hey Anne.
a recent addition/new member of the H-B Greens has organised for the
Climate Change Despair & Empowerment Roadshow to be held in Bundy
soon. Ann J should be able to fill you in on when and where.

--- In ClimateChangeAction@..., Clemens Vermeulen
<clemens1947@...> wrote:
>
> Climate Change Despair & Empowerment Roadshow
> with Ruth Rosenhek & John Seed
>
> Climate change is the most serious issue facing humankind. Learn
more
> and see what you and your community can do to effect change.
> A multi-media presentation including film of Al Gore speaking on
the
> Australian situation
>
> NORTHCOAST EVENTS
> WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 21st - 24th
>
> Feb 20. 6:30PM Bangalow Hypothetical - A Future Scenario mc'ed by
> Mick O'Regan with panel of experts - A&I Hall
>
> Murwillumbah -  Feb 21 Civic Auditorium  7:30PM
> Kyogle - Feb 21 Memorial Hall 7.30PM
> Byron Bay - Feb 22 Community Centre 7.30PM
> Ballina - Feb 22 Richmond Room 6:30PM
> Mullumbimby - Feb 23 Pioneer Hall 7PM
> Nimbin - Feb 23 Town Hall 7:30PM
> Uki - Feb 24 Uki Hall 7.30PM
> Lismore - Feb 24 Red Dove 7:30PM
>
> For further details, visit www.climate.net.au or email
> rainforestinfo@... or ring 66 897 519.
>
> Ruth Rosenhek, MS in Organisational Management, is Director of the
> Rainforest Information Centre in Lismore (NSW). Ruth is an
> international environmental activist who organizes and campaigns on
> behalf of forest protection, land rights and global justice and
> teaches deep ecology. See
> http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/deep-eco/rosenhek.htm.
>
> John Seed is founder of the Rainforest Information Centre. John has
> been working for 30 years for the conservation of nature. In 1995
he
> was awarded the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) by the Australian
> Government for services to conservation and the environment.
>
>
> Rainforest Information Centre
> Box 368, Lismore 2480 NSW
> (02) 66897519
>
> http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/
>
> --
> Rainforest Information Centre
> Box 368, Lismore 2480 NSW
> (02) 66897519
>
> http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/
>
> ruthr@...
>
> Watch our latest film, Appiko on the web at  http://www.appiko.org
> In the tradition of Gandhi and the Chipko movement,they used direct
> action to save the forests of the Western Ghats. An inspirational
> story of a non-violent grass-roots movement that arose in the
vilages
> of Southern India.
> --
> This message has been scanned for viruses and
> dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
> believed to be clean.
>
>
> --
> Clemens Vermeulen
> web:     http://clemens.vermeulen.id.au/
> e-mail:  clemens@...
> contact: http://clemens.vermeulen.id.au/contact
>
> Also a provider of technical services to:
> clients of http://inkcart.com.au/
>
> Telephone:
> Cairns: +61 7 4015 1940
> Brisbane: +61 7 3305 0190
> Sydney: +61 2 9028 7005
> Melbourne: +61 3 9015 7225
>
> Toll free: 138813 1 61733050190#
>
> Fax: +61 7 33011853
>
> SIP: +899 060 3305 0190
> SIP: 33050190@...
> mobile: +61 4 1900 6050
>
>
> Live Tech Support:
> Live How To Support through your favourite Internet Messenger:
> ICQ: 265476993
> MSN: support@...
> Yahoo: Altnews_Helpdesk
> Google Talk: Altnews.Helpdesk@...
> We are generally online during AU business hours UTC+1000
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>

08 May 2007, Customs House

http://www.brisinst.org.au/calendar/20070508_59.html

This would be a good opportunity to ask him if his transport plan, in
the light of the Climate Change feedback they received (http://
www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/BCC:BASE:1735908314:pc=PC_2450) is what would
be the best for a sustainable future.


--
Brooke Smith <novorivus@...>
You will always get the greatest recognition for the job you least like.
PGP: http://keyserver.veridis.com:11371/export?id=4427400912143993659




[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

----- Original Message -----
From: "AlterNet EnviroHealth" <alternet@...>
To: <anne@...>
Sent: Tuesday, February 13, 2007 4:35 AM
Subject: Who's Funding Global Warming | Preparing for a Post-Oil World


Daily Message:

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the first dispatch of EnviroHealth. While concern about the
environment has always been high on the list for many Americans --
it is quickly gaining public momentum and political traction now as well.

We are excited to bring you the best stories about the re-energizing of
a movement, the policy and innovation being developed, and the people
who are making change happen.

Environmentalist Bill McKibben, who has been writing about the dangers
of global warming since 1989, said recently that he has felt more hope
in the last six months than in the last 20 years. These are indeed exciting
times to be writing and reading about the environment.

Stay tuned,

Tara Lohan
___________________________________________________________
WHO'S FUNDING GLOBAL WARMING?
By Tara Lohan, AlterNet
Find out which banks are part of the problem, and which are
part of the solution, in the fight against global climate
change.
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/47615/

TEN WAYS TO PREPARE FOR A POST-OIL SOCIETY
By James Howard Kunstler, Kunstler.com
The best way to feel hopeful about our looming energy crisis
is to get active now and prepare for living arrangements in
a post-oil society.
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/47705/

VEGETARIAN IS THE NEW PRIUS
By Kathy Freston, HuffingtonPost.com
Livestock destroy the environment, so fill your bowl with
veggies instead of veal.
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/47668/

RENEWABLES CAN TURN THE TIDE ON GLOBAL WARMING
By Kelpie Wilson, TruthOut.org
There is no "silver bullet" solution to our energy crisis.
But a new study shows that the right combination of
renewables may be our best bet.
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/47654/

EXXONMOBIL'S WAR ON SCIENCE
By Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., HuffingtonPost.com
With an elaborate network of phony think tanks and slick
public relations firms, ExxonMobil has become today's Big
Tobacco, defrauding the public and waging a war on science.

http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/47371/

THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU CAN DO TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING
By Tara Lohan, AlterNet
Environmentalist Bill McKibben explains that forcing
Congress to take action on climate change is the top
priority. Fortunately, he has a plan.
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/47064/

ALPHA FEMALES
By Bill McKibben, Grist Magazine
You know climate concern has gone mainstream when sororities
get on board.
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/47702/

BIODIESEL: THE FUEL THAT DOESN'T KILL US
By Joshua Scheer, Truthdig
Annie Nelson, wife of Willie Nelson, speaks about
community-based biodiesel production as a way of restoring
dignity to family farmers, the environment, the economy and
national security.
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/47367/

APPLE COMPUTERS: FUN FOR YOU, TOXIC FOR THE ENVIRONMENT
By Jess Hemerly, AlterNet
Apple positions itself as the technological haven for the
hip, the progressive and the revolutionary. But when it
comes to the environment, Apple is quite out of touch.
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/47228/

WILL 'GREEN' BUILDING BE THE FUTURE OF NEW ORLEANS?
By Kellie Lunney, The American Prospect
There is no shortage of "green" plans for rebuilding New
Orleans. But what does sustainability mean to people
without a roof over their heads?
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/47724/

___________________________________________________________
These stories and more are available on in EnviroHealth
on AlterNet.

http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth

==========================================
Donate: Visit https://www.alternet.org/donate/ to support
AlterNet and independent journalism.

Unsubscribe: Visit http://www.alternet.org/unsubscribe/
to unsubscribe.

