an existential threat to humanity”.

Morrison and Trump isolated on climate change

In a major repudiation of the climate change inactivity of leaders such as Scott Morrison and Donald Trump, the authors warn that central banks must not wait for changes in government policy if they are to deliver financial stability and, more broadly, to avoid threats to the existence of capitalism.

They say that central banks must be more proactive, withstand any “sociopolitical backlashes” and lead public opinion away from fossil fuel reliance and in the direction of mobilising “capital for green and low-carbon investments in the broader context of environmentally sustainable development”.  The risk of not doing so is that a green swan systemic financial crisis will blow up and central banks will have to “intervene as ‘climate rescuers of last resort’ and buy large sets of devalued assets, to save the financial system once more.”  Those devalued assets would include coal mines and coal- and gas-fired power stations, as well as the financial institutions exposed to or dependent on fossil fuel corporations.

The spectre of green swans with fat tails is seriously beginning to haunt finance capital.  It is having to concede that saving the system may require sacrificing fossil fuel industries, although in the first place they argue for carbon pricing and various other regulatory measures.

For climate’s sake, capitalism must go!

Capitalism has long disrupted the essential unity of humanity and nature, and that disruption is nearing breaking point It is a catastrophe waiting to happen.  We can no longer endure a system which ha to expand, at the cost of people and their planet, to exist. None of the amusing gobbledygook behind which the bourgeoisie attempts to conceal scientific socialist examination of capitalism will save this system. If we want to avoid the catastrophe and restore balance to the relationship between people and nature, we must reject and abandon capitalism.

The deeper reality of fracking

Arrernte Kaytetye elder, Christine Palmer, speaking in Sydney at rally marking the 11th anniversary of the NT Intervention

Louisa L

‘We have to ventilate our homes so they don’t explode’

Gamilaraay man Raymond ‘Bubbly’ Weatherall is at the Redfern Community Centre. On this Friday night in early June, rain smashes down outside as he recounts how his countryman Nathan Leslie threatened to arrest police, who’d come to arrest him for trespassing on his own land. 

Weatherall’s audience has just watched the outstanding documentary ‘Sacrifice Zone’ on anti-fracking struggles against the Santos Narrabri Gas Project in north western NSW. 

They’ve seen Leslie on screen. His bearing shows someone to be reckoned with, because he stands in the Law. The battle is “bigger than me,” says Leslie. “Our Ancestors are always watching.” 

The police backed off and left, Bubbly gleefully tells the audience.

Struggle spreads

Huge struggles up to 2015 reduced the percentage of NSW open for fracking from 60 per cent to 5 per cent till, as the documentary states, “all that is left is Santos land.” Work has begun on Gomeroi land in the Pilliga.

The battle is Australia-wide. Only Victoria, which has banned it, Tasmania and the ACT are currently unaffected. According to Guardian Australia’s Michael Evershed, “The vast majority of land in both the NT and South Australia is covered by either current tenements for petroleum exploration and development, or applications for exploration and development,” leaving them vulnerable to shale gas mining.

When the ALP mis-government recently approved 51 per cent of NT for shale gas mining and fracking it became clear that Aboriginal lands are being particularly targeted.

Before the go-ahead, NT First Nations’ youth group, Seed, stated, “Over 60 community members from across 13 regions came together on Larrakia country in Darwin, 18-20 November 2017, to yarn about how to stand together and stop fracking from destroying the NT.  

“Never before have this many Aboriginal community members been brought together on the issue of fracking.

“People came together from every corner of the Territory” 

This spearhead of powerful opposition ensured 135 requirements were promised, but the fight is not over by a long shot. 

For our children

Shale and coal seam gas mining creates huge amounts of poisoned waste water and can contaminate rivers up to 1000km away. 

Borroloola’s McArthur River has already been poisoned by mining giant Glencore using conventional mining.

A statement from Elder Nancy McDinny, Yanuwa & Garrawa from Borroloola reads, “Those four rivers on Garawa country; we’re going to fight for that water for our children and ban fracking.” 

“We want this land to be strong and healthy for our children so they can go out bush hunting and fishing in the clean environment. Our water has to be clean and healthy for everyone to drink,” she says.

To the east, the Great Artesian Basin (GAB) covers an area the size of Queensland, straddling four states. Once contaminated, underground resources like GAB which communities rely on into the future, damage can’t be undone. 

