DLEP ignores all the research

If you found yourself in the intensive care ward on Kiribati, a Pacific island, you would have sea water around your ankles at every high tide.

Fresh water would be difficult to obtain as the water table has also been inundated by sea.

If you had been a fisherman on Lake Chad in Africa when it dried up, you might have taken up farming, only to find that now you are unable to feed your family as there is no rain.

There are signs everywhere that the climate is hotting up.

I do mean the climate and not the weather.

The climate overall shows an upward trend but the proposed Gosford LEP demonstrates that our local leaders believe in business as usual.

Why else would they propose building on land reclaimed from the sea in Gosford?

Why else would they change the dune area to RE1 which could permit development, when storm surges have already demonstrated their power at Ocean Beach?

Why did they pay a firm to prepare a document about flooding if they were just going to ignore it?

Gosford's LEP seems to date from a past era and it makes obvious the fact that each council department works independently and has no idea what is happening in any other department.

There are people who believe that we can do something about the problem, at least to slow the effects down, so that living things can perhaps adapt more easily over time. Surely we should listen and think about their proposals.

We must ensure that we let the authorities know that an LEP which ignores all the research and all the available signs of climate change all over the world today, is unacceptable.

Surely we want them to err on the side of caution not just for our children but for all life on earth.

Email, 1 Apr 2010 Margaret Lund, Woy Woy Bay