/*Your email ID. <diaEmailID='282975177' thread=5412/>--*/

Climate Change Despair & Empowerment Roadshow
with Ruth Rosenhek & John Seed

Climate change is the most serious issue facing humankind. Learn more
and see what you and your community can do to effect change.
A multi-media presentation including film of Al Gore speaking on the
Australian situation

NORTHCOAST EVENTS
WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 21st - 24th

Feb 20. 6:30PM Bangalow Hypothetical - A Future Scenario mc'ed by
Mick O'Regan with panel of experts - A&I Hall

Murwillumbah -  Feb 21 Civic Auditorium  7:30PM
Kyogle - Feb 21 Memorial Hall 7.30PM
Byron Bay - Feb 22 Community Centre 7.30PM
Ballina - Feb 22 Richmond Room 6:30PM
Mullumbimby - Feb 23 Pioneer Hall 7PM
Nimbin - Feb 23 Town Hall 7:30PM
Uki - Feb 24 Uki Hall 7.30PM
Lismore - Feb 24 Red Dove 7:30PM

For further details, visit www.climate.net.au or email
rainforestinfo@... or ring 66 897 519.

Ruth Rosenhek, MS in Organisational Management, is Director of the
Rainforest Information Centre in Lismore (NSW). Ruth is an
international environmental activist who organizes and campaigns on
behalf of forest protection, land rights and global justice and
teaches deep ecology. See
http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/deep-eco/rosenhek.htm.

John Seed is founder of the Rainforest Information Centre. John has
been working for 30 years for the conservation of nature. In 1995 he
was awarded the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) by the Australian
Government for services to conservation and the environment.


Rainforest Information Centre
Box 368, Lismore 2480 NSW
(02) 66897519

http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/

--
Rainforest Information Centre
Box 368, Lismore 2480 NSW
(02) 66897519

http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au/

ruthr@...

Watch our latest film, Appiko on the web at  http://www.appiko.org
In the tradition of Gandhi and the Chipko movement,they used direct
action to save the forests of the Western Ghats. An inspirational
story of a non-violent grass-roots movement that arose in the vilages
of Southern India.
--
This message has been scanned for viruses and
dangerous content by MailScanner, and is
believed to be clean.


--
Clemens Vermeulen
web:     http://clemens.vermeulen.id.au/
e-mail:  clemens@...
contact: http://clemens.vermeulen.id.au/contact

Also a provider of technical services to:
clients of http://inkcart.com.au/

Telephone:
Cairns: +61 7 4015 1940
Brisbane: +61 7 3305 0190
Sydney: +61 2 9028 7005
Melbourne: +61 3 9015 7225

Toll free: 138813 1 61733050190#

Fax: +61 7 33011853

SIP: +899 060 3305 0190
SIP: 33050190@...
mobile: +61 4 1900 6050


Live Tech Support:
Live How To Support through your favourite Internet Messenger:
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Google Talk: Altnews.Helpdesk@...
We are generally online during AU business hours UTC+1000


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

----- Original Message -----
From: Joey Racano
To: joeylittleshell@...
Sent: Monday, February 05, 2007 3:24 PM
Subject: (2012) ~Global Warming Brainstorming~


Dear Friends of the Earth,

A group of California activist's have come up with a simple and do-able anti-
global warming action plan (attached/pasted below). Check it out then read this
letter. If you agree, cut and paste it, add your name, and send it to the Email
addresses at the bottom. For Senator Feinstein, go to her site at:
http://feinstein.senate.gov/email.html

For Barbara Boxer, here: http://boxer.senate.gov/contact/

Thank you for standing up and being counted.

Joey Racano, Director
Ocean Outfall Group
PO Box 1260, Morro Bay
Ca 93443


Subject line: Help global warming by preserving old growth forests

Body of email:

February 4, 2007

Dear Members of Congress, the Legislature, and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger,

The task of saving California's old-growth forest has always been such a
contentious issue, that leaders of both major parties have historically shied
away.

However, in light of the recently released United Nations report by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the stakes, like our seas, have risen
significantly. The time has come for spirited debate to end and decisive action
to begin.

We the citizens of the global community support the idea of carbon sequestration
through protection of California's last remaining old-growth forests, consider
it to be an excellent first step in the quest for global climate stabilization,
and do hereby call upon our leaders to begin implementation of such a program.


Sincerely,

Your Name:
Your Address,
City, State, Country:


send to:

dkucinich@..., governor@..., George.Miller@...,
senator.harman@..., sf.nancy@..., gary.miller@...,
assemblymember.berg@..., senator.kuehl@..., 
senator@...,  senator_byrd@...,
kmiller@..., adieslsi@...,
AmericanVoices@..., tom_bohigian@...,
bulletinfeedback@..., ladams@...,
webmaster@...

check out my BLOG at: www.stopthewaiver.com

~GLOBAL WARMING BRAINSTORMING~

                             by Susan Moloney and Joseph Racano

Campaign for Old Growth

A Proposal to Reduce Greenhouse Gases through Carbon Sequestration, while
Simultaneously Protecting Old-Growth Trees

POINTS TO CONSIDER:

* Old-growth trees and mature forests store more carbon, a component of the
greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, than young trees and tree plantations do.
California old-growth forests sequester more carbon than any other forest type
on Earth, reducing global warming from industrial and other emissions.

* Ancient trees are second only to wetlands in their ability to sequester carbon
from the atmosphere.

* Most of California's original old-growth trees have been cut down.

* Currently, no state or federal statute bans the cutting of old-growth trees in
the State of California. Most people are incredulous to learn this

* The risk of severe fires is increased by removing large, fire-resistant,
old-growth trees from the forest, because those trees shade out flammable
undergrowth and preserve moisture in the forest.

* Language currently exists that will protect California's largest and oldest
trees -- SB 754, introduced by Senator Perata 2/21/03.

* Prop 84 may have funds available that could be used to compensate and/or
credit landowners who have these trees on their land.

TOP 3 REASONS TO PASS THE HERITAGE TREE BILL ALONG WITH A CARBON CREDIT
COMPONENT:

   1.. A majority of people in California, throughout the country and around the
world want to see our majestic ancient trees protected.
   2.. These trees help reduce global warming by storing carbon.
   3.. Whom ever passes this legacy legislation will by thanked by current and
future generations!
Page 2

PERMANENTLY PROTECTING OUR MASSIVE OLD-GROWTH TREES AND REDUCING GREENHOUSE
GASES ARE ISSUES THAT ARE OF EXTREME IMPORTANCE. WE LOOK FORWARD TO WORKING WITH
YOU TO PASS THIS HISTORIC LEGISLATION THAT WILL ACCOMPLISH BOTH GOALS.

CONTACT:

Joey Racano, Director....or.......Susan Moloney, Founder

Ocean Outfall Group............Campaign for Old Growth

PO Box 373................P O Box 1928

Morro Bay, Ca 93443............Redway, CA 95560

(805) 748-3233 cell.............(707) 932-0026 cell

(805) 772-2988 home and fax

www.stopthewaiver.com....................................www.ancienttrees.org

stopthewaiver@...@ancienttrees.org

-----------------
"They took out Saddam Hussein and they hanged him, for good or worse. It's not
up to me to judge any government, but that gentleman was the president of that
country."

