President of Western Australian football team Fremantle Dockers says he has no plans to end the sponsorship deal with Woodside Energy despite pressures to cut ties with the oil and gas giant.
The comment comes after an open letter signed by six people pushing for climate change action received extensive media coverage.
Those signing the letter include former Western Australian Premier Carmen Lawrence, author Tim Winton, former Fremantle player Dale Kickett, former football manager Gerard McNeill, former Woodside climate adviser Alex Hillman and scientist Bill Hare.
The letter criticised Woodside for pressing ahead with its Scarborough gas development, “doubling down on fossil fuels” in the last year, purchasing BHP’s oil and gas assets and “becoming one of the top ten largest fossil fuel companies in the world.”
The authors argued that Woodside shouldn’t be allowed to use Dockers’ “good name” to “enhance its reputation when its core activities are so clearly threatening our planet.”
Fremantle ‘Cannot Disconnect’ From Mining Sponsorship.
Fremantle’s partnership with Woodside started in 2010 with the Woodside logo displayed on Fremantle’s guernsey as part of the contract.But Fremantle President Dale Alcock said he wouldn’t axe the agreement, which is worth millions of dollars, until the end of the 2023 season, when the sponsorship deal ends.
Alcock acknowledged that “climate change and sustainability are key social issues” but stressed that sports need corporate support and sponsorship.
“In Western Australia, we don’t have too many (corporations) that are headquartered in Perth—and many of those that are in Western Australia are resource related.
“Clearly, half of our economy in Western Australia is resource related. It’s hard to avoid having relationships with resource companies, and those resource companies are large employers—and large supporters – of our community.
“That is something we cannot disconnect from in Western Australia.”
Woodside said in a statement it was “proud to be part of the diverse communities in which we work.”
“Our sponsorship of the Dockers has extended beyond on-field sponsorship into areas where both organisations hold shared values and commitments to make a positive contribution, including through Woodside’s role as an Indigenous program partner,” a spokesperson said.
The Environmental In Much Healthier State Than What’s Portrayed By Media
The decision to consider the deal comes after California-based eco-modernist Michael Shellenberger argued that the state of the environment today is in a much better condition than is being portrayed by climate change advocates and media.He told the CPAC audience in Australia; there was more coral in the Great Barrier Reef than there had ever been in 36 years. At the same time, the area of land burned by forest fires had declined by 25 percent globally since 2003—an area the size of Texas.
He also noted that emissions had slightly declined globally over the last decade with the transition from coal to natural gas, going down 22 percent in the United States between 2005 and 2020—he added that this information was underreported.
“The death rate from natural disasters has crashed, we have four times as many people as we did in the world 100 years ago. The death toll has declined about 90 percent in the United States,” he said.
“Somewhere between 305,100 people die every year from natural disasters. More people die walking from their bed to the toilet than they do from natural disasters.”
Currently, China is the world’s largest emitter of CO2 both in production and consumption terms, with a lack of stringent environmental standards in coal-fired power stations, coal mining, and blast furnaces producing iron and steel.
