Climate change hypocrisy exposed at Corinella

SOME people think ‘action on climate change’ is gluing your hands to a Picasso painting or being the first council in regional Victoria to declare a ‘climate change emergency’ in your shire.

Running around making noise, painting slogans and waving placards is as far as some are prepared to go.

But there’s a map doing the rounds at the moment that shows the sand mines which already pock-mark the Woodlands in the hinterland between Lang Lang and Glen Forbes will eventually consume almost all of those ‘reserves’ of trees and native bushland to the eternal detriment of Western Port.

Imagine the damage that has already been done to that waterway by draining the so-called ‘Koo Wee Rup Swamp’ which must have been, at one time, an incredible wetlands system to rival the Gordon in Tasmania.

We’ve lost that now and no doubt the biodiversity and water quality in the bay has suffered, impacting bird and fish life, which is all-the-more reason why the mangroves and coastal bush that remain must be protected.

However, if that was important to climate change activists, there would have been 2000 people at a political candidates’ meeting in Corinella last Saturday afternoon, not 150 or 200.

But 200 was good and it helped to shed more light on the hypocrisy and deceit of government when it comes to climate change.

While the state and federal government are out applying all the window dressing to the climate change debate, by pressuring AGL to close Loy Yang A and erecting hundreds of giant wind turbines around our coastline, in the absence of an overall energy plan, they can’t see the wood for the trees.

Here they have an opportunity to stop the drawdown on carbon, and save Western Port, not to mention the impact of allegedly 5000 sand trucks-a-day on the Bass Highway and the area’s vital tourism sector, by at least stopping and studying the effect of massive sand mine expansion in, not only Bass Coast, but South Gippsland Shire as well.

Perhaps then, they might place limits on expansion here and look elsewhere for construction and concrete sand to feed Melbourne’s insatiable appetite for urban sprawl.

And publishing the final Distinctive Areas and Landscapes (DAL) Plan for Bass Coast, to expose the government’s intentions where sand extraction is concerned, before the election, so the voters can decide, would be a start.