Tuesday, September 03, 2013

Party Games 43/54 Stop Coal Seam Gas Party

I back the Stop Coal Seam Gas Party for one major reason. If people are talking about frakking, it should involve Battlestar Galactica, not pumping water into the ground to get out natural gas. BSG is just more fun all round.

But the Stop Coal Seam Gas Party don't see it quite my way. They're more concerned with the environmental impact of this process, such as polluting local water supplies. This is a much more serious and reasonable point of opposition.

That said, they take the precautionary principle too far. They want to completely ban coal seam gas, and have as a guideline no industrial or business activity should be allowed or facilitated which can be proven to be injurious to human health. This does paint rather a broader brush than I think they intend. Driving is proven to be injurious to human health. Rock climbing, bungee jumping, sky diving, and many, many more things that we allow can be injurious to human health.

The big difference is that many of those things can only impact on the person doing so, and where they may affect someone else, we do place limits on the activity (requiring a drivers license). The Stop CSG team are a bit too quick to outright ban it. They say that before a technology is implemented it must be proven to be absolutely safe, and until so any development using it should be prevented. But this creates a catch 22 situation where it can't be proven to be safe until it's actually put into practice somewhere. There needs to be some flexibility to trial things where the impacts if problems arise won't be as severe and that plans to deal with something going wrong are put in place. Just saying no won't work.

That said, Coal Seam Gas is probably still in this "let's make sure it works as we think it does" stage and should be under scrutiny.

The Stop Coal Seam Gas Party has senate candidates in New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria.

website: http://www.stopcsgparty.org.au/
facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StopCsgParty
 
o industrial or business activity should be allowed or facilitated which can be proven to be injurious to human health - See more at: http://www.stopcsgparty.org.au/our_policies#sthash.IPPyO9j6.dpuf
o industrial or business activity should be allowed or facilitated which can be proven to be injurious to human health - See more at: http://www.stopcsgparty.org.au/our_policies#sthash.IPPyO9j6.dpuf
o industrial or business activity should be allowed or facilitated which can be proven to be injurious to human health - See more at: http://www.stopcsgparty.org.au/our_policies#sthash.IPPyO9j6.dpuf
o industrial or business activity should be allowed or facilitated which can be proven to be injurious to human health - See more at: http://www.stopcsgparty.org.au/our_policies#sthash.IPPyO9j6.dpuf
o industrial or business activity should be allowed or facilitated which can be proven to be injurious to human health - See more at: http://www.stopcsgparty.org.au/our_policies#sthash.IPPyO9j6.dpuf
o industrial or business activity should be allowed or facilitated which can be proven to be injurious to human health - See more at: http://www.stopcsgparty.org.au/our_policies#sthash.IPPyO9j6.dpuf
o industrial or business activity should be allowed or facilitated which can be proven to be injurious to human health - See more at: http://www.stopcsgparty.org.au/our_policies#sthash.IPPyO9j6.dpuf
o industrial or business activity should be allowed or facilitated which can be proven to be injurious to human health - See more at: http://www.stopcsgparty.org.au/our_policies#sthash.IPPyO9j6.dpuf

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