Yarra Climate Action Now!

Yesterday Julia Gillard announced some of the Labor Party's climate policies.

Debate amongst the YCAN team has centred on whether these are the worst policies ever, or the second worst.

The Labor Party cannot even pretend to care about climate change now. These policies will see Australia's emissions continue to rise rapidly while the impacts of climate change keep worsening.

In summary, the policy announcements are:

1. A green light for new coal-fired power stations and existing ones to keep polluting indefinitely

Twelve new coal-fired power stations on the drawing board around Australia have been given the go-ahead. Any new plants beyond these will be subject to "emissions standards", which will only block brown coal developments, but not black coal.

Further, all new coal plants (the phrase "new coal plants" shouldn't exist in and of itself as we should not be building any) will need to be "carbon capture and storage ready" - something that is completely meaningless.

Existing polluting infrastructure, such as Hazelwood Power Station remain untouched.


2. More inaction and delay

The "citizens assembly", due to report in over 12 months is just an excuse for inaction, when urgent action is desperately needed. Community consensus on climate action has existed for years, and scientific consensus has existed well before that. We want action, not more talk!


3. Money from solar energy to go to buying petrol cars

Money will be taken away from the solar infrastructure program to fund rebates for car owners to purchase a new car if their car is older than 1995.


For further information see the Vote Climate website.

And for further analysis, Bernard Keane from Crikey has expressed it well in his piece:


Citizen Gillard abandons basic leadership on climate change

It's hard to describe just how truly wretched Labor's new climate change policy is. It makes the CPRS, its dog of an emissions trading scheme, look like a model of best practice. It is a spectacular failure of leadership.

Julia Gillard's "citizens' assembly" has effectively outsourced responsibility for climate policy to "ordinary Australians", on whose "skills, capacity, decency and plain common sense" Gillard will rely to tell her about the community consensus on climate change. In effect it institutionalises what is already apparent -- this is a Government controlled by focus group reactions.

Labor has been playing politics with climate change for three years and it hasn't stopped. But whereas for most of that time it used climate change to damage the Coalition, now it is having to defend itself against the issue. It will only be with the political cover afforded by this nonsensical Assembly that the Government will take any action on a carbon price.

Rarely has so much goodwill and political capital been wasted on such an important issue.

The consensus the Government insists it needs the protection of before acting already exists. It's not just in the opinion polls, which show time and time again that the majority of voters want action on climate change and supported the Government's CPRS. In 2007, let's not forget, both sides of politics told Australians they were going to introduce an ETS. The 2007 election endorsed a community consensus on the need for action.

Instead, in 2010, neither party will commit to any sort of carbon price mechanism for at least three years. Instead, they're offering excuses as to why they don't want to take action. We've done anything but move forward on climate action.

Gillard's interim actions are little better. The new emissions standard she proposes won't even apply to four coal-fired power stations being built or brought back on line currently. They may not apply to two more, the massive Mt Piper and Bayswater projects in NSW, which will together add 4% to national CO2-equivalent emissions when they come on line. Holding the baseline for the CPRS at 2008 levels won't give electricity generators any more investment certainty when it remains unclear whether there will ever be an emissions trading scheme in Australia. Nor does it change the simple fact that State Governments continue to drive Australia into a coal-fired future.

Labor's craven pandering to key outer-suburban electorates in its population and asylum seeker policies was bad enough. But abdicating executive responsibility for action on climate change is a new low in cynical politics, beyond the depths even reached by NSW Labor. Politicians are elected to lead. Deferring every controversial issue back to the electorate is a clumsy variant of leadership by polling and focus groups.

So blatant is Labor's refusal to lead that it raises serious questions about its fitness for government. The only problem is that the alternative is an economically-illiterate party whose leader doesn't believe in climate change at all, but who insists on wasting $3b on the most expensive possible means of addressing it.

What a choice, two major parties incapable of leadership and unfit to govern.

Unfortunately, the Gillard Prime Ministership has gotten off to a very bad start.