‘We let this go without so much as a whimper in our country’

Lisa Cox writes in Guardian Australia, “Alliances have been formed across groups that have traditionally been at odds – the environment movement, Indigenous groups and conservative regional and farming communities.” 

Drew Hutton, former President of the Lock the Gate Alliance, says, “The only thing stopping them is this magnificent fortitude.”

When corporations came knocking in the US coal seam gas belt, communities believed the hype.  US farmer, John Fenton says, “We let this go without so much as a whimper in our country. We can’t drink the water out of the wells any more. We have to ventilate our homes so they don’t explode… Our property is worth nothing now.”

In Queensland, producing gas fields already cover more than 30,000 square kilometres.  The results are laid bare; industrialisation of rural and remote areas by an insidious, deceitful and destructive industry. Those affected have begged Australia to listen and learn.

Struggle reveals the bloodless icy heart of capitalism; that only profits matter. The interests of the people and those of giant corporations are diametrically opposed. Those on the front line of struggle will never look at capitalism in the same way again. Many begin to sense that this antagonistic and irreconcilable contradiction needs a final resolution. 

‘Sacrifice Zone’ is free to view at https://vimeo.com/257444267

Stop finance capital’s unacceptable trade in water rights!

Nick G.

Last night’s ABC Four Corners program revealed that billions of dollars in tax payers' money, poured into rescuing the rivers and streams of the Murray-Darling Basin to save it from environmental collapse, had instead benefitted a handful of wealthy cotton growers.

Aided by corrupt officials in the NSW Department of Water, cotton growers are stealing water from the Barwon River and Darling Rivers to create massive shallow dams from which to irrigate vast tracts of land on which cotton is grown.

Imperialist finance capital buys up our water

As valuable as the program was in exposing these rorts, it really only scratched the surface of problems related to Australian freshwater supplies. And those problems do not exist in isolation. They are part of a global theft of public commons by giant multinational financial corporations which have forced their way into a deliberately constructed private water market that allows them to speculate with their surplus capital.

The seizure of freshwater supplies contained in rivers and the Great Artesian Basin by finance capital investors, miners and gas extraction companies mirrors the wave of privatisations and corporatisations of city and state water utilities that occurred in the mid-1990s. The major beneficiaries of the latter included French companies Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux and Vivendi, Thames Water and Lend Lease.

Water trading followed a June 1995 decision to establish the Murray-Darling Cap to put a limit on the amount of water that could be taken out of the Murray-Darling river catchments.  Ostensibly a response to concerns about environmental flows, the Cap came with a new system that allowed irrigators to trade their entitlements to waters taken from the Murray-Darling, and also to trade annual allocations taken under those entitlements.

Investment funds with active interests in water emerged after 2007, when investors no longer had to own land in the Murray Darling Basin to be eligible to buy and sell its water rights.

Water was no longer a common good, that is, a resource deemed to be under the ownership of all Australian citizens and available for their use and enjoyment, but a private commodity, “blue gold” as it was quickly dubbed by corporate investors. And it was no longer a simple commodity, but a financial instrument which could be held, in the case of entitlements, as a security against mortgages.

Whilst making this fundamental change to ownership and control of freshwater supply, the federal government chose not to maintain any register of foreign capital purchasing Australian water rights.  Very belatedly, a register will be introduced in December of this year.

Despite the lack of clarity around who owns our water, several major players have been identified.

By 2010 the major players in our water market, then valued at $30 billion included:

• $20 million worth of entitlements bought by the US-owned Summit Global Management through an Australian subsidiary;
• An estimated $130 million worth of water bought by Olam International of Singapore in a deal involving the purchase of almond groves in northern Victoria;
• More than $30 million worth of rights in western NSW held by Tandou which has substantial British and US ownership.

(It is worth noting that Summit’s assets were sold in 2015 to noted enemies of the Australian working class in the Aware Water investment group, owned by former ports bosses Chris Corrigan and Peter Scanlon. Corrigan, who tried to smash the Maritime Union of Australia is also tied to the Webster Group, one of two corporations currently owning 70% of the Barwon River’s water.)

It was estimated that by 2010, 8.1% of Australian freshwater was owned by foreign capital. By 2013, that figure had risen by 60% to 13.7%.  No doubt the figure will be higher again when the registry data is released next year.