-Hugo Chavez


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Socialist Alliance meeting
System change, not Climate Change
Thursday February 8, 6:30pm
Brisbane Activist Centre, 74B Wickham St, Fortitude Valley

Socialist Alliance's first meeting of 2007 will look at the savage
environmental crisis facing humanity, especially in regards to Climate
Change, the inability of capitalism to address the crisis, and the need for
fundamental systematic change that brings our environment under social
(rather than corporate) control. Join this discussion, then help plan out
other activities, such as:
* continuing the steps forward for justice for Aboriginal rights after the
victory that Palm Island cop Hurley will be charged;
* solidarity with Venezuela and Latin America
* a radical alternative in the Federal elections

See you on Thursday. Ph 3831 2644 for more info.

***
Red Cinema, progressive films on the big screen, presents...
Panther
Sat February 17, 6:30pm for 7pm.
Brisbane Activist Centre, 74b Wickham St The Valley.

Entry by donation $10/$6 conc/$3 high school, food + drinks available from
6:30pm.
Funds raised to Green Left Weekly. www.greenleft.org.au Ph 3831 2644; 0400
720 757


PANTHER is a feature film dramatising the development of the Black Panther
Party, where the brutalised Black population in the US organised to resist
racism and police violence.
An inspiring film that shows what people power can do in the face of
institutionalised racism - a struggle that is alive in Queensland today as
the Aboriginal community and supporters campaign for justice and an end to
Black deaths in custody.

***
Walk for sustainable transport
11am Sat Feb 17
Rally Queens Park, Cnr George and Elizabeth Sts
Walk to State Parliament
Want more frequent public transport services? Sick of crowded trains and
buses? Want more + better bikeways? Want safer facilities for pedestrians?
Then come join the walk! Organised by Community Action for Sustainable
Transport. Ph Tristan 0416 786 615 or David 0403 871 082

***
Environment Film Festival
Friday March 2 - Sunday March 4
All films at Brisbane Activist Centre, 74B Wickham St, Fortitude Valley
Delicious vegetarian food & drinks available from 6:30pm each night of the
festival.

A feast of environmental films to inform and inspire - from the struggle for
renewable energy to overcoming Peak Oil, from anti-nuclear to confronting
climate change. All enjoyed on the big screen in an intimate setting with
delicious food and drinks available, and open discussions surrounding the
film themes.

Films include (more to be announced):

Who killed the electric car?
A murder mystery, a call to arms and an effective inducement to rage, "Who
Killed the Electric Car?" is a brilliant complement to documentaries like Al
Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth". The film reveals
the necessary alternatives that already exist - and the lengths that the
corporate world will go to to safeguard profits, rather than our planet.

The burning season - the Chico Mendes story
A feature film dramatisation of the life of Amazon rainforest activist Chico
Mendes, a leader of the Rubber workers union, who takes on industrial
pirates that want to burn the rainforest to make way for a highway. Mendes
and his followers counter the developers with their numbers and their
bodies, in acts of civil disobedience with are met by kidnapping and
torture. In one of his last roles before his death, Raul Julia gives an
impassioned, breathtaking performance as Mendes.

End of Suburbia plus Power of Community - how Cuba survived Peak Oil
End of Suburbia reveals the ever depleting nature of oil, which in turn has
become a necessity in industrial capitalism - an addiction encouraged
through mass consumerism in the first world "burbs". Power of community
shows how an
alternative social system - beholden to the needs of the environment and
people, not the corporate bottom line - deals with peak oil. The film gives
clues not only to the overcoming of Peak Oil - moving to a sustainable
environment of organic farms and urban gardens - but the collective action
needed globally to confront the enormous environmental challenges of the
21st century.

Tickets
Per session $10 waged / $6 concession
Purple Festival Pass (Entry to all sessions) $25/$15
Green Festival Pass (All sessions, all dinners, 1 complementary drink
each night) $45/30

Enquiries:
Ph 3831 2644; 0410 629 088. Email: brisbane@...

Fundraiser for Australia's leading progressive paper, Green Left Weekly, and
the Socialist Alliance

***
International Women's Day Rally and March 2007
Women unite for justice
* Repay stolen wages * stop family violence * no more deaths in custody *
end the occupation of Iraq * repeal Workchoices
Sat March 10, 10am, Queens Park (Cnr George & Elizabeth Sts)
Ph: 0400 720 757; 0407 631 117

--
Brisbane Activist Centre, 74b Wickham St, Fortitude Valley
Home of Socialist Alliance, Green Left Weekly, Resistance + books, badges,
t-shirts, more!
Ph: (07) 3139 1765; 3831 2644 Mob: 0410 629 088 Email:
brisbane@...
http://www.greenleft.org.au     http://www.socialist-alliance.org/brisbane


Messages in this topic (3) Reply (via web post) | Start a new topic
Messages | Polls
Books Not Bombs is a youth and student coalition against war. Books Not
Bombs Organised two very sucessful High School and University Student
strikes agaist the Iraq war in March this year. We are still organising as a
network of people who are committed to halting the war path of the US,
Australian and other governments who are determined to go to war against the
third world. We believe a world without war is possible, but only if it is
world that puts ordinary people's rights before the profits of big
corporations and the super rich. Everybody i welcome and encouraged to get
active with Books not bombs. We can be reached at the Brisbane activist
centre on 3831 2644 , Dave on 3875 7227 or phone Jason on 0407155581 for Uni
or High school activity.

Hope to see you
soon

from December's New Internationalist

Costing climate change

George Monbiot resists the urge to do battle in a fog of meaningless
statistics.

Now that the dismissal of climate change is no longer fashionable, the
professional deniers are trying another means of stopping us from taking
action. It would be cheaper, they say, to wait for the impacts of
climate change and then adapt to them. They have the figures to prove
it. It is tempting to prove them wrong. Given the new projections of
major drought in continental interiors, of a possible global food
deficit, of sea level rises with the potential to affect billions of
people, it should be easy to demonstrate that the price of waiting for
the catastrophe is higher than the price of reducing emissions. But it’s
a temptation we should resist. Such calculations use costs which simply
cannot be compared. The most famous exponent of the comparison is the
Danish statistician Bjørn Lomborg. In his book The Skeptical
Environmentalist, he argues that the cost of doing nothing about climate
change – of letting nature take its course – is $4,820 billion. The cost
of stabilizing global temperatures at 2.5° above the 1990 level would be
$8,553 billion; and the cost of stabilising them at 1.5° above the 1990
level would be $37,632 billion. He warns that ‘with the best intentions
of doing something about global warming we could end up burdening the
global community with a cost much higher or even twice that of global
warming alone’. It would be better to use our money to make investments
with higher returns, leaving ‘future generations of poor people with far
greater resources’.

Many environmentalists have taken him to task, claiming that his costs
for taking action are too high and his costs for the impacts of climate
change are too low. But they have been drawn into a fake debate. For
while the costs of taking action can reasonably be measured in dollars,
most of the costs of climate change cannot.

We are told, for example, that the financial costs of Hurricane Katrina,
which may have been exacerbated by climate change, amount to some $75
billion, and we can use that number to help derive a price for carbon
pollution. But does it capture the suffering of the people whose homes
were destroyed? Does it reflect the partial destruction, in New Orleans,
of one of the quirkiest and most creative communities on earth? Does it,
most importantly, measure the value of the lives of those who drowned?

In other words, is it possible to place an economic price on human life?
Or on an ecosystem, or on the climate? Could such costs, when rolled out
around the world, really be deemed to amount to $4,820 billion, give or
take the odd dollar? Such figures are not just wrong. They are meaningless.

