24m ago11.55 AEST
Patrick Commins reports in The Guardian Live

"Pocock says companies ‘taking the piss’ after reform to petroleum resource rent tax

Independent senator David Pocock and teal MP Zali Steggall say Labor’s 2023 reforms to the petroleum resource rent tax (PRRT) did not go far enough and that major gas exporters are still not paying their fair share.

The PRRT is anticipated to generate $4bn less than when it was tweaked two years ago to ensure the east-coast LNG giants paid some measure of the tax.

Pocock told the ABC that the PRRT needed to be revisited as companies were “taking the piss”, and that the government had chosen the weakest of a range of reform options, backed by the Greens."

If #labor is going to green light #FossilFuelExtraction licences and #GasExports the least #AlboPM ought to do is jack up the #PRRT rate to somewhere equitable (I'd say about 80% of net profit is not unreasonable)

#AusPol #Gas

If federal and State #Labor were truly worried about the cost of energy as well as the pace of energy transition funding to meet #NetZero , there are more effective and timely ways to address these issues than granting extension to #Woodside ‘s #Gas exploitation in an fragile environment,

1) tax #FossilFuelExtraction industries appropirately (a la Denmark)
2) use tax income to fund electrification and renewables (including storage)
3) legislate reserve gas for domestic use, price-capped to mitigate #costofliving pressures
4) properly support regional areas in local job creation (use that greedy corporate zeal to make some lasting changes in regional Australia).

No extension of gas exploitation was required and the #Corporate #grifters can go an f** themselves.

#Auspol

@fixatedpersonsunit
Send a personal message to #SenMurrayWatt

https://www.murraywatt.com.au/contact/

#Environment #FossilFuelExtraction #WoodsideGas #WA

After the Wars in #Iraq, ‘Everything Living is Dying’

Decades of war, poverty and fossil fuel extraction have devastated the country’s #environment and its people.

By Lynzy Billing, December 29, 2021

"As far back as 2005, the United Nations had estimated that Iraq was already littered with several thousand contaminated sites. Five years later, an investigation by The Times, a London-based newspaper, suggested that the U.S. military had generated some 11 million pounds of toxic waste and abandoned it in Iraq. Today, the country remains awash in hazardous materials, such as depleted #uranium and #dioxin, which have polluted the soil and water. And extractive #industries like the KAR oil refinery often operate with minimal transparency. On top of all of this, Iraq is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change, which has already contributed to grinding water shortages and prolonged drought. In short, Iraq presents a uniquely #dystopian tableau—one where human activity contaminates virtually every ecosystem, and where terms like '#ecocide' have special currency.

"According to Iraqi physicians, the many overlapping environmental insults could account for the country’s high rates of cancer, birth defects, and other diseases. Preliminary research by local scientists supports these claims, but the country lacks the money and technology needed to investigate on its own. To get a better handle on the scale and severity of the contamination, as well as any health impacts, they say, international teams will need to assist in comprehensive investigations."

#BirthDefects #DepletedUranium #IraqWar #EndlessWar #Nuclear #NuclearWaste #Toxic #WaterPollution #WaterIsLife #FossilFuels #FossilFuelExtraction
Read more:
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/29122021/iraq-ecocide/