Within 24 hours of her swearing in, the Federal Government was signing a deal to export brown coal - the world's dirtiest, most greenhouse gas intensive fuel - to Vietnam.

The greenwash was coming in thick and fast from the Trade Minister Simon Crean, who said the technology used in this export deal would clean up the brown coal - when in fact it will make it as polluting as black coal - still a disaster in terms of emissions produced.

So far, Victoria has avoided the coal export curse, with all its associated health and environment impacts, which affects NSW and QLD. This deal is a step in the wrong direction. Australia is the world's biggest coal exporter and this makes us one of the biggest pushers of the fossil fuel drug which is causing global warming.

We must stop exporting coal as well as burning it within our own shores. Not only will this help avoid catastrophic climate change, a transition to renewable energy will create more jobs than it destroys and in the medium and long term provide a massive boost to the Australian economy.

Luckily this grubby deal did not go unnoticed. A group of people gathered at the Southbank hotel where the deal was signed, after being given only a few hours notice. The media coverage can be see here - The Age, ABC

It is crucial that the Australian public cuts through the spin coming from the Labor Party and judges Julia Gillard on her policies.

Steve and Naomi from Rising Tide reporting from Bolivia

Some countries around the world are feeling the effects of climate change more than others, yet most of us are unaware of these struggles. Australia is doing relatively well coping with the current effects of climate change for now, at least compared to some low lying island nations or communities reliant on the melt waters from glaciers.

This was made amazingly clear at the Bolivian hosted World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, April 2010. Throughout the conference, people spoke about losing human rights due to water shortages. Glacier-fed drinking water disappearing as global warming melts the snowy peaks away.

We learned that one of the glaciers in the Andes mountain chain, Chacaltaya was once a popular ski field, but has completely disappeared, years earlier than scientists predicted. And according to these same scientists, in the next 20-30 years most of the glaciers right across the Andes will go, affecting access to water for 70 million people.

One woman was very direct when talking us. “What can we do to stop this?”

We considered Australia’s contribution to these climate problems. In Australia, we mine and burn coal as our number one energy source. We have some of the world’s largest per person carbon emissions due to our dirty energy supply. Even this seems insignificant compared to the coal we mine and export, releasing more CO2 than all of our domestic emissions combined.

Australia is the world’s biggest coal exporter, and state and federal governments are planning to expand this deadly industry, building roads and railways so we can send the coal to the ports faster, and pushing for new mines to be opened. That is, unless we stop them.

After a little scratching of our heads we turned back to the woman, “We could paint a banner with a glacier-fed community that reads, Please Stop Mining Coal, Climate Change is Taking Our Water”.

There was no going back now. This woman’s question set us on a path high into the Andes Mountains in search of an appropriate community. We found ourselves in the meeting room of local NGO Aqua Sustentable (Water Sustainability) explaining our odd sounding idea to strangers we hoped could help us in our quest to share this message with Australians back home.

Our enthusiasm caught on and days later we took off further up the mountains with their team. Within three hours we arrived at the Khapi community, passing seemingly endless fields of fresh growing food along the way. We learned the Khapi community is made up of about 40 families, all working together to grow their food, live in mud brick homes and use the glacier-fed water supply that literally flows right past their houses.

Upon arriving at the community, we were greeted by 30 smiling faces at the primary school. To begin, we gave a short presentation about Australia (and our world famous kangaroos) the coal industry, renewable alternatives and our climate change work back home. We spoke in English, another woman translated into Spanish, and then another young man spoke in the local Aymara language. Luckily, the photographs projected up onto the wall told most of the story.

It wasn’t a fun story to tell. Photos from near our home in the Hunter Valley NSW, showed open cut coal mining. Tiny spots in the dark hole were revealed to be enormous trucks hauling tones upon tones of coal. Huge smoke stacks spewing dark clouds of pollution. The more we told the story, the more the reality of what is going on really hit us.