When economists have tried to put a price on such things, they have
simply exposed the limitations of their science. In 1996, for example, a
study for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that a
life lost in the poor nations could be priced at $150,000, while a life
lost in the rich nations could be assessed at $1.5 million. The
researchers produced these figures by estimating how much people would
be prepared to pay for the adaptive measures that would save their
lives. Unsurprisingly, they discovered that the lives of rich people
were worth more than the lives of poor people.

These days, economists are less prepared to expose themselves to
ridicule. So anything that cannot be quantified is simply excluded from
the balance sheet. What this means is that the loss of all the really
important things – a functioning ecosystem, human communities, human
life – is overlooked. Because they aren’t counted, they don’t count.

It would be wrong to blame only Bjørn Lomborg and the economists whose
work he promotes for taking this line. Almost everyone feels obliged to
attach a price tag to global catastrophe. The British Government, for
example, has decided that the ‘social cost’ of carbon emissions is
somewhere between $60 and $250 per tonne, with a middle value of $120.
We might reasonably ask what the heck this means. Does the British
Government really believe it can put a price on the people of Africa? On
Bangladesh?

The answer appears to be yes. In its White Paper on aviation, it washes
its hands of responsibility for the 235-per-cent growth in flying
expected in Britain between now and 2030. The massive boost to
greenhouse gases this will cause should be remedied, it says, by
encouraging the airline industry to ‘pay the external costs its
activities impose on society at large’. But how? Should a steward be
sacrificed every time someone in Ethiopia dies of hunger? As Bangladesh
goes under water, will ministers demand the drowning of a commensurate
number of airline executives?

The only suggestion it makes is that aviation fuel might be taxed. The
implication is that a payment in pounds or euros would somehow cancel
out the ‘external costs’ of rising emissions, which means death and
ecological collapse.

Taking action, in other words, must be a moral decision, not an economic
one. Either we decide that it is right to spend a lot of money seeking
to prevent catastrophic climate change or we decide that it isn’t, but
we must make that decision on the grounds of how much we value people
and places as people and places, rather than as figures in a ledger.

This is not the only way in which different kinds of costs have been
conflated. The denial industry also manages to mix up money actually
spent with money that might have been made if regulations suppressing
climate change weren’t in place. But spending money that really exists
and not having money that might have existed are costs which are felt
quite differently.

At the moment, all of us ‘suffer’ economically as a result of the ban on
psychotropic drugs. If this trade had been legal, it would have
increased the size of the economy, which means that on average we would
be slightly richer today than we are. But, with the exception of a few
people who have been hoping to sell these items legally, we do not walk
around under a cloud, lamenting the fact that money which might have
entered our pockets has been denied to us. The impact of this constraint
is real, but it has not been felt by us. No-one’s bank account is
emptied by what might have been. The political impact of the two kinds
of ‘cost’ is very different.

Even when taking action means spending real taxpayers’ money, it is not
always true that this always represents a genuine social cost. It
depends on how the money would otherwise have been spent.

One of the arguments made by those who claim that we should take no
action is that if the same amount of money were spent on relieving
hunger, or supplying clean water, or preventing AIDS or tuberculosis or
malaria, it would save more lives. This approach tends to overlook the
fact that climate change is likely to cause more hunger, more water
stress and more communicable disease, thereby raising the cost of
addressing them. But this is not the strongest response to their
argument. Behind their case is an unfathomable assumption: that money
spent on preventing climate change is money not spent on foreign aid. In
other words, it supposes that the climate change budget is in direct
competition with the rich countries’ foreign aid budgets, rather than
with any other kind of spending.

If the rich countries were already doing everything in their power to
help the poor, this argument would carry some weight. But it is hard to
think of a national exchequer which has ever been endangered by its
foreign aid spending. The governments of Europe have agreed that by 2015
– a mere 35 years after the date they first set for themselves - they
will give 0.7 per cent of their national income in foreign aid. The US
currently spends 0.17 per cent of gross domestic product – just over $19
billion - on aid. Britain spends 0.36 per cent, or about $7.5 billion.

In other respects these governments are more generous. Britain’s budget
for the widening the M1 motorway is $6.3 billion. This is nearly seven
times as much as it is currently spending every year on tackling climate
change. In his book Perverse Subsidies, published in 2001, Professor
Norman Myers adds the direct payments US corporations receive from their
government to the wider costs they oblige society to carry, and arrives
at an annual figure of $2.6 trillion. This is roughly five times as much
as the profits they were making at the time his book was written. As
well as the annual $362 billion the 30 richest governments were paying
their farmers when Perverse Subsidies was published, they were spending
some $71 billion on fossil fuels and nuclear power and a staggering $1.1
trillion on road transport. Worldwide, governments pay companies $25
billion a year to destroy the earth’s fisheries, and $14 billion to
wreck our forests.

In the European Union, according to the European Environment Agency,
direct and indirect subsidies for the coal industry amounted to $17
billion in 2001, and subsidies to the oil and gas industry to $11
billion. In the US, Joseph Stiglitz, the former chief economist at the
World Bank, and Linda Bilmes, an economist at Harvard, calculate that,
on ‘very conservative’ estimates, the war in Iraq has so far cost their
country between $1 and $2 trillion.

This is not a choice between state spending on climate change or state
spending on foreign aid and essential public services. It is a choice
between state spending on climate change or state spending on coal, oil,
roads, farm subsidies, environmental destruction and unprovoked wars. We
could reasonably ask why governments seem to find it so easy to raise
the money required to wreck the biosphere, and so difficult to raise the
money required to save it.

So please don’t take the ‘costs’ of climate change – either its impacts
or action prevent it – at face value. Even when teased apart, they mean
less than economists claim. We cannot use a spreadsheet to decide
whether or not to act. We can only use our conscience.

George Monbiot’s new book Heat: how to stop the planet burning is
published by Penguin. He has also launched a new website –
www.turnuptheheat.org – exposing the fake green claims of corporations
and politicians.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21206820-421,00.html

From: "Rettet den Regenwald e.V."
Encourage the Dutch government to say NO to EU-rainforest-destruction


The Dutch government has realized that they were wrong to subsidise
the use of 'deforestation palm oil' in power stations. They
acknowledged the link between this kind of 'bioenergy' and rainforest
destruction and promised never to repeat their mistake. Please ask
them to veto plans by the EU Commission to legislate for high
mandatory biofuel targets, in the absence of any credible safeguards.

There is an urgent email alert to the Dutch government which you will
find at

http://www.regenwald.org/protestaktion.php?id=129

PLEASE USE THIS LINK, SINCE THE ENGLISH VERSION CANNOT BE SEEN ON THE
WELCOME PAGE.

News Poll @  http://au.news.yahoo.com/

[b]Do you support a proposed eventual ban on coal exports?[/b]

results so far:
4420 votes since Feb 8 2007
yes  42%  1867 votes
no  52%  2298 votes
undecided  6%  255 votes

watched this a couple of nights ago >

[b]Tony Jones speaks with Tim Flannery[/b]
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2006/s1842715.htm

Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 07/02/2007
Reporter: Tony Jones

[i]Tony Jones speaks with Australian of the Year Professor Tim
Flannery, on the issue of climate change.[/i]

Transcript:

TONY JONES: Let's look back at a moment in today's Question Time when
the newly-minted Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull set out the
scale of the problem facing the Government which have to reign in
carbon emissions to deal with global warming.

MALCOLM TURNBULL, ENVIRONMENT MINISTER: China, Mr Speaker, is the
world's second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. Only a few years
ago it was forecast to overtake the United States by 2020. China's
growth has been so rapid that it is expected to overtake the United
States by 2010 or even 2009. So it is growing extraordinarily quickly,
in terms of its greenhouse gas emissions.

