Councillor Chris Harris

Politicians of all shades these days pay at least lip-service to climate change. But which ones are serious when it comes to real action?

Chris Harris at Monday night’s Council meeting will present Councillors with an opportunity to get behind the community legal action challenging the concept plan for the CUB site in Chippendale.

He is asking Council to contribute $20,000 towards the estimated legal costs, backing up community members who have already donated $3,000 to the cause.

‘I imagine the Labor councillors will have to think hard about supporting action against Planning Minister Frank Sartor, but I can see no good reason why the remaining councillors should not get behind this last-ditch attempt to save the future of Sydney,’ said Cr Harris.

‘The CUB site is the largest remaining old industrial site to be developed in the CBD and given that we will have to live with its environmental consequences for decades, we have to act now or never.’

‘I support Clover Moore’s vision for Sydney. I agree with her that Sydney should be liveable, equitable and environmentally sustainable and that this depends on what we do now.’ (SMH 6/6/07)

‘If we believe this then we need to change the nature of this disastrous project which will snarl traffic and impact heavily on the environment for decades to come. The other environmental measures council is planning will be cancelled out unless we act now.

Cr Harris has fully backed the community action by letterboxing Chippendale with an appeal for loan/donations. The litigation is also being supported by Legal Aid which has indemnified the litigants against costs should they lose the case.

‘This means there is no risk to Council or anyone else who backs the action,’ says Cr Harris. ‘The choice is simple: get behind this action or face a long future of pollution and traffic chaos in Sydney.’

‘I invite residents to come to Town Hall on Monday evening to watch the debate.’

Attachments: Media Release; Flyer Page 1; Flyer Page 2.

A few people have made comments lately that show the concept of ’sustainability’ means quite different things to different people.

Here we are making an issue of the CUB site and the Surry Hills Community Centre, which clearly do not meet the sustainability standards needed to reverse global warming, and more than one person has responded with comments like: ‘But what’s wrong with being on mains water?’

Well, nothing is wrong with it, especially as most of us have little choice and little incentive to do otherwise. Some climate-change sceptics even take sustainability messages as a personal affront.

That’s not what we are saying, though.

The point is that the ways of the past, the ways we have grown up with and take for granted, cannot last. Even ultra-sceptics like George Bush and John Howard are finally admitting that climate change induced by human activity is a real problem.

That’s partly because so many major players in business and economics have now accepted that the longer we take to tackle the problem the worse the economic damage we will most likely have to endure. Even the risk of it demands action.

So when developers propose major projects that incorporate only minor or marginal green initiatives, and these projects have, say, a 30-year life span, it’s simply stealing from our own future and that of our children — and their children.

Don’t forget that every tonne of CO2 pumped into the atmosphere will stay there for hundreds of years. There is no magic vacuum-cleaner to take it all away.

Every minute, every week and every month counts. It’s urgent!

So the only responsible way forward is to drastically reduce emissions, now. We need to realise that every take-away coffee cup, every glass of mains water that has been pumped from a distant dam and every old computer monitor we throw out embodies energy that has produced emissions. But compared to a take-away coffee cup, major developments like the CUB site will be cataclysmic in their impacts.

Read the rest of this entry »

The court case to save Chippendale from an extra 2,300 polluting cars, the unsustainable use of water, the disposal of sewage to the ocean and the massive long term construction impacts of the proposed CUB development is set for 25 July. The Environmental Defender’s Office, the community’s legal advisors for the case, estimates that a further $30,000 will be needed on top of the Legal Aid already granted.

That’s why I am working with members of the local community to launch a public fundraising appeal.

The concept plan approved for the site pays only lip-service to the environment while Frank Sartor’s autocratic planning powers ensure that community concerns will also be sacrificed on the altar of developer profits.

This court case is our last chance to force the big end of town to re-think and re-design this massive new development into something Sydney and future generations can be proud of.

Anyone who travels along Broadway, Abercrombie Street or Regent Street which bound the huge site knows how bad the delays already are. Imagine three more sets of traffic lights and 2,300 more vehicles moving in and out of the site – because that’s how many parking spots are planned for the development! Read the rest of this entry »

In Elizabeth Farrelly’s piece on the Surry Hills Neighbourhood centre (Quest for green, yet engaging, public building May 16, 2007) she tells us that striving for viridity in urban design is worthwhile.

But she also says we all need to become eco-heads because we ‘can’t trust government to find the green pastures and lead us there’.

She uses the Surry Hills Neighbourhood Centre to underline her point. But is she right?

It’s true we are living in an age where greenhouse gases are at levels rarely seen in the history of the world. However being an ‘eco-head’ is not that hard.

With 75 per cent of the world’s energy being used by cities we need to design our buildings in such a way that we don’t go on pumping water from a far away dam to flush the toilets and pump our sewage to a far away ocean outfall. By the way the electricity that we use to do all this pumping is provided by burning coal, and guess what? Coal contributes 33 per cent of our total greenhouse gas emissions.

So how do we fix this?

First up we take less water from our rivers so our farmers can do what they do best – provide us with food. How? We simply work out what the yearly rainfall is, how much water each building needs and install water tanks to meet that need. How hard is that? If there is a shortfall – say unexpectedly low rainfall - then dam water can be used as a back up. The dam of course, by not being drained for toilet flushing, is now full.

Secondly we treat and recycle our sewage and use that water to flush toilets - 70 per cent of a non-residential building’s needs - water gardens, circulate through cooling systems and eventually, when we get over the ‘yuk’ factor, drink it as does half the known world including London and Singapore. Read the rest of this entry »

Clover Moore on Monday night used her casting vote to approve the new Surry Hills Community Centre knowing it would be environmentally unsustainable and that the cost had blown out from $3.6 million to $19 million.

Of course, this long-awaited centre with its library and childcare centre will be a fine social asset for Surry Hills.

But this is the first major building project this council has started from scratch, in an era that recognises climate change as the greatest threat to our way of life.

And what do we get? An overspend of millions of dollars for a building that relies on mains water, pumps its sewage into the ocean and will cause over 400 tonnes of greenhouse gas pollution per year.

In contrast to the $19 million we are coughing up in Surry Hills, a far more sustainable building of similar size in Knox Street Double Bay cost under $9 million.

The floor space is the same, the height is the same, the demand for quality is the same, so why such a massive difference in cost? Read the rest of this entry »