Four decades after the battle for the Franklin Dam, a contest between nature and industry is underway in the high tropical forests of Far North Queensland that is equally as pivotal.

If the battle to save Chalumbin tropical forests from the bulldozers is lost, a rapacious, environmentally-destructive industry will have open slather to rip the heart out of other areas of unique natural beauty from Cape York to Tasmania.

The battle for the Franklin was the coming of age battle for Dr Bob Brown, who went on to create the Greens as a political party.

This time round there isn’t a Green in sight because the environmental vandal claims to be the Green movement’s best friend: Big Wind. If the proposed development at Chalumbin was a coal mine, its backers could kiss their chances goodbye. Yet Ark Energy’s proposal to bulldoze native tropical forest across an area of 10.7 square kilometres adjacent to a World Heritage-listed area is just one step away from approval.

If Environment Minister Tania Plibersek says ‘Yes’, 146 km of access roads, some 70 metres wide, will be cut across the landscape to install 94 turbines. At 250 metres, these will be some of the largest turbines in Australia.

The tragedy is that Chalumbin is a highly biodiverse old-growth forest that is hundreds if not thousands of years old. It is home to 535 native animals and 28 rare and threatened species such as the globally threatened Sarus Crane and the endangered Spectacled Flying Fox. The turbines will strike the Masked and the Barking Owl.

Chalumbin borders the globally significant Wet Tropic World Heritage Area and Bush Heritage’s York Reserve. It should be protected as a National Park not turned into turbine trash in pursuit of a flawed decarbonisation strategy. The Labor/Greens policy of cutting emissions through wind and solar is inevitably forced to rely on gas as a backup as has been acknowledged by the Net Zero Australia report prepared by Australia’s former chief scientist Professor Robin Batterham.

Yet, it is completely unnecessary to destroy environmentally unique places such as Chalumbin. To cut emissions and save the environment the obvious solution is to go nuclear which is cheaper than Labor’s renewables plan that has been estimated to cost an eye-watering $9 trillion by 2060. There are plenty of supporters of nuclear in Labor and in the union movement who have been forced to bite their tongues up to now including South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas.

The Greens need to take a look at Finland’s Green Party which in May last year made a historic shift to adopt a fully pro-nuclear stance. As Tea Tormanen, who visited Australia in April to talk about Finland’s experience said, ‘The Australian approach of cutting emissions solely by relying on renewables is not realistic. It hasn’t worked anywhere (except) countries that have huge reserves of hydro.’

The Chalumbin Wind Turbine industrial plant is being fiercely opposed by the three Aboriginal tribes for whom it is their ancestral home. Their opposition has been ignored. So much for Labor’s Voice to Parliament. They are working together with the broader community to stop the development.

Ms Plibersek is due to announce her decision in September. With Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen’s madcap renewal rollout way behind schedule, she’ll be under pressure to turn a deaf ear to the pleas of the community and green light the bulldozers to woo inner-city environmentalists who don’t realise that they are inadvertently destroying the thing they love. Labor’s turf war with the Greens in those seats adds further pressure.

As Minister for the Environment, Graham Richardson inscribed the Daintree Rainforest and surrounding areas on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1988.

Ms Plibersek must follow in his footsteps and visit Chalumbin before she makes this crucial decision. She should stand atop the ridge and watch the wedge-tailed eagles soar above forests stretching as far as the eye can see. She should sit with the elders and hear their stories of the Dreamtime. Then she should carve out a place for herself in history by saving Chalumbin and persuading her party to change course and go nuclear.