Queenslanders should be angry about the LNP’s obsession with building a new polluting coal plant given the damage it would do to the state’s clean air, clean water and emerging clean energy industry
The Queensland Liberal National Party’s (LNP) dangerous push for a new coal-fired power station will produce more of the pollution that is fuelling climate change and will accelerate the decline of our Great Barrier Reef, the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) has warned.
ACF Chief Executive Officer, Kelly O’Shanassy, said Queenslanders should be angry about the LNP’s obsession with building a new polluting coal plant given the damage it would do to the state’s clean air, clean water and emerging clean energy industry.
“It beggars belief, with everything we know about climate change, that a major party like the LNP would be proposing a new polluting coal power plant in a modern, developed country,” Ms O’Shanassy said.
“Queensland has a burgeoning clean energy industry and our elected officials should be concentrating their efforts on seeing it thrive. Projects like the massive Bulli Creek Solar Farm and the Kidston Solar and Pumped Hydro Project show the enormous potential for Queensland to be powered with clean energy.
“Instead the LNP has opted for more coal power, which endangers our communities. Overnight the world’s most preeminent medical journal, the Lancet, released a major report showing climate change is already a major public health crisis. By driving longer and hotter heatwaves, helping spread disease, and worsening allergies, climate change threatens our health and our way of life.
“Meanwhile, the United Nations has warned global climate pollution concentrations have reached their highest levels in at least 800,000 years. And Australia has been put on notice for its soaring pollution, which will see it miss its Paris climate obligations without stronger action.
“This is to say nothing about the existential threat climate change poses to the Great Barrier Reef, which is still recovering from two successive mass coral bleaching events.
“Why does the LNP want a sicker community, a more dangerous planet and a damaged reef? It is time for the LNP to dump its coal obsession and make Queensland a sun-powered state.
“So far Labor has committed to 50 per cent clean energy in Queensland by 2030 and net-zero pollution by 2050. It has promised to end large-scale tree clearing and to back big clean energy projects.
“The LNP has committed to scrapping these promises and instead wants to build a new coal-burning power plant that will further pollute our planet.
“Both the Palaszczuk Government and the LNP opposition have let us down by backing Adani’s dirty coal mine that would help destroy our climate, drain and pollute our groundwater and trash our Great Barrier Reef.”
