Environmentalists around the country are gearing up to protest the world's biggest climate criminals — US President George Bush and PM John Howard — who will be pushing their environmentally disastrous agenda at the September 8-9 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Sydney.
Greens Senator Kerry Nettle told Green Left Weekly: "People who care about our planet will be converging on the APEC meetings in Sydney to send world leaders a message that we want real action on climate change. Instead, APEC is setting itself up to be little more than a multi-million- dollar photo opportunity for our nearly departed prime minister."
Liv Nigro, an activist in the Sydney Anti-Nuclear Coalition, told GLW that "APEC presents a rare opportunity to express mass opposition to global inaction on climate change and the absurd development of a global nuclear industry. It is particularly important to protest at APEC considering that Howard plans to announce Australia's entry into the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, which will see Australia become a dumping ground for international radioactive waste."
The US-led GNEP will create an exclusive club of nuclear "supplier" nations that will "loan" out nuclear fuel to other nations. The spent fuel will then be returned for reprocessing and storage in the home country. Recent revelations of Australia's intentions to join GNEP are intimately linked with the recent takeover of Indigenous land in the Northern Territory to pave the way for a massive expansion of uranium mining and the opening of nuclear waste dumps.
Howard and Bush have both refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and are intending to use the APEC summit to directly undermine the new round of Kyoto negotiations, by calling for a "new Kyoto" based on voluntary emission reduction targets and promotion of nuclear power and yet-to-be-developed "clean coal" technology.
Catherine Fitzpatrick, a climate campaigner with Greenpeace, told GLW that APEC is not an adequate forum to deal with climate change. "It is not much more than a talk fest. Any effective global action on climate change currently takes place under the Kyoto Protocol and that is where both governments should be focusing."
According to Zane Alcorn, a Melbourne-based Resistance member and Socialist Alliance candidate for the federal election, "As well as promoting false and dangerous so-called 'solutions' to climate change, such as nuclear power, 'clean coal' and biofuels, Bush and Howard are also responsible for the Iraq war. This is a war fought to control Iraq's oil and reap huge profits for big US oil corporations — not only is the war causing a humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq, but it is also perpetuating the use of fossil fuels. It's time to withdraw from Iraq and move to a renewable energy future."