Monday 20 December 2010

GetUp! loses all credibility


I’ve had a lot of time for GetUp! Action for Australia in the past but this organisation is beginning to stretch its credibility too thin these days.
Get an load of this from the website:

Save Wooli

Right now the Clarence Valley Council is considering adopting a policy of "planned retreat" for village of Wooli and its unique environment. This abandonment is their only response to the increased threat from coastal erosion caused by climate change.
Urge them to reject it and protect Wooli, by signing this Right now the Clarence Valley Council is considering adopting a policy of "planned retreat" for village of Wooli and its unique petition below.

I believe that if Council approves the recently released Wooli Coastal Plan, no action will be taken to defend the Wooli Community and environment from the threat of coastal erosion caused by climate change and Council will adopt a policy of planned abandonment of the village. I ask that Clarence Valley Council reject this plan.

No mention of the fact that Wooli is not the only place on the Clarence Coast or in the river delta suffering the early effects of climate change and relentless erosive wave patterns.
Not a word about the CSIRO predicting higher and stronger tides taking away coastal and estuary foreshore, making the aquifer saline and raising the water table.
That this will often be occurring in urban areas built on reclaimed marshland and in natural flood storage areas.
Absolutely dumb on Commonwealth Government predictions of ‘worst case’ sea level rises and storm surges which will see quite a few houses in Yamba inundated on a regular basis or lost completely. That coastal erosion on Yamba Hill and at Broom’s Head is a fact of life, as well as sections of Palmers Island now so unstable that no-one can safely live there.
Silent as the grave when it comes to Clarence Coast landowners (including those at Wooli) knowing the risks for well over a decade and putting their heads in the sand while buying seafront or riverfront property anyway.
Last but not least, no mention of how a local government with so much vulnerable shoreline and a small rate base is going to manage to pay millions of dollars decade in and decade out in a vain effort to hold the ocean back from a small village built on a sand spit between a tidal river and the Pacific Ocean.
GetUp! needs to grow up.

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