Yarra Climate Action Now!

Sunday 14 February
12noon
Melbourne Town Hall, Swanston St, City.

Seats are limited, to book your free seat go to: http://t10.eventbrite.com/

Featuring: The Governor of Victoria Professor David de Kretser AC
Uncle Bob Randall traditional owner of Uluru
Professor Will Steffen, Executive Director, ANU Climate Change Institute
Senator Christine Milne
...and many more.

At both the state and national levels, local leadership has failed to deliver even very small cuts in carbon emissions. Not surprisingly at the international level, the recent Copenhagen negotiations have produced no meaningful outcome either.

We have to face it, conventional political change methods have not worked.

We have run out of time for half-measures. It is now imperative that a safe climate is restored as fast as humanly possible. This will require zero emissions, and more, at emergency speed.

It seems that what is essential to accomplish is impossible to achieve. Clearly a breakthrough is needed.

The Transition Decade (T10) initiative has been designed to meet this dual challenge of going for the goals that are really needed and getting effective change too. The strategy is to harness the power of collaboration.

An alliance of committed groups has been formed to drive a collaborative framework through a decade of structural and social change. The launch will create the opportunity to take the size and effectiveness of this alliance to a whole new level. The launch of the Transition Decade will showcase leading work by groups that are using this shared time frame and scale of change, and will set out the many ways that thousands of organisations and millions of people can join the alliance.

Can we do it together? Will a shared plan work? Come along and decide for yourself!

Book your seat at: http://t10.eventbrite.com/

Brought to you by the founding members of T10, the Sustainable Living Foundation, Beyond Zero Emissions, Friends of the Earth and the Climate Emergency Network.

“Which way of life is the more desirable—to join with other citizens and share in the state’s activity, or to live in it like an alien, absolved from the ties of political society?”

Aristotle, Politics (350 BC)


Research by psychologists Klar and Kasser recently published in the Political Psychology journal has found evidence that activists are happier than non-activists and that doing something politically engaged improved vitality levels compared with doing a similar, non-political task.

Klar and Kasser surveyed university students in two separate studies, and found that those that identified themselves as activists or were located via an activist network were happier and more fulfilled than non-activists. This of course doesn't identify whether happy and fulfilled people become activists or if activism makes you happy and fulfilled.

Another experiment then split the sample (again university students) into those taking part in a politically engaged activity (writing to the cafeteria director asking for food to be sourced more ethically and locally) and a similar but non-political activity (writing to the cafeteria director asking for tastier and more varied food). It was found that those who wrote the political letter reported feeling more energised and alive afterwards than those that did not.

The full article can be downloaded from here.

And for your entertainment courtesy of 350.org - what the happy people got up to in 2009 - much more to come in 2010...

The Australian Greens continue their attempts to inject some common sense into the climate change debate. Yesterday they launched a proposal for a two-year carbon tax to start in July 2010 to begin the shift towards a zero carbon economy while a longer-term policy is sorted out.

The tax will be $20 per tonne of carbon dioxide at 2005 dollars, adjusted for inflation. The Greens estimate that this will raise $20 billion over the two years, half of which will be distributed to low-income households, $4 billion would go to trade exposed emissions intensive industries, $2.5 billion to tackling climate change in developing countries and around $1 billion to an Australian climate change action fund. Unlike Labor Party policy and in line with the Garnaut Review, there is no money for coal-fired generators.

While this proposal certainly does not go far enough with regards to how fast and how deeply we must cut emissions if Australia is to play its part globally in avoiding catastrophic climate change, it is at least a step in the right direction. So far the proposals from the Rudd Government only served to lock in business as usual and corporate welfare at the taxpayers' expense.

For more detail on the proposal click here.

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.

An Anglican bishop, an economics professor and a Nobel Peace Prize winner walk into a bar……and sit down to a vegetarian meal.

It’s not a joke, but a reflection of the increasingly mainstream concept of becoming vegetarian or vegan, or significantly cutting down meat and dairy in your diet, for ecological and climate change reasons.

In 2006, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) published the report Livestock’s Long Shadow, looking at the significant and growing ecological destruction caused by livestock farming all over the world. This report has recently been critiqued and updated in a report that found that 51% of the global warming effect caused by humans is caused by livestock farming (meat and dairy). Livestock produces huge amounts of methane (the vast majority from belching, not farting!), which is a potent greenhouse gas in the relative short term. Much of the land clearing and deforestation happening around the world is also linked to livestock farming, being either to clear land directly for grazing, or to grow feed for livestock.

In recent months, Economics Professor Nicholas Stern and Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have both urged people to cut down the amount of meat and dairy they consume, in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Anglican Bishop of London, Richard Chartres has recently become a vegetarian for ecological reasons.

So how about you, can you do it? Cutting down on personal meat and dairy consumption is certainly easier than trying to convince governments to shift their countries away from fossil fuel dependence. It's a great place to start making a difference!