Fossil Fuel Frenzy Taking Toll on Forgotten Flatback Sea Turtles
With climate change beginning to take its toll on sea turtle nesting beaches, hatchling gender and food supplies, destroying habitat and generating new global warming gases would seem to be a counter-productive response. However, Chevron and Big Oil continue to push for drilling for oil and natural gas projects to produce more fossil fuel for burning – and increasing carbon dioxide emissions while extracting and exploiting resources along the way.
While the fossil fuel frenzy is occurring around the globe, one of the most blatant conflicts between Big Oil, global warming and sea turtles is in remote Northwestern Australia. Here Chevron and Shell among other international corporations are running roughshod over western and indigenous communities, government and the environment to push through LNG projects that will not only destroy sea turtle nesting habitat and pollute waters that are critical to calving whales, but generate tens of millions of tons per year or more of new carbon dioxide emissions every year.
Chevron broke ground in December 2009 on the Barrow Island Nature Reserve with its Gorgon natural gas project that will destroy nesting beaches for the "forgotten" Australian flatback sea turtles. Unlike the other six species of sea turtles, so little research has been done on these mysterious sea turtles that their international status as a species is described as "data deficient". However, the Western Australian government's environmental experts oppose the Gorgon project on Barrolw Island and stated earlier this year that: Put simply, the proposal as presented does not provide a reasonable prospect for the long term viability of this valuable turtle rookery. Read more about the Gorgon Project.
Sea turtles and whales that swim and nest along the wild Kimberley coast in Northwest Australia were ignored by Big Oil and the Western Australian government in deciding to site a new LNG gas plant near James Price Point – adjacent to humpback whale calving areas. Read more about saving the Kimberley.
It is not too late for Chevron to put the brakes on these projects and prevent the environmental, human and economic disasters that it has created at its refineries in California, the jungle of Ecuador, the forests of Nigeria, and other locations around the world. Read more about the True Cost of Chevron.
With climate change beginning to take its toll on sea turtle nesting beaches, hatchling gender and food supplies, destroying habitat and generating new global warming gases would seem to be a counter-productive response. However, Chevron and Big Oil continue to push for drilling for oil and natural gas projects to produce more fossil fuel for burning – and increasing carbon dioxide emissions while extracting and exploiting resources along the way.
