Santana chair compares climate change graph to "... a rainbow flag. Left ideology entrenched everywhere."

In a series of social media posts the Australian Chair of Santana Minerals Peter Cook has attacked people who believe in climate change - and renewable energy.

Santana is controversially attempting to get planning permission to dig a $NZ 4.5 billion open pit gold mine in Central Otago’s tourism and wine region.

In one post he captions a climate change graph with “Even the graph looks like a rainbow flag. The left ideology entrenched everywhere.”

• On LinkedIn - Santana’s Chair links climate change to “the rainbow flag and left ideology.”

In another post Mr Cook attacks the state government of Victoria for supporting solar energy.

• Another LinkedIn post from Mr Cook. Claiming the Australian Liberal Party would “romp it in if they show some spine and political mongrel.” He accuses Victorian voters as “stupid” for supporting solar energy.

In another post Mr Cook praises the “herd mentality” of Australian retail gold buyers as the price of gold soared to $US 5,000.

Mr Cook’s views are attracting widespread attention in New Zealand today (January 30th, 2025) with climate scientists in local media calling his views “astonishing” including a claim from Mr Cook that carbon dioxide is the “gas of life.”

One post from Mr Cook opposing climate change science borders on the bizarre.

• This post is hard to understand - but the message at the bottom is clear - “Keep the social warriors and “tik tok” actors of modernity out of it.”

Mr Cook was putting his best foot forwards when Santana’s shares were launched on the NZ stock exchange a year ago saying:

“The view that a miner turns up in another country and starts digging a hole in the ground could not be further from the truth.”

Santana’s CEO Damien Camp then makes a statement that surprisingly was not edited out of the NZ share launch celebration, saying that he was “working with the community and government to mitigate some of those effects, positive effects.”

Santana’s share price has already reacted to a sequence of events that is turning the Santana Central Otago dream into something of a potential nightmare as the number of PR and technical missteps increases.