There are currently two investment funds serving to channel local and foreign capital into the water market. One is BlueSky Alternative Investments which incorporates private equity, hedge fund and venture capital divisions and whose major shareholders are JP Morgan Nominees Australia Ltd and HSBC Custody Nominees (Australia) Ltd.
T
he other is a private fund, Kilter Investments.  Financial analyst Alan Kohler reported how in 2015 he “spoke yesterday with Cullen Gunn who runs a wholesale water investment fund (for “sophisticated” high net worth investors and big super funds only) called Kilter. He says water is a "great asset class". "It’s like commercial property except there’s no problem with impairment or messy tenants. The yield is sold, about 5-8 per cent and if someone doesn’t pay you just take the asset back, instead of having to apply to have a tenant evicted."

"Also, it’s clear to me that climate change means there is going to be less water in future, so the economic value of it will increase."

The Australian Constitution – an obstacle to a national approach to water management

As we have stated elsewhere, the Australian Constitution was a weak three-way compromise between the British, the colonial elites in the separate colonies, and the proponents of a central government. It does not provide for control of Australian freshwater by the Australian government. Rather, that control is vested in the States.

As a consequence of our ineffective and outdated Constitution, our two major freshwater systems rely on the cooperation and goodwill of the state and federal governments. Hence there are the Murray-Darling Basin Authority and the Great Artesian Basin Coordinating Committee. The former holds powers referred to it by State Ministers; the latter advises Ministers on behalf of various stakeholder groups.

This is an unacceptable arrangement.  There should be single national authorities with exclusive powers over both Basins. 

In the case of the Great Artesian Basin, there are divergent views on its sustainability.  Some view it as a renewable supply, refreshed by rains falling in north-eastern Queensland.  But another view sees it as a plutonic source of water derived from steam generated by vulcanism deep in the earth over millions of years and hence essentially not renewable.

As per the Constitution, three separate states and the Northern Territory are in charge of their own Great Artesian Basin waters.  SA allows Olympic Dam to extract up to 42 million litres per day. 

The Queensland government has given Adani open slather on Great Artesian Basin waters.  It has no limit on what it can extract but merely needs to monitor and report the amount of water it extracts with a permit that runs until 2077.

Gas producer Santos plans to drill 850 coal seam gas wells through the Great Artesian Basin.

The Achilles heel of the current cooperative arrangements between the states and the federal government over the two Basins is that individual players can walk away at any stage as indeed was mooted by NSW Department of Primary Industry and Water Deputy Director Gavin Hanlon.

In a confidential phone discussion with irrigator lobbyists, a tape of which was played on the Four Corners program, Hanlon raises the Plan B “walk away” option, much to the delight of the lobbyist. When one realises that the value of the NSW water market is equal to the entire value of Australia’s wool exports, the potential for corrupt relations between senior public servants and traders of water entitlements and allocations becomes immediately apparent.

What can be done?

In the short term and within the current Constitution’s limited provisions, the federal Government must regulate the water market to ensure equity and access, control increases in the price of water, restrict the entry of foreign capital to the market, and secure water for environmental flows all the way to and through the mouth of the Murray.

In the longer term, water must be protected as a public trust, as a common good, within a new anti-imperialist and republican Constitution. Private ownership of our freshwater supplies must be abolished and the assets of foreign investors confiscated without compensation.  The two Basins must be administered by a national public authority created to ensure fair water allocation and a healthy freshwater ecosystem.

Only an independent and socialist Australia can implement these changes.

Coal Seam Gas? No fracking way!

Nick G.

Despite recent announcements about expansion of renewable energy generation and storage, the South Australian government remains committed to destructive coal seam gas ventures.

This is despite overwhelming community opposition.  A parliamentary enquiry has confirmed this, saying CSG has no “social licence”, i.e. no community acceptance.

The Labor state government was a strong supporter of the abominable plan by Marathon Resources to mine uranium in the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary.  A people’s campaign, rather than parliamentary common sense defeated the plan.

The same government pushed strongly for an international nuclear waste storage facility.  A people’s campaign, rather than parliamentary common sense defeated the plan.

This government, which parades its credentials as a world leader in renewable energy, is bankrolling efforts to impose fracking on the state’s South East. This will also eventually be defeated by a people’s campaign, rather than parliamentary common sense.

Fracking harms humans and nature

Fracking -  the process of coal seam gas extraction – uses chemicals that can contaminate aquifers or return to the surface as contaminated waste water which has to be stored. The chemicals include tetramethyl ammonium chloride, minimal doses of which can poison large amounts of water; the neurotoxins diethylene glycol or methanol; butoxyethanol, a life-destroying substance; and nonylphenol, which is carcinogenic and harms fertility. Among the lifeforms killed by these toxins are many of the microorganisms whose activities help seal tiny rock fissures, thus accelerating the release of poisoned waters to the surface.

