Gideon Polya, “Melbourne’s “CLIMATE EMERGENCY!” Human Sign. Australians & Tuvaluans Protest Man-made Climate Disaster”, MWC News,submitted 7 July 2008.
There are several photos that can illustrate this article. (1) the aerial photograph (carried by Australian TV) of the Human Sign saying “CLIMATE EMERGENCY!”: http://www.greenlivingpedia.org/images/1/1d/2008-07_climate_rally_human_sign_2.jpg and photographs showing MY local Yarra Valley Climate Action Group banner : http://www.greenlivingpedia.org/Image:DSC_6466.jpg (that’s ME holding the “Earth” side of the banner) and http://f1.grp.yahoofs.com/v1/YEBxSEDr-UD9SjFpmWnhoyEyUa9jzx6B2P6wo7_Pb9dtwtXd5xzMqgFmFQ0rATxK2ZteRvS3J26o6jTW5cCyaOe0e1Vy1jqkM1o/Photos%2C%20july%205%20Rally/The%20crowd%20at%20City%20sq.jpg (similar images appeared on Australian TV and in the print media).
Melbourne’s “CLIMATE EMERGENCY!” Human Sign. Australians & Tuvaluans Protest Man-made Climate Disaster
On July 5, 2008 about 5,000 citizens of Melbourne - plus some lovely people from the acutely climate change-threatened Pacific Island Nation of Tuvalu – gathered to protest man-made Climate Change in the Melbourne City Square and then marched through the City to make a HUMAN SIGN saying “CLIMATE EMERGENCY!” (for an aerial photo of the human sign that was broadcast around Australia by the various TV networks, and other photos of the Climate Emergency Rally - including your MWC News correspondent holding up the banner of his local Yarra Valley Climate Action Group - see: http://www.greenlivingpedia.org/Climate_emergency_rally_Melbourne_July_5_2008 ).
The Climate Emergency Rally was organized more than 50 community groups concerned about lack of Australian State and Federal Government action on climate change and linked to an Australian Climate Emergency Network (CEN; see: http://www.climateemergencynetwork.org/ ). One of the over 50 community groups involved was my own local Yarra Valley Climate Action Group (the beautiful Yarra River Valley is the heart of the 15,000 square kilometre City of Melbourne region in Victoria).
Like the other Climate Emergency Network groups, the Yarra Valley Climate Action Group (YVCAG) seeks to INFORM others in various ways about the Climate Emergency and Sustainability Emergency and has placed a series of well-referenced and succinct “10-point Climate Emergency Fact Sheets” on its website (see: http://sites.google.com/site/yarravalleyclimateactiongroup/Home ). SOME of the more shocking of these key Climate Emergency Facts are summarized briefly below for these various Facts Sheets by way of background to this Climate Emergency Rally report.
1. POLLUTION DEATHS FROM FOSSIL FUEL-BASED POWER PLANTS - “Annual coal-based electricity deaths” [and “total annual fossil fuel-based electricity deaths”] are 170,000 [283,000] (the World), 11,000 [13,000] (India), 47,000 [47,500] (China), 49,000 [72,000] (the US), 3,400 [6,900] (the UK), 4,900 [5,400] (Australia) and 2,700 [3,800](Canada) as compared to 110 [360] (heavily renewable-based New Zealand).
2. MAN-MADE, CO2-DRIVEN GLOBAL WARMING SCIENCE INFORMATION - top US climate scientist Dr James Hansen (Head, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, GISS, New York) says that we have gone too far: "The evidence indicates we've aimed too high -- that the safe upper limit for atmospheric CO2 is no more than 350 ppm", and wants a “negative CO2 emissions” policy of cessation of CO2 pollution and reducing atmospheric CO2 pollution (e.g. by use of renewable and geothermal energy, re-afforestation, returning carbon as biochar to soils).
3. GLOBAL WARMING DANGERS AND SOLUTIONS FOR OLDER PEOPLE - Heat waves will differentially kill elderly people – In 2003 there was a heatwave in Europe that killed 35,000-50,000 in Europe and nearly 15,000 in France. Older people were differentially affected, the problems being that older people are frailer, more prone to heat stress and have diminished brain signalling of dehydration stress. Retirement benefits require GDP growth, carbon-based growth is no longer possible but cheap, non-carbon energy alternatives are already developed – For people who are self-funded retirees on superannuation schemes or government pensions it is necessary for GDP growth to compensate for outlays and inflation.
