The Great Barrier Reef was already under tremendous stress. This won’t help.
The Shen Neng 1, hauling more than 65,000 tons of coal, hit the reef at full speed late Saturday in a restricted zone of the marine park. The impact ruptured the vessel’s fuel tanks, prompting Australian officials to activate a national oil spill response plan.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau will be conducting a full investigation into the incident. The carrier was aground on a shoal and is not expected to be moved without salvage assistance.
Authorities said they were trying to assess the scope of a salvage project late Sunday.
Capricorn Conservation Council, a national environmental group, said in a release that it was “horrified that a Chinese coal carrier has run aground near Great Keppel Island.”
The ship may break into pieces and it is carrying (and leaking) 300,000 gallons of heavy fuel oil.
Yep. We awoke news of this this morning.
Most people outside Australia will have no idea how dependent our economy is upon resource extraction. If it we’re for coal, bauxite (precursor of Aluminum), iron ore, copper and timber, Australia wouldn’t have an economy. Most of these raw material are shipped to Asia, where they value add to them and then sell the finished products back to us.
Thus the piss poor regulations on anything that might cause our customers to spend another dollar or two on safety measures – can’t bite the hand that keeps us from being the third-world economy that we realistically would be – apart from selling cheap our natural resources.
I think we need to emotionally gird ourselves for the strong probability that we are going to lose some beloved and irreplaceable natural wonders before we finally solve this climate problem. And I say that as someone who is quite optimistic that we will solve the problem. But it’s just too late to save everything – I think Joe Romm is sadly right that it will take a couple of “climate Pearl Harbors” to really wake people up and spur the necessary changes. This is of course not even taking into account the worst effect of climate change, which is the suffering that is and will be inflicted upon developing countries that are unable to adequately adapt.
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The Shen Neng 1, hauling more than 65,000 tons of coal, hit the reef at full speed late Saturday in a restricted zone of the marine park.
Capricorn Conservation Council, a national environmental group, said in a release that it was “horrified that a Chinese coal carrier has run aground near Great Keppel Island.”
The group called for a marine pilot to be required for all vessels operating in the area. “We are outraged that no marine pilot is required on ships between Gladstone and Cairns. This will increase the likelihood of similar events.”
Pilotage — Gladstone port
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
why yes, yes they DO need a qualified marine pilot… egads!
There may be at least a little good news:
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/04/04/copenhagen-accord-progress/
This can get even worse if the ship breaks apart & dumps the rest of all the fuel on board, plus the 65,000 tons of coal it has in it`s holds.
Very very bad already.
What was that ship doing anywhere near there, out of the shipping lanes, & with no pilot.
The owner of this ship is COSCO – bad news all around. Several serious incidents the last few years.
– And now this, off the Great Barrier Reef.
Apart from the apparent disability to operate its ships, COSCO is controversial for other reasons. In 2008:
Back in 1998 (before Dubai, there was China):
And in 1999:
very bad indeed. In a similar vein I highly recommend the doc Darwin’s Nightmare.