BMD workers going to work on an Adani site near Mt Coolon on Valentine’s Day found themselves greeted, not with a bunch of red roses, but by 65-year-old Craig Linn. Craig was chained to a cattle grid, stopping worker entrance to the site. He remained there from before 6am until police finally cut him free and took him away at around 10.45am.
While Adani strove to belittle the action, claiming that it ‘no impact’, the truth is that 150+ work hours were lost, delaying progress and costing Adani. Let Craig explain why he took action…
Craig’s Statement
So how does a 65-year-old retired academic end up on the front line against coal? Well, I’ll try to keep it short, but I do think it is worth providing a brief roadmap.
Nearly 40 years ago, in the 1980s, I was working as a scientific officer at the Pollution Control Commission (subsequently the EPA). There I found myself working on the team building simulation models to track the pollution from coal-fired power stations. Yes, that’s right, coal-fired power stations, even then they were a menace.
It was around that time that “global warming” came across my radar and it didn’t take me long to realise it was pretty serious stuff. Over the subsequent three decades I’ve tracked the science closely and engaged in all the usual “politically correct” processes. I’ve made submissions to Environmental Assessments, written letters to politicians, run educational workshops to highlight the threats, and I’ve done the rallies and the marches like most decent folks.
I even secured, quite amazingly, one-on-one meetings with two state environmental ministers and one federal environment minister, and, like all politicians, they promised that they were taking the matter seriously and would act.
Well guess what, that action just never happened, and the emissions just keep rising. So now we have a dying Barrier Reef, and bushfires so severe they are pretty well unstoppable. In Sydney where I live, we have just lost 80% of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area. In this area alone, approximately 140 million animals have had their habitat burnt out, with millions of them already dead. But still we have lunatic politicians who want to mine more coal and build more coal fired power stations.
So it’s time for everyday Australians, and that is all I am, to step up and take peaceful direct action to shut down the mining and burning of thermal coal once and for all. Climate change isn’t coming, it’s here! So act!
Please use Craig’s example to consider taking action. Contact https://frontlineaction.org/take-action/ to find out how this can be done.
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