Sydney Nuclear Free Coalition

Dr Helen Caldicott (Doctors for Nuclear Free Australia)

Catherine Fitzpatrick (Greenpeace)

Imogen Zethoven (The Wilderness Society)
with Welcome to Country from Jenny Munroe

6:30pm Wednesday August 15th

LHMU Auditorium 187 Thomas Street, Haymarket (Next to UTS)


John Howard is on the record as marking climate change the central issue for the APEC conference in September. APEC will be Howard's last chance before the Federal election to paint himself as world leader on climate change - and his diminishing popularity makes him eager for good publicity.


However, Howard offers no new solutions to climate change. The major initiatives on the table are simply an extension of the old dirty fuel industry: namely coal and nuclear energy. He is planning to announce Australia's entry into the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) at APEC, paving the way for Australia playing host to an international waste dump. In addition, Australia is moving towards selling uranium to India, who have not signed the Nuclear non-proliferation Treaty.


Although 80% of Australians believe that a "nuclear Australia would be a disaster-in-waiting," John Howard plans to use APEC to promote the expansion of the region's nuclear industry, against the wishes of the nation.


Facts:

   * Nuclear energy requires large-scale mining projects, which consume
     approximately 33 million litres of water per day free of charge.
   * The unavoidable consequence of nuclear energy is its radioactive
     waste dumps, which remain hazardous to the environment and human
     health for thousands of years.
   * Enriched uranium is a crucial part of the deadly nuclear weapons
     cycle.
   * Nuclear energy further discriminates within Australia as the
     mining and toxic dumps are forced upon Indigenous land.
   * The nuclear industry remains extremely expensive to establish and
     its expansion would take public money away from the development of
     clean renewable energy technologies.

We need to debunk Howard's myths in the lead-up to September. Come
along to this meeting to talk about the kind of opposition we can
present to Howard's climate agenda at APEC and about some of the real solutions to climate change.