Tasmanian environment groups have joined with communities around the country to voice concerns in a nationwide Day of Action against the burning of native-forest products in power stations to generate electricity.
Wood-fired power generators would adversely impact Tasmania’s clean, clever brand and represent a major new threat to both high conservation-value forests and the ability to reach agreement around a lasting solution to the forestry crisis in Tasmania.
“The woodchipping industry has led Tasmania into an environmental and economic crisis and wood fired power stations are simply an attempt to create new markets for the native forest woodchips the rest of the world no longer wants to buy,” said Jenny Weber of the Huon Valley Environment Centre.
“Premier Bartlett must recognise that sending native forests into polluting forest furnaces is no solution to the current forest industry crisis. Instead, it would entrench native forest destruction and lock in low-value commodity production that has led Tasmania into this industry crisis,” said the Wilderness Society spokesperson, Vica Bayley.
“Successive governments’ willingness to allow environmentally destructive logging, for low value native forest products has helped to create the current industry crisis and Mr Bartlett needs to ensure this doesn’t happen again,” said Mr Bayley.
The Huon Valley Environment Centre, The Wilderness Society, Still Wild Still Threatened and the Climate Action Hobart were joined by community members to sign petitions and postcards addressed to Federal and State Politicians. They joined hundreds of people around the country.
“Only last week, in the United State, 90 leading scientists called for changes to a new climate bill saying that burning native-forest biomass is anything but “carbon neutral,” said Alice Giblin of Climate Action Hobart.
Forest Campaigner for Still Wild Still Threatened Ed Hill said that “major players in the national energy market, such as the GreenPower accreditation group and leading energy retailers, such as AGL and Origin, have already rejected native forest-fired power.”
“Now its time for David Bartlett to recognise that wood fired power is not clean, not renewable and not a solution to the current logging industry crisis,” concluded Mr Hill.
Download: Synopsis on the Tasmanian wood-fired power threat:
wood_fired_power-synopsis.pdf
Jenny Webber, Vica Bayley,, Ed Hill, Huon Valley Environment Centre
