Fracking ban in the Northern Territory should stay, group of leading climate scientists says

Thirty-one of Australia's leading climate scientists and doctors have written an open letter to the Northern Territory Government calling on it to not permit the opening up of new gas fields through hydraulic fracturing.

The scientists say the estimated emissions rise
from developing one gas field is unacceptable.

The letter, coordinated by the Australia Institute think tank, also called on the Territory Government's fracking inquiry panel to recommend that new shale gas fields are too risky because of the consequences of potentially increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

The Territory Government will make a decision on whether to allow fracking of major shale gas reserves to resume after its inquiry delivers a final report next month.

"The NT is in the region likely to experience the most severe impacts of global warming, for example it is highly susceptible to temperature increases," wrote the scientists, including the CSIRO's Climate Change Hub leader Professor David Karoly.

Read the ABC News story by Jane Bardon - “Fracking ban in the Northern Territory should stay, group of leading climate scientists says.”

NGOs to Singapore banks: Act on climate change and stop funding coal

A few weeks after the Singapore government launched an initaitive declaring 2018 the Year of Climate Action, a coalition of international green groups has issued an open letter calling on the country’s powerful banks to stop financing coal power in Asia.

A dump truck at a coal mine owned by Banpu Public
 Company Ltd in a paddy field in Kerta Buana village
in Kutai Kartanegara, East Kalimantan. 

In a letter published on Wednesday, NGOs including Australia’s Market Forces, Friends of the Earth US and Japan, and Indonesian group Wahli said that if global warming is to be capped below 2˚C below pre-industrial levels to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, Singapore’s banks must follow the lead taken by their European and North American counterparts and stop funding new coal power plants. 

Read the Eco-Business story - “NGOs to Singapore banks: Act on climate change and stop funding coal.”