The children seemed glued to the slides, including the photos of Australian banners. When we explained our banner idea they all cheered with excitement. They now had a chance to paint their own.



The kids loved it. We were very impressed with the way they concentrated to make the banner the best it could be. They were obviously very proud of their hard work, parading the banner around the community above their heads, laughing and carrying on.

They soon reached a special lookout where we could see the towering glacier in all its glory. Illimani.

After the laughter and joy we shared with the kids, it was sobering to hear the words of community leader Severino Cortez Bilbao. “Recently we've started thinking about our Illimani. Before it was pure white, right down to there. In the last 5 or 6 years it's suffered badly, it's all black. Some people don't think about it, but we are thinking about it, we're thinking about our children, those who will come after, because we're already getting on, we may not see what happens later on. If Illimani dries up, there'll be no water and no life, no life.”

This experience turned out to be far more than a banner painting exercise. It was life changing. We knew a little of warming events in mountainous regions of the world, but it was something else to visit a community where their glacier and water supply is disappearing before their eyes.

The challenge to support climate affected communities and to encourage action against climate change and coal mining is a large one, but the smiles of those children with the most to loose will stick with us for a while yet.

What dinosaur lives in the Latrobe Valley and suffers from terrible gas?


Hazelwood brown coal power station near Morwell in the Latrobe Valley is Australia’s most polluting power station and one of the dirtiest in the developed world.

Hazelwood produces a whopping 15% of Victoria’s greenhouse gas emissions, and is a major consumer of our precious and scarce water (27 billion litres per year).

It was due to be closed down in 2009, but in 2005, in a shameful decision, the State Labor Government extended its life out past 2030.

If the Australian economy is to begin the transition to zero emissions, and thereby do our bit in avoiding the worsening droughts, fires, floods and sea level rises that will come from runaway climate change, then we need to start by replacing Hazelwood with clean renewable energy by 2012.

A number of groups have begun a campaign, calling on all parties to commit to replacing Hazelwood before the Victorian State Election in November this year. We have already held rallies and started doorknocking in inner Melbourne. This is a key election test – do the candidates in your seat support replacing Hazelwood with clean energy?

We need your help to make this happen!

What can I do?

• Send a letter to the Labor and Liberal Party leaders
• Sign up to the Environment Victoria or Climate Action Centre bulletins
• Join the campaign on facebook
• Follow Replace Hazelwood on Twitter
• Help with letterboxing or doorknocking (see video below)
• Print out and put a Replace Hazelwood poster up in your house or workplace
• Get more information

If you have any questions send us an email on yarracan@gmail.com

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.

Are our leaders criminally insane? Or maybe they live in a parallel universe?
These questions may seem harsh (and probably weird), but they need to be asked urgently in the face of developments in the past week.

First we'll set some context. The climate science keeps getting worse. Climate change is happening faster and faster, with the impacts become greater. We are facing an emergency the likes of which humanity has never seen. Europe's leading climate scientist, Prof Schellnhuber, has warned that on current trends, the Earth's carrying capacity for humans will be below one billion by the year 2100. He also released a report recently, which showed that to give ourselves a two out of three chance of avoiding more than 2 degrees of warming (already unsafe), the USA and Australia needed to cut their emissions to zero by 2020, China by 2035, with the whole world reaching zero by 2050.

In this context, the inaction of our governments on climate change is indeed striking, and the lengths they will go to to protect the profits of the coal industry very disturbing.

Last week, the Rudd Government rejected a UK Government proposal that Australia sign up to their policy of only approving new coal-fired power stations if they have clean coal (carbon capture and storage) technology in place. This sensible policy was rejected, probably because the Rudd Government is aware this would mean no more coal-fired power stations would be built, as carbon capture and storage will never be viable. But why are they planning to build any more anyway? How about some wind and solar thermal power?

At the state level, The Age revealed that the Minister for Maximising Coal Industry Profits, Peter Batchelor, is planning to open up Victoria's brown coal resources for export to India. This would mean that we export the world's most greenhouse gas intensive fuel to India for it to burn in its power stations. Why aren't we investing in manufacturing renewable energy technology and exporting that?

