Yarra Climate Action Now!

Yarra Climate Action Now has graduated from a blog to a website!

This blog will no longer be active.

Go to http://ycan.org.au/ for all the latest climate action and news relevant to the inner-city.

While we still don't know who will be our Prime Minister, one thing is clear - the Greens have been the big winners in this election.


Here in the seat of Melbourne, Adam Bandt won his party's first ever lower house seat (in a general election) with a massive 13% increase in the Green primary vote (to a total of 36%) and a 10% swing from Labor to Greens two-party-preferred. Nationally the Greens gained about 11.5% of the primary vote, an increase of almost 4% from last election, by far the biggest gain for any party.

It also seems like the Greens will win 5 or 6 senate spots, meaning they may win one in every state. In Victoria Richard Di Natale has been elected to the Senate with a full quota of votes. The Greens will hold the balance of power in the Senate.

Both Labor and the Greens said that climate change was the biggest issue in the seat of Melbourne.

In The Age, losing Labor candidate Cath Bowtell said, "...clearly they [voters of Melbourne] want us to work faster on reducing carbon emissions and moving to a cleaner-energy economy.''

This result doesn't bode well for inner-city State MPs, who are facing an election in three months. The Brumby Government will have to vastly improved its climate policies if it doesn't want to lose seats to the Greens.

We hope this result encourages some soul-searching in the Labor Party. With both big parties offering no leadership to tackle the climate crisis, more and more people will keep turning to the Greens. We hope all parties heed the signs at this election and greatly improve their climate policies.

Yarra Climate Action Now is proud to have been a part of the Vote Climate campaign in the seat of Melbourne. Our work helped make a difference in this seat and helped the party with the best climate policies win! Well done to everyone involved.

Last weekend volunteers from Yarra Climate Action Now doorknocked over 1000 homes in Collingwood and Fitzroy for the Replace Hazelwood campaign. We gathered hundreds of signatures for our petition and spoke to people about the urgent need to replace Australia's dirtiest coal-fired power station with clean renewable energy. We got a great response from the community.

While many first-time doorknockers were nervous at the beginning, with one hour of training and practice, over 20 people hit the streets and had a good time doing it!

First time doorknocker Phil said:

"Thanks for the chance to participate. It was a great learning experience.

"Oddly, I was pretty nervous right at the start. I was worried about how to do the opening pitch when the door was first opened. I went with my partner and watched her as she did a few houses and that helped a lot.

"Following that, and after doing about 3 pitches myself I got over my nerves and started to really get into the flow. I then found it really enjoyable, in fact it really fired me up!"


Our next doorknocking session is Sunday 4 July in Richmond, 1-4pm (one hour training, two hours doorknocking), meeting at Melbourne Girls College, Yarra blvd, Richmond.

We need your help! Sign up now here.

YCAN's re-branding sessions outside the office of Richard Wynne, Labor member for Richmond are catching people's attention. See coverage below from the Melbourne Leader and Melbourne Times.

Please get in touch to help with the campaign to get Victoria out of coal and into renewable energy: yarracan -at- gmail.com, or drop in to a re-branding session for a chat, every Wednesday, 5.30-6.30pm, 112 Smith St, Collingwood.

Every Wednesday starting 3 February 5.30-6.30pm, 112 Smith St, Collingwood - 'til the bastards put humanity ahead of coal industry profits

Our weekly re-branding sessions continue and we need you!!

After completing six weeks in a row in 2009, we will now attempt to have a weekly presence outside Labor Minister Richard Wynne's office until the November State Election or until the Brumby Government implements some decent climate crisis policies!

Our actions are already having an effect. Richard Wynne was one of the Ministers that successfully argued to postpone the allocation of brown coal for export to India.

We will be correcting the Brumby Government's image, to match its pro-coal actions, every Wednesday, 5.30-6.30pm, 112 Smith St, Collingwood.

WE NEED YOU FOR THIS TO SUCCEED – CAN YOU FILL A WEEKLY, FORTNIGHTLY, MONTHLY OR ONE-OFF ONE HOUR SHIFT AT THE PROTEST VIGIL ON A WEDNESDAY EVENING? If you can please contact us – Yarracan -at- gmail.com

Also, if you are a musician or performer and feel like busking while we do our rebranding, we would love to have you on a Wednesday evening.

Some recent Brumby Government climate change 'initiatives':

• Investing our money in the construction of a new coal-fired power station in the Latrobe Valley.
• Lobbying to get the owners of coal power stations more compensation from taxpayers under an emissions trading scheme.
• Accepting thousands of dollars in donations to the Labor Party from coal corporations in return for private meetings in which coal expansion proposals are discussed.
• Investing in research in so-called ‘clean coal’ rather than genuinely clean energy production like 24-hour baseload solar and wind power that actually exist.
• Going back on a promise to introduce a gross feed-in tariff which would pay owners of solar panels for all the electricity their panels produced.
• Looking into exporting dirty brown coal to countries like India.

(references for the points above available on request)

To get on the roster for a shift contact Yarracan -at- gmail.com or show up on a Wednesday.

Yarra Climate Action Now, together with several other climate action groups across Melbourne have launched the Get the Picture Kev! visual petition. The photos will be collected at markets and other events, and presented to Kevin Rudd later in the year.

To host the cardboard cut-out and collect photos please contact us on YarraCAN@gmail.com.

To see media coverage of the petition in the Melbourne Leader, click here.

To see all the photos we have uploaded so far click here.

Kev's appearances in May 2009 will be:
Saturday 9 May at the Collingwood Children's Farm farmers market
Sunday 17 May at the Giant Human Sign at St Kilda Beach
Saturday 23 May at the Abbotsford Convent farmers market

That's all there is to say, the photos speak for themselves!



















For more photos, click here.