On Monday, May 20th 2013, the Extreme Energy Initiative invited Dr Mariann Lloyd-Smith, a Senior Advisor to the National Toxics Network (NTN) based in Australia and the Pacific and also an advisor to IPEN, an international public interest network representing over 700 organisations in over 100 countries committed to a toxics-free future.
View slides from the lecture.
The lecture, entitled ‘Licence to Drill? Is Australia’s Present Britain’s Future?’ Explored social resistance to unconventional gas activities in Australia. You can watch the full lecture above. The lecture explored the fascinating, and sometimes frightening, reality of the toxic substances used in coal seam gas extraction, hydraulic fracturing (‘fracking’), and some methods used by the Lock the Gate Alliance to deny companies the ‘social licence’ to operate where they can cause harm to the health of adults, children and and livestock.
Dr Lloyd-Smith was a member of the UN Expert Group on Climate Change and Chemicals and a coauthor of the report ‘Climate Change and POPs; Predicting the Impact’. She also coauthored NTN’s report on the chemical impacts of unconventional gas in Australia and has presented the findings to communities across Australia, UK and Europe. Mariann gained her PhD from the Faculty of Law at the University of Technology (UTS), Sydney and has worked in the area of chemicals policy and waste management for over two decades. Mariann has published widely on chemical issues and was an author of Australia’s national management plans for hazardous waste.
The event also introduced the Extreme Energy Initiative’s new website.