Mobilising public and private resources to restore a safe climate for the common good
In February 2016, global temperatures spiked to well over 1.5°C above pre-industrial times, just weeks after the Paris resolution aimed at not exceeding that benchmark. See: Climate Reality Check
Ask the Australian parliament to declare a climate emergency
and mobilise resources accordingly
Australians are great at pitching in to help and mobilising resources in an emergency. Remember the Queensland floods of 2011? Three-quarters of the council areas within the state of Queensland were declared disaster zones. Government funds were made available and a large workforce was mobilised to deal with the emergency.
Volunteers were quick to offer assistance. More than 55,000 volunteers registered to help clean up the streets of Brisbane, with thousands more simply pitching in to help in all affected areas. All over Australia kind-hearted individuals and community groups took the initiative to send supplies and raise emergency funds.
Declaring an emergency is a significant step. It mobilises government and community resources and funds that are not normally available and inspires the public to act for the common good.
» Sign the petition
If you would like to embed or co-publish this petition page on your website, or if you’d like to know more about our ‘petitionSTORM’ plans, please read here:
» What is a Climate Emergency PetitionSTORM?
This petitionstorm is co-published at
» www.climatesafety.net/petition
» www.climateemergency.good.do
» www.corenafund.org.au
» www.climatesafety.info/climateemergency
» www.groundswellbasscoast.com/climate-emergency-declaration
Future Environment Defenders (FED Up)
» Climate Change Balmain-Rozelle website
» See who supports this campaign
Interviews with Margaret Hender from CORENA
Margaret Hender from CORENA lives in Adelaide and is part of a group which started this petition to the Australian parliament, urging politicians to declare a climate emergency and take action accordingly. In this interview with The Sustainable Hour on 94.7 The Pulse in Geelong, she talks about the reasons, the hopes and the goals:
CityMag“In an emergency, which I really do believe we’re in when it comes to the climate, everything changes. In an emergency you all jump in and do whatever you can – nobody really cares if it’s an equitable distribution of effort. Those who can do a lot do a lot, those who can do a little do a little – you just get on with it.”
Margaret Hender
Climate emergency mobilisation blog
- USA | Margaret Klein Salamon: How to go into emergency mode
- Australia | Ian Dunlop: What we need is a Government of National Unity
- USA | Bernie Sanders: We must move on climate as we would if we were at war
- USA | Legal petition pushes President Obama to declare climate emergency and end oil exports
- Canada | The Leap Manifesto: Call for a leap to prevent catastrophic global warming
- United Kingdom | Winston Churchill: There is one bond which unites us all
- Australia | David Spratt: Amazing things are what we need to do on climate now
- USA | Barack Obama: We’re not acting fast enough
Enquiries
Margaret@CORENAfund.org.au
MikAidt@climatesafety.info
Philip.Sutton@green-innovations.asn.au
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Time to recognise the risks: Australian #climate emergency Declaration petition https://t.co/xYgrtjmFsi pic.twitter.com/6vWlcU0LJH
— John Englart EAM (@takvera) April 17, 2016
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4 thoughts on “Help build support for a climate emergency declaration”
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Given the dire news on climate, the huge damage to public health and the steepening coal industry death spiral we can’t afford to muck around. We need a concerted effort to make sure that we make a just transition to 100% renewable energy at the earliest possible opportunity.
Record-breaking heat run continues through March
First 3 months of 2016 are 1.51C above late 19th century
The temperature data for March 2016 is out. March was 1.53C hotter than late nineteenth century.
The record-breaking El Nino has driven up temperatures by about 0.2C, to a mind-blowing set of figures over last year. So the NASA temperature data last shows last 6 months (compared to 1880-1909 baseline) as
Oct 2015 – 1.31C
Nov – 1.28C
Dec – 1.35C
Jan 2016 – 1.39C
Feb – 1.60C
Mar – 1.53C
Average for first 3 months of this year: 1.51C
April is currently running ~1.4C but may drop a little.
The raw data is here:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.C.txt
So much for all the blah about how we have got 30 or 40 years to get to zero emissions to keep to under 1.5C of warming!
David Spratt
On 14 April, Bernie Sanders went public again on the need for a WW2 emergency response to climate. The Altantic Magazine called it “The Democrats’ Most Substantive Climate Debate Yet” (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/the-democrats-most-substantive-climate-debate-so-far/478503/)
Throughout the back-and-forth on climate, Sanders compared global warming to warfare. The United States should respond to melting icecaps like it would respond to a foreign invasion, he said: “If we approach this, Errol, as if we were literally at a war — you know, in 1941, under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, we moved within three years, within three more years to rebuild our economy to defeat Nazism and Japanese imperialism. That is exactly the kind of approach we need right now.”
The idea that climate change will require a mass economic mobilisation on the level required by World War II is an increasingly popular idea among environmentalists. It’s been written about in these pages:
Not war and war: politics and environmentalism
http://www.basecase.org/env/not-war-and-war
The Atlantic Magazine: Why Solving Climate Change Will Be Like Mobilizing for War
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/why-only-a-technocratic-revolution-can-win-the-climate-change-war/410377/
and Al Gore has called for it as a way to end the global savings glut:
The Economist: The global secular savings stagnation glut
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/puzzles
It is also the opposite of the world’s current approach, which is effectively to divert investment from fossil fuels to clean energy. Seeing this idea enter mainstream Democratic rhetoric so forcefully bodes well for its chances.
Did anyone notice the heading tucked away on page 10 of last Saturday’s Age? (26/3/16) – ‘Time is running out for climate’. Everyone knows we have to take emergency action if a small baby’s temperature goes up a degree or two. But do we know what to do when the ‘baby’ is the whole earth life system?
Yet the biggest power everyone has right now is to vote in the next election for clear-eyed parliamentary representatives who are publicly resolute about the costs of not acting and who have a real and concrete plan for rapidly winding down coal, oil and gas production to transition Australian industry to energy based on solar and other clean power sources.
The Turnbull government’s recently quietly launched productivity Growth Centre for oil, gas, coal seam gas, coal and uranium (Age 24/3/16) and the emails revealed by FOI showing they wanted CSIRO to cease ALL public good climate work (Age 4/4/16) augur badly. There’ll be no viable economy without a viable climate.