China is commissioning the equivalent of a 1,000 megawatt coal-fired
power station every five days and its additional growth in emissions
equals Australia's annual total every eight months. So that gives an
idea of the scale of the problem.

TONY JONES: Well, Malcolm Turnbull's solution is to export Australian
made clean coal technology to these giant polluters, along with our
shipments of coal. At the same time the Government is edging towards
some form of carbon trading system.

Joining us now is Professor Tim Flannery, arguably Australia's best
known popular scientist. He's also the author of The Weather Makers
and he was recently named Australian of the Year.

Thanks for being here.

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY, SCIENTIST & AUTHOR: It's a pleasure. Thank you.

TONY JONES: We've just heard Malcolm Turnbull set out, as he said, the
scale of the problem, but that's just China. There is India as well
and between them, they have some 600 coal-fired power stations on the
drawing-board. What happens to the atmosphere if they are all
commissioned and they are not clean?

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: I think the battle for climate stability will
be lost and we'll have very serious consequences within the next two,
three or four decades.

TONY JONES: We'll be lost if India and China specifically aren't
reigned in?

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: If we have an increase on that scale - and
just to put that in perspective, over the last 10 years, when we've
been arguing whether we should have carbon trading or not, the volume
of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere - human-caused greenhouse gas -
has increased by 20 per cent in a decade. Over the next five years, it
is likely to increase by another 10 or 15 per cent and so on. So the
problem is growing so large that we'll reach a point where it simply
won't be feasible to turn the situation around.

TONY JONES: That's what we call a tipping point. Is there a way of
assessing how close we are to a tipping point where you can't reverse
or fix the situation?

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: Look, it is not possible to say when that
point is going to come, but a useful analogy is the development of
cancer in the human body. In a sense, the IPCC report we had last week
was the experts saying, "We've got a very serious problem. The Earth
has got a serious disease. We don't know yet whether it's got to that
point where it's metastasised and run away but we need to start
treating it soon and effectively".

The sooner you start treating it and the more effectively you start
treating it, the better chance you will stop it before it gets to that
tipping point.

TONY JONES: It's interesting you should quote the IPCC report, because
you are very critical of it, aren't you? You think it's rather a
conservative outlook and doesn't reflect what in fact is happening or
the speed with which it is happening.

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: Look, I'm not critical of it in a sense. It's
a consensus document and it is conservative particularly from the
perspective that it cuts off the science in early 2005 and a lot has
happened since then. Of course, being a consensus document, a lot of
the material that I think is reasonably well-supported also gets
weeded out through that process. If the IPCC says it you better
believe it and then leave room to think it is actually a lot worse
than they have said.

TONY JONES: What do you believe that goes beyond what they think and
what's the evidence for that?

[b]PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: Look, what we've seen in the Arctic over
the last two years has been such breathtaking change that you have to
worry about stability for sea levels and for the entire Northern
Hemisphere climate system. The rate of ice melt in 2005 increased by
about five times over what it was previously and it's been very, very
large again in 2006. Now if you take those two years as the new
trajectory for ice melt in the Arctic - we've only two years of data
there - but if we do that, there will be no Arctic to melt in five to
15 years and that is an astonishingly short period of time for an ice
cap that's existed for three million years.[/b]

And when you think that - the climate system of the Northern
Hemisphere is structured by the temperature gradings between the Pole
and the equator, you know, so it's as you start changing the
temperature of the Pole you start reorganising the climate system of
the Northern Hemisphere. So I'm very fearful that not in 50 or a
hundred years time but within 10 or 20 years time we'll start seeing
very large scale changes in the bio sphere and people will realise,
perhaps belatedly, the nature of this emergency.

TONY JONES: One of the things that you point out - and I think it is
interesting to note because people don't realise - for example, that
the atmosphere is not as big as many assume it is, for example, it is
much smaller than the ocean.

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: Yeah, it's about one 500th the size of the
ocean, and that explains why we've had three atmospheric emergencies,
if you want, through my lifetime, you know. We had acid rain, then we
had the hole in the ozone layer and now we've got greenhouse gases and
climate change. We haven't yet precipitated a global oceanic pollution
crisis. It is not that we don't throw rubbish into the oceans, it's
just that the oceans are so much bigger. Incidentally, the day we do
that – the day we pollute the oceans globally - is the day we can say
goodbye to any sort of planetary stability, because the oceans are the
great drivers of the system.

TONY JONES: What we know for sure is that Australia contributes,
although it does contribute to greenhouse gas only a tiny proportion.
We talked about China, we talked about India as Malcolm Turnbull did.
Now the Government are banking very heavily on Australian made clean
coal technology being used to clean up all of those coal-fired power
stations in China and India that you say could tip us over the edge.
How likely is it that that technology could be ready in time and
effective enough to actually do that?

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: I don't think it will be ready in time. I
think we need to take a much more holistic approach than this. Look,
from a scientific perspective, looking at the data, I feel as if it is
1939 and there's an enormous threat on the horizon and we need to act
in a way that isn't the way that we act normally. Under normal
circumstances, our economic wellbeing and whatever is what we put
first and foremost. When you are faced with a dire crisis, that's not
the first thing that we address. For example, just going back to that
analogy of going to the doctor and finding you've got a serious
disease, you don't ask, "How much is it going to cost me to get
cured?" You ask, "What are my chances of a cure and what do I do to
make sure the cure happens?" That's the situation I feel we're in.
We've got to address this issue, even if it means a sacrifice at this
time for a better future.

TONY JONES: Let's talk in specifics though, about the Australian
technology that the Government is banking on. Why do you think it
won't be ready?

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: First of all, it's dependent on the nature of
the ground under those power stations. Some parts of the Earth's crust
are suitable for sequestrian carbon, other parts aren't. We haven't
yet done a survey to see how widely applicable this technology will
be. We know from the Australian situation though, that the Hunter
Valley is not a good place to put the CO2, whereas perhaps West
Gippsland and the Yachtway Basin is a little bit better. How widely
applicable it will be no one knows.

Secondly, the costing is not yet clear. We know the electricity
generated by this technology is going to be more expensive than
standard coal-fired power plants but how much more expensive is as yet
unclear. In the Australian situation, the best figures I can see
suggest that it may be 6 to 10 cents a kilowatt hour, as opposed to
the three or so that we pay now.

TONY JONES: Let's take it to a broad level, because we are talking
about the global problem and as we said earlier, we are talking about
China and India being these two emerging giants with hundreds and
hundreds of coal-fired power stations on the drawing board. It's
Malcolm Turnbull's expressed hope that in years to come the greatest
contribution Australia could make to the reduction of greenhouse gases
globally is to export this technology to those countries.

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: That will be part of the solution, but there's
going to be other aspects to that solution too and part of that is
going to be nuclear power because some parts of the world simply don't
have the wealth of options that we have here in Australia. But there
are many other alternatives as well. Geothermal energy, for example,
is something that is barely spoken about, yet whose potential is every
bit as great.

TONY JONES: I'll come to that in some detail in a moment because I
mentioned it at the beginning of the program and your quite sort of
radical solution to our power needs. We will come to that but here is
a question I put to the Prime Minister on Monday night. Now given that
Australia sends to China and India huge volumes of the coal that they
are burning, could there come a time, without drastic change to the
way it is burnt, where it's no longer in our national interests to
export coal?