Doctors are among those concerned by the effects of fracking on human health.  Dr David Shearman AM FRACP is Hon. Secretary of Doctors for the Environment Australia and Emeritus Professor of Medicine University of Adelaide. He cites US studies that reveal major concerns associated with fracking.

“Between 2009 and 2015 at least 685 papers were published in peer-reviewed scientific journals that were relevant to the effects of unconventional gas development. Eight-four per cent of public health studies indicated public health hazards, elevated risks, or adverse health outcomes; 69 per cent of water quality studies contain findings of potential, or actual water contamination; and 87 per cent of air quality studies showed elevated air pollutants,” he said.

“The inhabitants of the gas fields in the US,” he added, “suffer increased eye problems, respiratory irritation, and headaches.”

Farmers reject incentives to destroy environmental and human health

The state Liberal Opposition, playing to its traditionally conservative electoral base in the South East, announced a ten-year moratorium on fracking. State Treasurer Tom Koutsantonis deplored the move, alleging that it had caused an “investment strike” on gas projects in the state.

In response, the state government offered local farmers an “incentive” of ten percent of the royalties of any productive CSG well on their property.

But even offering thirty pieces of silver could not induce farmers to betray their livelihood or the interests of their community.  It did the opposite.

Lorraine Robertson is one of many dairy farmers in the south-east of South Australia who saw their profits decimated when Fonterra and Murray Goulburn announced they were retroactively cutting milk prices.

She said it resulted in about $150,000 being clawed back from her farm, and although she was in a desperate financial situation, it was not enough to allow gas exploration on her property.

"We're on the bones of our ass and I still wouldn't accept it — I don't know any farmers that would,” she said.

Her views were echoed by Tantanoola farmer Peter Altschwager, who said the majority of South-East farmers opposed fracking and, until companies showed unconventional gas extraction was safe, the State Government’s new royalties plan was unlikely to win support.

Paying monopolies from the public purse

Frustrated by the refusal of farmers to be bought off, the Labor government has gifted Adelaide-based gas producer Beach Energy $6 million or half the cost of establishing a 4 kilometre-deep gas well on state forestry land just outside of the South-East town of Penola.

The company plans to have the gas well operational by September.

According to regional newspaper, The Border Watch, the drilling site will be located near the boundary of the world-famous Coonawarra wine district and adjacent the new $80m Union Dairy Company processing plant.  Local farmers and vignerons are furious.

For a complete ban on CSG

CSG extraction places humanity and nature on opposite sides of an antagonistic contradiction.

They should not be so opposed: both human labour power and nature are sources of wealth, but under capitalism both are exploited in the pursuit of private capital accumulation.
Both suffer the destructive impact of such exploitation.

It is possible to temporarily stop this or that form of the destructive exploitation of nature, but like the destructive exploitation of human labour power there can be no permanent protection under capitalism.

When the working class comes to power, when the immediate and selfish interests of private capital are brought to an end, the workers will rise to the challenge of restoring the essential unity of humanity and nature, ending both its own exploitation and the destructive exploitation of its only life environment, the Earth.

Fracking Threat builds Community Strength

(Contributed)

On 30^th April a public meeting organised by the Conservation Council of SA was held in Adelaide to disseminate information about current and proposed coal seam gas fracking in the state. The meeting was an initial call to action.

A panel of speakers included rural community representatives from the eastern states, the Limestone Coast of SA, an Indigenous Australian representative and a representative from Friends of the Earth Australia.

As the easy to get at sources of gas become depleted, rather than switching to renewable sources of energy, profit-hungry corporations prefer instead to attempt to extract every last molecule of gas from the harder to get to sources. The so-called unconventional gas exists deep beneath the surface, trapped in layers of coal. The gas does not flow freely and so intervention is required to release it. This involves drilling to depths of the order of a kilometre, then drilling horizontally for quite a distance into the coal seam. Sand and volatile BTEX (benzene,toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene) are pumped into the seam under pressure which fractures the geological structure and releases the methane gas.

The trouble with this process is that many thousands of these drill holes are required for the venture to be profitable.

Each hole disrupts the geological structure beneath the surface and it is difficult to predict the effect of this over time. Not even the companies know with certainty what the consequences will be.

