JOINT MEDIA RELEASE: SAVE OUR FORESHORES & GREENPEACE AUSTRALIA PACIFIC

"The boat rally and public information day on Airlie Beach's beautiful foreshore parkland was bigger and better than our wildest expectations," said community group Save Our Foreshore's spokesperson Suzette Pelt.
 
"Around 90 boats of all sizes from square riggers to kayaks and tinnies to glamour yachts came out on the water to send the clear message that the experimental mining proposal for the highly polluting shale rock industry is simply incompatible with everything the Whitsundays stands for.
 
"We have a hugely successful and sustainable tourism industry here, based on the pristine environment of the Whitsunday Islands and Great Barrier Reef, also a World Heritage area. All these values, people's lifestyles, health and properties would be placed at risk.”
 
Greenpeace campaigner Simon Roz said: “Even the USA, an oil thirsty country, has placed a ban on this industry because of its known risks to the environment. In Gladstone, the site of Australia's first pilot oil shale project, people 20 km away were driven from their homes and became sick with cancers and skin problems as a result of that disastrous experiment. That mining company promised world standard environmental practises then and denied any wrongdoing when people lost their health, livelihoods and homes.
 
"There is not a shred of evidence that it would be different today, the technology is essentially the same, its never been proven on a commercial scale anywhere in the world. And they want to experiment on the shores of the Great Barrier Reef, pumping massive amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, along with a chemical cocktail of some 300 hazardous compounds including dioxins.”
 
Ms Pelt added: “Without a doubt, clean and renewable energy alternatives to fossil fuels will be available in the coming decade, the same timeframe this mining company says it needs before starting up in Australia. So for Australia to be seen to be supporting a backward looking, dirty, low grade fuel source would be going against its commitment to Kyoto, the Rudd government's promise to reduce greenhouse emissions and as a signatory to the 2004 Stockholm Convention, which aims to protect human health and the environment by banning the production and use of some of the most toxic chemicals like dioxins, known to humankind.”

Public ‘open boat’ days on the Esperanza will be held in Mackay on Saturday 26 July, Townsville on Saturday 2 August and Cairns on Saturday 9 August. For more information about Greenpeace’s energy revolution tour visit http://www.greenpeace.org.au/energyrevolution

Sign SOF petition to stop the shale oil project