Our climate scientists are very worried, but they insist we still have a chance to avoid runaway climate change. However, this won't happen unless we stop burning coal, and stop it fast.

We need to let our leaders know that we don't live in a parallel universe, we live in reality, a reality threatened by the climate crisis.

A snap rally has been called to encourage Brumby to block the coal export proposal:
START: 12.30, Thursday 22nd October
WHERE: Steps of Parliament House, Spring St
FINISH: 1.10 – plenty of time for lunch and getting back to work!
RSVP: Let us know you’re coming by sending a quick email to exportingcoalisdumb -at- yahoo.com.au

The Australian Coal Association has launched a campaign in regional marginal seats, telling voters that acting on climate change (in the form of the Rudd Government's Carbon Polluters Rewards Scheme - CPRS) will cost jobs. There are a couple of factual errors here:

1. Acting on the climate crisis will create many more jobs than it will cost. Renewable energy is more labour intensive than coal power and the government investment needed will greatly boost the economy.

2. The CPRS isn't really going to do anything to reduce Australia's emissions, it is designed to give the appearance of action without actually shifting us from business as usual. The coal industry couldn't have hoped for a better deal.

And of course, it goes without saying that the Australian Coal Association couldn't care less about "jobs", what they mean of course is "profits". The coal industry has been responsible for thousands of jobs losses over the last 15 years in the Latrobe Valley here in Victoria.

So we need to fight back! Help get this add on TV to counter the lies from the coal lobby.

In a world first, the Canadian province of Ontario has put in place a plan to reduce its coal usage by 40% by next year (on 2003 levels) and is hoping to phase out coal burning altogether by 2014.

Wind power is booming in this province of over 13 million people, which is also an electricity exporter to the USA.

Some turbines will be closed down, while others will have their coal fuel replaced with natural gas and renewable biomass. While this isn't a transition to 100% renewable energy, it is certainly a step in the right direction and will be the single biggest reduction in Canada's greenhouse gas emissions in its history.

If Ontario can do it, then Victoria, with our plentiful sun, wind and educated workforce can do it too.

Are you listening John Brumby? These are the kind of short term targets and action that we desperately need to avoid runaway climate change.

For more information click here.

"Switch off Hazelwood. Switch off Coal. Switch on Renewables” is a day of fun, creative and inspiring peaceful community action at Victoria's dirtiest secret, Hazelwood coal power station. This march and protest at the gates of the Hazelwood Power Station, is organised by community members who care about climate change.

We need you all there!

The Hazelwood protest is the community climate movement's big protest action in the lead up to the Copenhagen negotiations. It's timed to coincide with the peak arctic ice melt, and it's far enough ahead to have a bearing on the Copenhagen negotiations, which are happening now!

The day is building to be a big success.

It is billed as a protest and peaceful mass civil disobedience and we need every one concerned about climate change to be involved! Here's what it means:

There are two distinct arms to the event:

You can protest outside the station with banners, clowns, some great creative and positive props, music and speakers - hopefully to include Senator Christine Milne, one of the few politicians advocating a reasonable science based approach to climate change.

At some point in the day, the second arm of the protest will attempt to walk on to the station to serve "Community Decommission Orders" to Hazelwood Power Station. This completely peaceful act of protest may result in those people being liable for charges of trespass: a decision that people have been willing to take because of the scale of the threat to our well-being posed by the climate crisis.

Participants in both groups are equally important!

Some further information:

Background

Coal burning power stations are one of the main contributors to climate change, which poses an enormous threat to the world and it's inhabitants. Hazelwood is one of the dirtiest coal power stations in the industrialised world. It releases an average of 17 million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every year and represents around 5% of Australia's emissions. It was scheduled to be shut down this year, however it was given a lifeline by the ALP state government in 2005 allowing it to continue operation until 2031. We need support renewable energy instead and extend the lifeline to our planet!

