Green Left Weekly reporting Doctors for the Environment objections to gas as a “transition fuel” (2016): “ Doctors for the Environment spokesperson Graeme McLeay said on August 23 that the big winners from the COAG energy summit were “gas interests rather than ordinary Australians many of whom don't know the misinformation and lies that are being presented as 'evidence'.” McLeay criticised the federal Environment and Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg as “reckless” for repeating the lie that gas will help with a transition to renewables and that it is a cleaner form of fossil fuel. “The Minister has clearly ignored the question of 'fugitive emissions' or releases of gas, mostly methane, during the mining, processing and delivery phases,” McLeay said. “America's Environmental Defence Fund estimates that a significant amount of man-made global warming is caused by methane emissions, much of which is fugitive emissions.“The Minister also seems to have ignored the environmental damage to air quality and water tables and the health costs of gas mining on local communities.” Doctors for the Environment has undertaken research on these questions and states that the risks of unconventional gas mining are “so potentially serious, so difficult to manage and so likely to be long-lived, that any further development of the unconventional gas industry in Australia has to be seen as unwise and unhealthy”.There is also the question of the gas glut. Even industry insiders, such as Woodside, admit the prospect of producing more gas is less appealing due to oversupply in the gas market. McLeay, along with many others, refutes the lie that gas is some sort of transition towards developing sustainable energy systems.“We already have the technology to move to a rapid transition to renewables without the unnecessary and harmful step of opening new gasfields to an industry that will be soon outmoded. What we need is the political will that puts people's wellbeing above corporate greed,” he concluded” (Pip Hinman, “Energy ministers give green light to expand gas industry”, Green Left Weekly, 26 August 2016: https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/energy-ministers-give-green-light-expand-gas-industry ).