Climate & Energy Justice
We Need Renewables in the Right Place
"Can you imagine 239 turbines abutting the Tasmanian World Heritage Area, or Kakadu World Heritage Area, or the Blue Mountains World Heritage Area? The Wet Tropics deserves better!"
Climate & Energy Justice
The ‘climate election’ we need to have
As pre polling opens for the 2022 federal election, climate change and the environment have been largely missing from the mainstream debate.
Yet what happens at this election will impact climate and environment, in a time where science makes it abundantly clear that we don’t have time to waste if we want to avoid catastrophic climate change.
Climate & Energy Justice
Alarm that IPCC WGIII report on climate mitigation accepts overshoot of 1.5°C and relies on unproven technofixes that won’t curb runaway climate change
Once again, the IPCC’s findings have become a political battleground. Climate justice campaigners fear that climate scientists’ core message – that we must make an urgent just transition away from fossil fuels to limit the risk of runaway warming – is being undermined by the legitimisation of a 1.5 degree overshoot in modelled scenarios, and pathways that include unproven and speculative technologies to supposedly cool the planet later down the line.
Activists and experts from Friends of the Earth International, the world’s largest grassroots environmental federation, gave their responses.
Climate & Energy Justice
Climate to drive agenda of new government
This was the climate election we really needed. Although the mainstream media debate largely focused on issues like the cost of living, there was clearly a deep desire in the community to see the parties commit to meaningful action on climate change.
Poll after poll showed the depth of community concern for climate action. Poll after poll showed that this concern cut across party lines. But the conservatives in the federal government continued to ignore these calls, while stoking the culture war. And now they have paid the price of this refusal to listen to the community.
Climate & Energy Justice
Statements from Pacific Elders Voice
The Pacific Elders Voice group of highly renowned present and former leaders has issued two strong statements in relation to major regional and global issues - new security moves by the Australian government and its partners in the AUKUS agreement, and the recently released Working Group II 6th Assessment Report of the IPCC.
Climate & Energy Justice
Community solidarity after the floods
The news from south east Queensland and northern NSW is devastating. Among the harrowing stories of loss and destruction, there are many of mutual aid, solidarity, empathy and bravery.
As author Rebecca Solnit explained so beautifully in her book ‘A Paradise Built in Hell’, during and after disasters, it is the self initiative and self organising of affected communities that does some of the best work at emergency relief and long term recovery.
As the clean up gets underway, here are some ideas of local initiatives you may want to support.
Climate & Energy Justice
Healthcare workers stage die-in at AGL office to protest pollution
Last week, Gippsland health professionals travelled to Melbourne to join a theatrical health protest outside AGL’s head office to call on the energy giant to reduce its harmful coal pollution, warning that the health impacts of climate change could dwarf the impacts of Covid-19.
Climate & Energy Justice
There is no climate justice without LGBTIQA+ liberation
This article was written for Chain Reaction magazine by queer, enviro and social justice activists, Zianna Fuad (they/them) and Phil Evans (he/him or they/them), who are part of the Friends of the Earth community.
Climate & Energy Justice
COP 26: ‘Rich nations have kicked the can down the road’
The Conference of Parties (COP) climate negotiations in Glasgow has just ended. Climate science makes it clear that we are running out of time to avoid climate catastrophe and this COP was vital in terms of achieving global agreement to act to limit overall climate heating.