One speaker had a slide of a map of the state of Oklahoma showing the distribution of earthquakes prior to the commencement of fracking, and there were a handful of dots on the map. The comparison map for the period since the commencement of fracking was like a veritable pin cushion. These are not minor tremors but earthquakes of magnitude 3 or greater.

Another unknown is what substances might be released from these depths. Australia is one of the most uranium resource-rich countries in the world and it is conceivable that harmful radioactive substances could find their way into the aquifers and the surface as a by-product of fracking. This is in addition to the BTEX and the methane.

The contamination of ground water by this process has been well documented.

Once these drill holes have been finished with, they are capped with cement using “world best practices”. However, the cement deteriorates in an instant in geological terms – well within 25 years. So we have the situation of continuous release of methane (a potent greenhouse gas) and other damaging pollutants into the environment.

As Professor Irene Watson, an Indigenous woman of the Tanganekald and Meintangk peoples said at the meeting, even without the science, the first Australians have experience dating back for many thousands of years about what practices are good for country and on this basis have the moral authority to say no fracking.

The people of South Australia by and large have no idea of the scale of the fracking being proposed for the state. It has already started in the south east of the state in the region known as the Limestone Coast. Landowners and farmers there are being affected even at this early stage and have had a taste of what is to come.

The community has started to mobilise and an organisation called The Limestone Coast Protection Alliance has been formed (go to http://www.protectlimestonecoast.org.au/). The group has been very active in building community awareness and confronting the big companies and state government head-on. It goes without saying that the pro-development at any cost Weatherill government is working hand in glove with these companies to make ensure fracking goes ahead. But it is not going to be such a pushover!

Another not so well known fact is that coal seam gas exploration has been happening in Australia for over a decade in some parts. This has been most prominent in Queensland and more recently in NSW and Victoria. As this expansion has taken place, so too has the community resistance to it.

This resistance has understandably developed in the rural areas of the country.

As one speaker from NSW said at the meeting, as a farmer, before any of this started he had no involvement in anything political nor did he have any desire to. However, once the exploration companies became interested in his property they started to show their hand. He was told one lie after another about the process and the so-called benefits. He did his own investigating and was appalled at the long term damage that would take place to the land, the water and our food security for the sake of short term gain for a very few.

One benefit being touted is the royalties that will be paid by the companies. Ostensibly the operating life of a coal seam deposit is 20 years. However, there is an exemption from royalties for the first 5 years. The fracking process is so violent that in fact most of the gas will have been extracted within those first 5 years. As the above-mentioned speaker said “more money will be raised from parking fines than royalties”.

Far from Australians benefiting from unconventional gas, they will find the cost of gas will go up since the gas will be sold on the world market at parity price.

He went on to say that appealing to the government and the parliament made no difference.

There were many other similar stories recounted at the meeting and overwhelmingly these ordinary people realised that they were not being represented by parliament and that they had to take matters into their own hands.

The community movement has been growing in strength, employing new and very inventive and innovative tactics against the big companies. This is exemplified by the Lock The Gate Alliance (go to http://www.lockthegate.org.au/).

These are not left wing activists but in many cases staunch National Party voters who have seen for themselves the limitations inherent in the parliamentary system.

In the Gippsland region of Victoria a similar situation has evolved and united community action has resulted in great achievements such as the government begrudgingly putting into place a moratorium on fracking.

A number of communities in Gippland have declared themselves Coal and Coal Seam Gas Free, with support for this in surveys ranging between 86% and 98%.

The fight is far from over but there is a passion and determination to continue and intensify the fight. This is something that the companies did not bargain for and are finding that divide and rule tactics have been unsuccessful.

The strength of this movement lies in the participation of people from all sections of society: primary producers, traditional owners, conservationists, support from city people, lawyers, students and retirees to name a few.

As the methods of struggle develop, these will be valuable for those communities where coal seam gas exploration is commencing, such as in South Australia.

In fact, the threat of fracking is global and already the movement against it is taking on a global scale with Australian based organisations linking with similar ones in other countries.

The film “Farmland not Gaslands” was also screened as part of the meeting. It clearly conveys the risks of fracking and describes the community movement against it in Gippsland. The film was produced by a member of the community. Well worth seeing.

The film and the stories from the panel of speakers were truly inspiring and demonstrate that ultimately the people under the right conditions will take matters into their own hands and throw up their own leaders.

The people united will never be defeated.

1 May 2015