We are advocating an urgent transition to 100% renewable energy and away from coal. This is already technically possible. We are also demanding that the government support the Latrobe Valley community in a transition away from fossil fuels towards a clean energy manufacturing hub - protecting jobs and giving us all a future. Replacing dinosaurs like Hazelwood with renewable energy is the first step in this transition.

Our State and Federal Governments are failing on climate change. Their policies are nowhere near what scientists are saying is needed to avoid catastrophe.


Details of the Event

On 11am on Sunday September 13, 2009 we will meet on the corner of Broadribb & Nadenboushs Rd (South of Morwell) and march to the front gates of the Hazelwood, rallying to 'Switch on Renewables and Switch off Coal' and slap a Community Decommission Order on Hazelwood Power Station. The event will be well organized with speakers, media link ups, first aid and medical help available but you'll need to bring your own food and drink.

Skills Workshop

There is a weekend skills workshop coming up this weekend, 29/30 August: to build skills for future climate protest organizing as well as skilling up for the day . Look on the website for details!

And Of Course...

Climate change is a threat of unprecedented proportions to our world and all it's inhabitants. People who have never been involved in protest before are getting involved in protests over limate change. The science says we already have too much carbon in the atmosphere to avoid run away climate change. We need to motivate our politicians to act fast enough - that means stopping burning coal, building renewable energy ASAP and sequestering carbon out of the atmosphere. We need to speak strongly, loudly and persistently until it happens!

If possible, RSVP on the website to help with planning for the day. Any questions and for further details of the protest and how to get there go to the website: www.switchoffhazelwood.org

Dr James Hansen, one of the world’s most respected climate scientists (who raised the alarm on climate change in the US Congress 20 years ago) was arrested together with a 94 year old former congressman, Hollywood actress Daryl Hannah and around 30 others at a protest against mountaintop removal coal mining on the 22nd of June.


The protesters sat down and blocked a road near the Goals Coal Plant in West Virginia, demanding that this destructive form of mining be stopped, due to the direct ecological damage it is causing and the urgent need to stop burning coal in order to avoid catastrophic climate change.

"I am not a politician; I am a scientist and a citizen," said Hansen, who is the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City and adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University.

"Politicians may have to advocate for halfway measures if they choose. But it is our responsibility to make sure our representatives feel the full force of citizens who speak for what is right, not what is politically expedient," Hansen told a crowd of about 350 people gathered at Marsh Fork Elementary. "Mountaintop removal, providing only a small fraction of our energy, should be abolished."

Thank you Dr. Hansen.

For those of us that want to follow Dr. Hansen’s brave example, sign up at beyontalk.net and come along to the peaceful community protest at Hazelwood Power Station on 12-13 of September this year.

First published in The Age 30 March 2009, by Guy Pearse

IMAGINE the scene — you have had a bad day at work, the kids have the flu, and you have just got some nuisance caller off the phone. There's a knock on the door. "Hi, I'm from Alcoa," says a slickly dressed man with a Texan drawl. "We're wonderin' whether you'd care to give us and our fellow emission intensive trade exposed companies $500 a year until 2020 and beyond so we can have free emission permits?" You slam the door in his face.

Then there's another knock on the door, similar bloke with an Oxbridge accent. "I'm from International Power," he says. "Terribly sorry, old chap, but coal-fired power stations will be worth less once emissions trading comes in, so generators are charging all households a once-off fee of $455 to maintain their value for our shareholders." You tell him where to stick his bill.

Then there's yet another knock on the door. "Yah, hi thar," he says with a bitzer foreign accent — Swiss maybe, with some South African speckled through it. 'We're from the Xstrata, and we'd like some cheques from you for the coal industry: $93 to cushion us from the impact of emissions trading; $62 for new infrastructure to double coal exports; and $62 for work on 'clean coal technology' — $220 all up should cover it for now." You threaten to call the police unless he leaves the property.

...to continue reading the article, click here.