By Elsa Fuentes-Hare

Various groups at UWA, including Fossil Free UWA, have started a new campaign entitled Stop the Centre for Climate Damage. The campaign team spent the last weeks of summer collecting signatures on an open letter to UWA Chancellor, Robert French AC, asking him to reconsider the new Centre for Long Subsea Tiebacks. 

The Centre will be a vital research organ for Woodside and Chevron, who will contribute $600,000 per annum. It would make projects like Woodside’s proposed Burrup Hub possible, a project that would produce four times more emissions than Adani’s Carmicheal coal mine in northern Queensland. 

The first phase of the campaign will involve gaining traction with students, academics and alumni. We plan to meet the new Vice Chancellor at the end of May with the ultimate aim of making further support for the “Centre for Climate Damage” embarrassing for the University. 

We kicked off the semester with a successful O-Day stall with the Guild Environment Department, where our Open Letter to the Chancellor gained considerable support. A link to the letter is on our Facebook page . Be sure to give us a like!

This was followed by a meeting at the Tav to welcome our new members, and hear a great Clean State talk about the Burrup Hub and the LNG industry in WA. We also handed out flyers and delivered a short speech before Extinction Rebellion’s talk about the climate crisis. 

Last week, we organised a  flash mob involving a legion of flames engulfing a blow-up globe. On Friday 13th, we were a strong presence at  the Uni Student Strike. We are gaining new members and gathering support at each meeting. 

If you are a current or past UWA student, lecturer, or staff member, we’d love to hear from you about this campaign. So get in touch through our Facebook page and let’s land a huge blow to the the Burrup Hub polluters by not letting them continue their work on our campus.