A poor environmental state

City of Sydney Greens Councillor Chris Harris has blasted the State Government’s environmental performance.

Cr Harris said Macquarie Street was too reliant on fossil fuel power and added that they had also dropped the ball in regard to public transport.

“It would be much better if the State Government would stop investing in coal-fired power stations and the burning of fossil fuels,” he said.

“The City of Sydney area is very, very large – we consume enough energy for a small power station and so it would be good if the Government would show some backbone and start to switch to renewable energy.

“But under the current major parties … they’re influenced by the money they get from the fossil fuel industry and the influence that they wield.”

Cr Harris said he didn’t see anything changing in the near future.

“In the short term there doesn’t appear to be any hope that the State Government is going to act … They’re currently proposing a new coal-fired power station – two of them in fact – which is just insane,” he said.

Cr Harris said it was up to both councils and individuals to do what they could to reduce emissions in the absence of the State Government taking action.

He confirmed that City of Sydney Council had a plan in the works for co-generation and tri-generation of energy.

“It’s been decided now, there’s a master plan being developed,” he said.

“The council will pay for and install [it] and hopefully we’ll be able to sell that energy to private users … but that’s not going to happen overnight, that’s going to take years to implement.”

In regard to public transport, Cr Harris said it caused more traffic than it fixed.

“Where I live now down in The Rocks, it’s scary the number of buses that are coming, if you just look down on the approach to the bridge, there are queues of buses every morning and every afternoon,” he said.

“That’s not essential – the reason there are so many buses is because there’s been a failure of public transport.”

He said the State Government needed to get buses out of the city.

“One thing that would help the city greatly would be to implement [and] spend some serious money on public transport,” he said.

“We could install light rail within two years, and we could have it out to Dulwich Hill and out to Green Square and link up with possibly even light rail going east, and that would help with traffic.

“[Also] the RTA [needs] to continue working with the City to help us install bike lanes, and make it harder for cars in the city … co-operation from the State Government for us to discourage people using cars would be a huge benefit.”