CLIMATE ACTION RADIO SHOW  - SEPTEMBER 19TH 2022

Produced by Vivien Langford

AUSTRALIA'S GREEN EXTRACTIVISM AND  SACRIFICE ZONES  ABROAD?

While  the climate  movement focusses on  going beyond coal, oil and gas, big business is driving a rush for  the rare earths and critical minerals needed for the transition to  Renewable energy with  storage.

The Australian Mining Industry  claims to have standards that are world's best  practice. However, sacrifice zones are already being created  as they mine for  Lithium in WA and Copper in SA. What  will be the environmental consequences on our water  and how will they deal with radioactive waste?

 Overseas,  Malaysians are protesting the radioactive waste from Australian Rare  earths processed over there  by Lynas. In Ecuador, the front line is to protect a cloud forest  of immense biodiversity from Gina  Rinehart's copper mining. In  Chile  they wanted a new constitution that  would have placed restrictions on mining making it more expensive to do business. When the constitution was rejected the headline in  Canada was "Business  can  now continue for  Canadian mines based in Chile". 

The urgency to  decarbonise must not   allow mining companies and governments to greenwash themselves while leaving behind new areas of devastastion... the  same sort of sacrifice zones we know from fossil fuels extraction. There  is an exponential growth in demand  eg  300-700% for Lithium used in batteryb storage.

https://aidwatch.org.au/alternatives-to-green-extractivism/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLV3KalvfFs Duncan Wood - Wilson Centre on the Geopolitics of critical minerals

We explore the alternatives with our guests

Guests:

Federico Fuentes -  talking about Lithium in Chile and Copper in Brazil.

He is  a Green Left Journalist and Author of  America's Turbulent Transitions -

Liz Downes -  Talking about Green Extractiviusm  from Rainforest Action Group :https://rainforestactiongroup.org/in-the-news/ Scroll down and note the number of 3CR programmes that have been covering this story in Ecuador.

Natalie Lowery -  Explaining Degrowth and what's at stake. AIDWATCH https://aidwatch.org.au/who-we-are/  and https://yestolifenotomining.org/

Music : Violeta Parra "Que Pena sienete el alma" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz53dE3ohj8