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: That time has already come. The social licence
of coal to operate is rapidly being withdrawn globally, and no
government can protect an industry from that sort of thing occurring.
We've seen it with asbestos. We'll see it with coal. The reason is
that, when you look at the proportion of the damage being done by coal
now, it is significant, but that grows greatly in future. We have to
deal with that issue if we want a stable climate.

TONY JONES: But it is clearly not going to happen is it? I mean, both
sides of politics - because of the incredible employment opportunities
offered by the mining industry and the prosperity this country gets
from selling coal to China and India - are not going to touch that.

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: We'll have to make a choice. Do we want our
minerals processing sector to prosper into the future or do we want
coal to prosper? That will be the sort of choice we'll have to make.
If we want minerals processing and minerals extraction to be a big
part of our future, we need to start investing now in technologies
that are going to deliver low cost electricity that don't create the
pollution, and that's where things like geothermal, I think become
very, very important.

TONY JONES: What are you going to say - I mean, you are Australian of
the Year and you get a chance to talk to these politicians. What are
you going to say to them about the fact that we're exporting the coal
that is being burnt that creates the CO2 that you believe could
destroy the world?

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: The first thing to say is we should have
ratified Kyoto because Kyoto is an international mechanism that deals
with the unwanted consequences of the coal trade and other fossil fuel
trades. If we had done that 10 years ago, we may have lessened the
damage that was being done and we may have been on a trajectory
towards healing the planet. We didn't do that, so now the medicine we
have to take has to be more radical, because the problem has grown by
20 per cent in the meantime. We are now getting close, many people
believe, to that tipping point where matters will be taken out of our
hands.

TONY JONES: By whom?

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: By the planet, by the nature of the climate
system, these positive feedback loops in the climate system. Once you
heat the planet up enough, you get to the point where, no matter what
humanity does, it is then too late to act.

TONY JONES: Mr Howard was quit emphatic on this issue when I
interviewed him. He defines Australia's national interest obviously,
as being our economic interests and there are huge economic interests
at stake and of course, the Government is saying, "We have the
technology, it's coming down the track, we'll send it to India and
China. They'll be able to fix the problem".

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: The technology is going to be too small and
come too late to fix the problem. We actually - 10 years ago - it is
possible had we had those technologies then and had we had carbon
trading then that we may have been able to use them as tools to fix
the problem. The problem has grown too big now to be fixed. We need
real investment by government, real sacrifice. At the moment for a
better future.

TONY JONES: You know what the Prime Minister said, he said that if we
stop sending Australian coal the Chinese will burn Chinese coal, which
is in fact dirtier and it will be even worse.

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: I think that's a false - what do you call it -
a false equation. The Europeans are already talking about tariffs,
carbon-based tariffs. As the situation unfolds and the matters get
more critical, the world is not going to allow people to pollute our
common atmosphere as occurs at the moment. The social licence to
operate those old polluting technologies will be withdrawn.

TONY JONES: You've mentioned Kyoto a moment ago. Of course, the reason
- the stated reason - the Government won't sign them or won't ratify,
I should say, the Kyoto Protocol is precisely because India and China
and the United States, for that matter, are not part of it.

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: You know what China said two days ago? They're
not going to rein in their emissions because the big polluters like
the USA and Australia haven't ratified Kyoto, and why should they take
up the challenge when we haven't addressed it. It's a great blame game
by us all and that sort of thinking gets us nowhere. We actually need
to move forward.

TONY JONES: Do you think carbon trading alone, even on a global scale,
will be enough to rein in the problem you see coming down the track?

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: It's a critically important tool. We must get
into Australia but it alone will not do the job now. The problem has
grown too great.

TONY JONES: So you think more radical mandated solutions might be
necessary?

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: We need real government leadership. We need to
set a target within the next 10 or 20 years which will allow us to
start exploiting some of these renewable and non polluting sources of
energy and use them as the backbone of our minerals processing
economy. These seem like radical ideas now but the sort of things five
years ago what we are talking about today seemed unbelievably radical.

Just to come back to coal, the Australia I grew up in rode on the
sheep's back. Where is the sheep today? The economy has changed and it
will change again in future. I'm convinced if we plot the right
trajectory Australia's prosperity will agree as we move away from coal.

TONY JONES: Let's go to the radical solution. You've actually
advocated for Australia closing down all coal-fired power stations and
going to power rationing, creating a joint national scheme, like the
Snowy Mountain scheme, to exploit geothermal power from the South
Australia Cooper Basin. How would it work?

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: I haven't talked about power rationing. I
think that we do need to ultimately close down those coal-fired power
plants but first we need to build the bridge to the new energy future.
There are hot rocks in South Australia that potentially have enough
embedded energy in them to run Australia's economy for the best part
of a century. They are not being fully exploited yet but the
technology to extract that energy and turn it into electricity is
relatively straightforward.

TONY JONES: Is it there? I mean, is it there at the time? I know there
are pilot plants in the Cooper Basin. How much of an effort, a
national effort, would it take to take that further as you pointed
out, and make a grid starting from there, spreading out to the rest of
the country?

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: If we started off on a raw footing, so this is
the big investment in our future, the big Snowy Mountain scheme, to
secure our future as the world's mineral processor and mineral
extraction area, I think we could probably do a very large amount of
that within a decade. We've got the north-south railway now. We simply
need to build on that, we need to reorient our grid, but first and
foremost, we need to prove up these technologies. So we need a large
investment in both solar-thermal and geothermal technologies, because
both have huge potential in this area to produce abundant cheap
electricity and they don't have the sort of problem we have with
nuclear. Part of the issue with nuclear is it is so politically
contentious and perhaps that's why it's on the agenda, but it also
makes it more difficult to use in Australia to move forward, and
frankly, I think there are better options.

TONY JONES: I've got to ask the obvious question: in your position,
you're going to get the chance to put the chance to put these sorts of
arguments to those directly in power and those who want to be in
power. I presume you've done that to some degree already. Is anyone in
the political scene thinking carefully about this proposal?

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: I suspect that some people are. The big
challenge for those people will be bringing their party with them.

TONY JONES: Do you think - I mean, I've got to ask this question. Are
you talking about in Government or in Opposition?

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: I think for both.

TONY JONES: There are people on both sides who listening to these ideas?

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: Yes.

TONY JONES: Why haven't they entered the national debate? You are
basically saying, "Here is something that would solve our power
problems a hundred years into the future".

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: People are thinking about late 20th century
solutions that might have been appropriate 10 years ago, and people -
we haven't caught on to the extent to which the problem has grown and
the urgent need now for much more widespread solutions. It is not just
securing our energy future, it's getting the gas out of the air and
Australia can play a leading role there too.

TONY JONES: Tim Flannery, you'll have a unique opportunity as
Australian of the Year to put these arguments. I'm glad you've had the
chance to do it on this program tonight. We'll see how you go. It was
obviously a provocative choice by the committee, putting you in this
job. It's an interesting time for you to be there. Thank you for
joining us.

PROFESSOR TIM FLANNERY: Thank you. I don't know if I'll thank them in
a year's time, but thank you.

http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/warming/?s=wklyenv

The War Resisters Support Campaign in Canada is seeking help in
finding temporary shelter for American war resisters who decide to
come to Canada. To that end the message and petition below will be
sent to the Green Party of Canada seeking its help in publicising
their need for help and to ask it's 8,000 members to help if they can.

