What you can do!

1. Talk about the issue with your friends, family and workmates.
We all need to discuss important issues like fossil fuel extraction and climate change because we are all affected by it for better or worse and so that we can nut out and create wise and workable solutions together. If we don’t, our planet and communities are at the mercy of wealthy corporations and oftimes corrupt politicians.

2. Do your own research
Horizontal hydraulic fracturing (fracking), deep-well injection, oilspill threats, landfarming, climate change causes and effects, seismic surveying…? Find our for yourself what all these things are and how they might affect you or others. There is heaps of information on this website covering these petroleum industry issues and on the internet in general. Ask around and find out what other people know and think such as the council, workers, scientists, farmers, environmental groups, unions, the industry and then make up your own mind on matters. Share your research.

3. Write letters to the paper, call radio talkback shows or blog away
Let the world know why you oppose the mass expansion of petroleum extraction eg. toxicity, oil spills, climate change, worker safety, ownership issues. If we spread our research and our concerns around then more people will know and more ideas and support will come. The petroleum industry is massive so we need a movement to stop it or at least slow it down. Every little improvement to the industry or delay to drilling that we can make is potentially another life saved or less greenhouse gas emitted. Don’t worry about what we can’t do, focus on what we can.

4. Convince those with the power
Government (Crown Minerals, now recalled Crown Petroleum & Minerals) grant the exploration and production (drilling/mining) permits. The Taranaki Regional Council grants the resource consents for onshore drilling so that the work can be undertaken. (The new marine Environmental Protection Agency will presumably grant the offshore resource consents at some time when that organisation functions). Landowners grant permission for the petroleum companies to use their land, which is particularly important for seismic surveys that do not require resource consent under current council policy. Private contractors do the work.

Pressuring or convincing these parties to decline permits, consents, access to their land or to work can stop the petroleum companies. You can use the environment court, public pressure, other legal policy arguments or just try and convince them that the costs far outweigh the benefits or at least they could wait a while and consider – we don’t need to mine out all the resources under our feet in the next few years, we could actually leave some for other generations. Greywolf Resources was successfully turned away by public pressure in Golden Bay this year and some contractors refused to work on a site in Tikorangi in 2009.

Anyone can register waahi tapu and historic sites with the Historic Places Trust and councils. This provides some protection from drilling but only within a limited area.

5. Take direct action
Direct action means doing something that will have a direct affect on your desired outcome. It can be anything from industrial action such as strikes, disrupting surveys to occupying or blockading drill sites. Keep your integrity, retain your focus on the kaupapa/cause and be safe. Disruption of the Raukumara Basin seismic survey on the East Coast by a flotilla of protest boats this summer successfully stopped the survey ship from completing its work, this season at least. The Tikorangi occupation in 2009 successfully stopped drilling through an unprotected waahi tapu. A storm successfully took out the Noble Discoverer survey ship too this winter!

6. Sign the ‘Frack No!’ Petition
Download the petition here and sign it then ask your friends and workmates to sign on. Freepost petitions to the Green Party or…

Sign online and send a letter directly to the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment here.

7. Sign the ‘No new coal or oil’ Petition

Sign on here via Greenpeace NZ’s website.

---