Last night’s ABC Four Corners program on coal seam gas can be a first important step in reform to protect the public’s health.

It raises the question of why an advanced wealthy country is so compelled to sacrifice the integrity of swathes of productive land for financial gain from exporting a resource which we don’t need for our own energy needs. This sacrifice flies in the face of a Federal Government report from its Science, Engineering and Innovation Council indicating that Australia could become a net importer of food, if as seems inevitable the country’s population continues to grow and climate change cuts agricultural production.

Furthermore, why such alacrity in signing off on $30 billion of projects in the face of concerning reports of the medical dangers, both existing and projected, of this technology leading to the demand for a moratorium in several regions of the USA?

……continued at ABC Online’s The DRUM – Unleashed.

For more on this topic, see 4 corners or this previous DEA article.