4. “COAL IS KING” AUSTRALIA CO2 POLLUTION FACT SHEET - Australia is the world’s #1 Developed Nation CO2 polluter. Consulting the US Energy Information Administration database we obtain the following information on “annual per capita fossil fuel-derived carbon dioxide (CO2) pollution” in “tonnes (t) per person per year” for Australia and other major polluters (2004 data): 19.2 (for Australia; 40 if you include Australia’s coal exports), 19.7 (the US), 18.4 (Canada), 9.9 (Japan), 4.2 (the World), 3.6 (China), 1.0 ( India) and 0.25 (for Bangladesh).
Faced with these horrendous realities, the organizations linked to the Climate Emergency Network (CEN) have a common set of values and objectives, specifically a goal of a safe climate future for all people, all species, and all generations that can be achieved by the Global Community concurrently halting man-made greenhouse gas emissions, removal of excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and actively cooling the Earth.
Unfortunately the State and Federal Governments of Australia – while well aware of the seriousness of man-made Climate Change- are simply refusing to act in a timely fashion. The reason for this irresponsible inaction over Climate Change is simply that Coal is King in climate criminal, “look the other way” Australia that is the world’s biggest coal exporter and one of the very worst per capita greenhouse gas polluters.
Indeed the rally came at the end of a disastrous fortnight in which 2 (TWO) new, huge fossil fuel-based power plants were announced for the State of Victoria (of which Melbourne is the capital); the State Government of Victoria stated it intended to bill responsible community groups for the legal costs associated with their ethical opposition to the enormously CO2-polluting Victorian desalination plant project; and the release of economist Professor Ross Garnaut's Draft Report on Climate Change that warned Australia risked losing natural wonders like the Great Barrier Reef and Kakadu if it didn't act now to combat global warning – but which, in addition to many other major flaws, paradoxically supported continued but “cleaner” coal burning-based electricity in Australia.
A number of excellent speakers addressed the Rally and here is a sample of what was said.
Andrea Bolch (president of “Your Water Your Say”): "The proposed water factory [one of the world's biggest desalination plants] will emit up to 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 per year; a new power station is being built to power it. It can never be carbon neutral. There are alternatives to securing our water future with a fraction the emissions and a fraction the cost. Three times the capacity of the proposed factory falls on our city and runs into our bays every year. Collect that, and recycle our 2 billion litres of sewerage effluent; that is responsible, sustainable, climate safe water policy."
Emeretta Cross (a charming Tuvaluan mother who left the Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu five years ago in search of a better life in Australia): “With the rising sea levels we've got salt water seeping through and it's actually killing off the natural agriculture. We need to import produce so then it becomes a problem with pollution. It also becomes a health crisis for our people, let alone the possibilities of migrating around the world. [it was a] mother's responsibility to teach the children about what they stand to lose. It is today that we have to do something for our families and our friends both here and abroad.”
Dr Bob Brown (Senator, Leader of the Australian Greens Party and tireless worker for the environment and human rights): "We are one of the most vulnerable nations in the world. Climate change is a disaster which is on our doorstep. We, in this wealthy lucky nation, must take a lead for the rest of the world to follow. By 2050 we need a reduction in greenhouse gases by 90 per cent if not a totally carbon-neutral economy.”
David Spratt (author, together with Philip Sutton, author of Climate Code Red: The case for emergency action (Scribe, Melbourne, 2008), an extremely important book endorsed by NASA’s Dr James Hansen as “a compelling case … we face a climate emergency”): "Today, we actually have the economic and technical capacity to make this change if we have the so-called political will. The idea of emergency action with as many resources as is necessary is no longer a radical idea, it's simply a necessary idea.”
Readers of MWC News are well aware of the Climate Emergency from many articles published by this humanitarian and ethical journal (e.g. see “Clean Energy World” Painting. NASA’s Dr Hansen Pleads for Negative CO2 Emissions” on MWC News: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/23119/42/ and “Solar Energy & the End of War. US Solar Balloon Technology to slash solar energy cost 90% by 2010” on MWC News: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/18667/42/ ).
Top UK climate scientist Professor James Lovelock FRS has warned that over 6 billion people will perish this century due to unaddressed, man-made climate change. Silence kills and silence is complicity – please INFORM everyone you can about the Climate Emergency and Sustainability Emergency facing the world..
Please follow the example of decent Australians resisting their troglodyte, climate criminal, coal burning-committed State and Federal Governments. Set up local Climate Action Groups like the Yarra Valley Climate Action Group (YVCAG); unite them under a national Climate Emergency Network umbrella, like the Australian Climate Emergency Network (CEN); and spread the message about the Climate Emergency, if need be by creating huge HUMAN SIGNS as we did on July 5 in Melbourne, Australia, to spread the urgent message: “CLIMATE EMERGENCY!” and the urgent need to ACT NOW.