This message will only go out to the public if the Green Party of
Canada approves it at its monthly meeting on Feb 11th. This approval
is by no means certain so we are asking for help from Worldwide and
Canadian supporters of the war resisters to help sway council to do
the right thing.
If you'd like to sign the petition either as a member or supporter of
the Green Party of Canada or as a person of any political persuasion
or nation who supports the war resisters please e-mail your name,
city, and country to easygreen@... and I'll add you to the list.

My apologies for cross posting but this is an urgent matter.

Thanks,

In Solidarity,
Dan Murray, Brampton, Canada



==========================================================

To: Green Party of Canada Council
including Provincial Represntatives and Shadow Cabinet and EDAs

From: The undersigned members of the Green Party of Canada
Members in Good Standing and Lapsed Members

Petition for Action

Green Greetings,

The undersigned Green-minded individuals, exploring grassroots values
of the Global Green Charter have identified a matter of great
urgency related to our core value of non-violence. To that end we
desire the GPC Council to take immediate action on the following
ordinary resolution:

We propose that the following statement be posted on the GPC website:

------------------------------------------------------------
"Since the Green Party of Canada is a Party of Peace, we support the
efforts of the War Resisters Support Campaign to provide shelter for
those of our American friends who refuse to kill or be killed in the
name of war.
We encourage all Greens who can do so to provide temporary space in
their homes for war resisters who have chosen to leave their country
rather than fight. Welcoming a war resister into your home on a
temporary basis is a positive step towards ending the war in Iraq.
Anything you can do to help would be greatly appreciated!

Please contact:

National Campaign Office:
Phone: 416-598-1222
Email: resisters@...
Mailing Address:
Box 13, 427 Bloor Street West
Toronto, ON M5S 1X7

Vancouver: http://ca.geocities.com/vanresisters
Email: bjorkna5@...

Victoria: vlannon@...

Montreal: montrealresisters@...

Ottawa: ottawaresisters@...

Nelson, BC: West Kootenays War Resisters Support Campaign
nelsonresisters@...
Phone: 250.354.7489
------------------------------------------------------------

Further we suggest that Council contact all EDAs encouraging
them to inform their membership of this humanitarian need; and to
explore other appropriate strategies to make the GPC commitment to
its values known and relevant between elections. There may be an
opportunity to issue a media release about a new age "Underground
Railroad" for social justice and return Canada to its rightful role as
"Peacekeepers" acting locally and globally.

Yours in peace and ecology,

SIGNITORIES

"EcoSocialism or Barbarism: There is no third way."

The blog, which is edited in Canada, features original articles and reprints
from a wide range of sources.
Readers can subscribe to receive email notices when updates are added. To
learn more, please visit http://climateandcapitalism.blogspot.com/

Dear friends,

We've seen it all around us: droughts, hurricanes, weird weather and wild
storms. Then last week, a major new report by over 2000 climate scientists
ended all debate: climate change is real- we've caused it- and its impact
will be catastrophic unless urgent action is taken.

Our leaders can stop this, but they've been too slow to act. This week,
we're launching a global TV ad campaign on 3 continents to wake world
leaders up to the disaster we're facing. Click below to watch our TV ad on
our new website and sign the petition calling for urgent action now.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/climate_action/3.php

Experts agree: we are fast approaching the point of no return. If the
world's temperature rises by even 2 degrees Celsius the consequences for
life on earth will be devastating.

This problem can be solved. We need a new international agreement that
commits countries to major emission cuts, and drives a global shift to
renewable energy. This will require bold political action -- and not just
by one or two countries.

Climate change is a global problem that requires global action. It is time
for people around the world to send a global wake up call to our leaders -
before it is too late. Click here to send them a message:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/climate_action/3.php

The leaders of the world's most polluting countries will be meeting in
Germany this June. The priorities for this summit are being decided right
now.

Public awareness of the climate threat around the world is reaching fever
pitch. Now the argument is over - it's time to focus our energy on building
a global movement to make our leaders act. Watch our TV ad and add your
voice to the wake up call:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/climate_action/3.php

It's not too late to protect our planet - but the moment is now. Please
sign the petition, post it on your blog or favourite listserve, forward
this email to your friends and family - and tell everyone you know.

Alone, we can't stop this disaster. But if we act together today, 2007
could become the year we took the first step to save the world.

With hope,

Ricken, David, Iain, Andrea, Jeremy, Rachel, Tom, Hannah, Paul, Lee-Sean,
Galit, Graziela, Nicole and the whole Avaaz.org team (formerly the
CeasefireCampaign.org team)

________________

PS - In an online poll last year, nearly a thousand of you helped choose a
great new name for our global campaigning effort - www.Avaaz.org. Avaaz
means "voice" or "song" in many Asian languages. The new site is now up in
10 languages so check it out! www.Avaaz.org

Via:

--
Clemens Vermeulen
web:     http://clemens.vermeulen.id.au/
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contact: http://clemens.vermeulen.id.au/contact

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Communities Uniting for Climate Action Now!
Posted by: "Tim Barton / BlueGreenEarth" tim_decenter@...   tim_decenter
Sat Feb 3, 2007 11:34 am (PST)
This is an American venture. But today I went to a meeting in a recently
built eco-house that is used for community events. The meeting was
convened by Labour, but had representatives of all the major parties
there, including the Greens, as well as other interested groups such
as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and Hastings Environmental Network,
plus of course members of the public. It was standing room only, but as
it is a small venue that means just over 100 so not amazing, but as the
building is in an outlying district (Ore), not so bad either.

The message from the incumbant MP and the councillors is still too close
to 'Business as Usual, with the odd tweek' for my taste (for example,
the policies of more housing, a link road, and 'regeneration' are
obviously sacrosanct and cannot be questioned). But the atmosphere is
changing, the lip service is new, the co-option of Green and Anarchist
positions never required before, so ther is an upside...

Let's keep our eyes on the prize and not let the co-optive powers that
be win out by taking the rhetoric without the action! They at least (here)
seem to mean well, but the road to hell is after all paved with 'em!

Tim

Communities Uniting for Climate Action Now!

This April 14th, tens of thousands of Americans will gather all across the
country at meaningful,
iconic places to call for action on climate change. We will hike, climb, walk,
swim, kayak, canoe,
or simply sit or stand with banners of our call to action:

"Step it up congress! Cut carbon 50% by 2050"

500 Actions Nationwide!
The Step It Up Organizing Team | Jan 31, 2007

Wow.

In just over a month, Americans all over the country have stepped up to the
challenge of forming a
national climate movement. In 500 iconic places, communities will come together
to demand, in a
unified voice, strong action on climate change. We're astounded at the number of
people who have
dedicated some of their time to organize or attend an action on April 14.

We'll be canyoneering in the West, forming a human line depicting what high
water levels might
look like in Manhattan fifty years from now, standing together in a town park,
on the steps of
Churches and Synagogues, or on a college campus. Beyond just the sheer number of
actions, and the
masses of passionate people who are organizing them, the range of activities is
exciting.

April 14 will prove to be a milestone in the climate movement, and you all are
part of it. It's
going to be great! Keep one eye on the Capitol and the other trained on your
community-lets make
sure this is BIG.

Keep up the good work, and thanks for Stepping It Up!

http://stepitup2007.org/

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/story.asp?j=82566981&p=8z567z6x

It has been reported that Mr Howard said Australia could not meet its
energy needs by relying on solar and wind power ...

Mr Howard's statement is false.

Peter Bright
Tasmania

http://www.ipcc.ch/index.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------
meanwhile back at flat-earth.Inc >

Published on Friday, February 2, 2007 by the Guardian / UK
Scientists Offered Cash to Dispute Climate Study
by Ian Sample

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby
group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine
a major climate change report due to be published today.

Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an
ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush
administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the
shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC).

Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered.

The UN report was written by international experts and is widely
regarded as the most comprehensive review yet of climate change
science. It will underpin international negotiations on new emissions
targets to succeed the Kyoto agreement, the first phase of which
expires in 2012. World governments were given a draft last year and
invited to comment.

The AEI has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil and more than 20
of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration.
Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of
AEI's board of trustees.

The letters, sent to scientists in Britain, the US and elsewhere,
attack the UN's panel as "resistant to reasonable criticism and
dissent and prone to summary conclusions that are poorly supported by
the analytical work" and ask for essays that "thoughtfully explore the
limitations of climate model outputs".

Climate scientists described the move yesterday as an attempt to cast
doubt over the "overwhelming scientific evidence" on global warming.
"It's a desperate attempt by an organisation who wants to distort
science for their own political aims," said David Viner of the
Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.

"The IPCC process is probably the most thorough and open review
undertaken in any discipline. This undermines the confidence of the
public in the scientific community and the ability of governments to
take on sound scientific advice," he said.

The letters were sent by Kenneth Green, a visiting scholar at AEI, who
confirmed that the organisation had approached scientists, economists
and policy analysts to write articles for an independent review that
would highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC report.

"Right now, the whole debate is polarised," he said. "One group says
that anyone with any doubts whatsoever are deniers and the other group
is saying that anyone who wants to take action is alarmist. We don't
think that approach has a lot of utility for intelligent policy."

One American scientist turned down the offer, citing fears that the
report could easily be misused for political gain. "You wouldn't know
if some of the other authors might say nothing's going to happen, that
we should ignore it, or that it's not our fault," said Steve
Schroeder, a professor at Texas A&M university.

The contents of the IPCC report have been an open secret since the
Bush administration posted its draft copy on the internet in April. It
says there is a 90% chance that human activity is warming the planet,
and that global average temperatures will rise by another 1.5 to 5.8C
this century, depending on emissions.

Lord Rees of Ludlow, the president of the Royal Society, Britain's
most prestigious scientific institute, said: "The IPCC is the world's
leading authority on climate change and its latest report will provide
a comprehensive picture of the latest scientific understanding on the
issue. It is expected to stress, more convincingly than ever before,
that our planet is already warming due to human actions, and that
'business as usual' would lead to unacceptable risks, underscoring the
urgent need for concerted international action to reduce the worst
impacts of climate change. However, yet again, there will be a vocal
minority with their own agendas who will try to suggest otherwise."

Ben Stewart of Greenpeace said: "The AEI is more than just a
thinktank, it functions as the Bush administration's intellectual Cosa
Nostra. They are White House surrogates in the last throes of their
campaign of climate change denial. They lost on the science; they lost
on the moral case for action. All they've got left is a suitcase full
of cash."

On Monday, another Exxon-funded organisation based in Canada will
launch a review in London which casts doubt on the IPCC report. Among
its authors are Tad Murty, a former scientist who believes human
activity makes no contribution to global warming. Confirmed VIPs
attending include Nigel Lawson and David Bellamy, who believes there
is no link between burning fossil fuels and global warming.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/future-is-coal-and-nuclear-howards-says/2\
007/01/31/1169919398978.html

....
Please consider a few lines to the Herald letters@...
in reply to this article and please forward this message throughout your
networks.

Below is my letter.
-----------------------
Dear Editor,

I view the article "Future is Coal and Nuclear says Howard"
http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/future-is-coal-and-nuclear-howards-says/2\
007/01/31/1169919398978.html as "Coal and Nuclear Industry Propaganda" and
wonder if these industries paid the Herald for the advertising space?

John Howard's "climate change addressing" energy policies are NOT what his
people want or NEED at this critical time in earth's climatic history. He must
face the reality and truth about climate change and our energy supply
alternatives. Our energy taxes must be used to give Australian people the REAL
energy solutions they need NOW. Not a continuation of the nest feathering
towards industries that are destroying our planet and all her occupants as I
write.

Clean and sustainable energy technology exists that can replace both of these
energy industries. Nuclear power is not safe, and it never will be. The Coal
industry must be phased out if our planet is to continue to exist as we know it.

WHAT ABOUT : Solar, Tidal, Wave and the massive energy supplies waiting to be
tapped from directly under our feet? Geothermal. Combinations of these energy
supply sources CAN supply our energy needs and in the process of giving natural,
safe, sustainable energy supplies, will curb our Carbon Dioxide emissions and
create jobs in new industry. New industries creating energy supplies that can
give BACK to the grid from individual properties is what Australia (and our
fragile planet) needs.

John Howard is a fool. I hope the majority will cease to blindly follow at the
next federal election.

Anne Goddard
http://globalclimatechangeaction.org

-----------------------------------------------------
The media nuclear propaganda saturation begins...
Please write letters of reply!!!!!
-------------------------------------------------------
Future is coal and nuclear, Howard says
   a.. January 31, 2007 - 7:16PM

Page 1 of 2 | Single page
Prime Minister John Howard has backed a new energy report which supports his
push for nuclear power as a way to combat climate change.

The Energy Supply Association of Australia (ESAA) said that substantial
greenhouse gas emission reductions were possible by the year 2030 but it would
cost $75 billion.

It also says nuclear power, cleaner coal and gas would help reduce greenhouse
gas emissions, but renewable energy such as wind and solar power would not be
cost effective.

"The answer is a greater emphasis on clean coal and nuclear power," Mr Howard
told reporters.

"It (the report) recognises that while renewables such as solar and wind have a
role to play, and we have always argued that, they will not provide the
fundamental answer.

"It's just simply not feasible to run power stations in this country on solar
and wind energy."

The ESAA, which represents more than 40 electricity and downstream gas
businesses, says the increasing pressure to restrict emissions from power
stations means families will inevitably face higher costs for domestic power
bills.

Without expensive new technology, up to 100 per cent of brown coal power
stations would have to be shut down by 2030 just to stabilise emissions at 2000
levels, the report says.

Around two thirds of existing black coal power stations - which currently
generate about 60 per cent of Australia's electricity - within current
technology would have to close by then as well.

Under the most severe scenario, cleaning up emissions under the expanded
requirements of the year 2030 would require an investment of $75 billion.

The federal government has a policy of pouring large sums of money into
supporting research into and trials of clean coal technologies.

The ESAA says advanced fossil-fuel technologies, including carbon capture and
storage (CCS), are not likely to be commercially available until at least 2020.

But for emissions cuts to be achieved and in a least-cost manner, the widest
possible range of generation technologies will be needed, including some not
proven or commercially available as yet.

The report said around 15-20 per cent of Australia's energy supplies by 2030
could be contributed to by nuclear reactors.

ESAA chief executive Brad Page said a price on carbon emissions was inevitable.

Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane rejected the suggestion that adoption of a
price on carbon emissions should be done without delay.

"We have put in place the prime minister's task group on emissions trading and
we will give an answer on that as we look through the real issues in relation to
carbon trading," he told ABC radio.

Australian Coal Association executive director Mark O'Neill said the ACA had
long held that it was critical that Australia invest in the research and
development effort to quickly get new technologies into the marketplace.

"Every analysis that's out there ... has concluded that it's a way of
significantly reducing the cost of achieving any kind of target in this area,"
he said.

The Greens said the ESAA report was self-serving, arguing for the nation to put
its hopes in CCS while ignoring the potential gains from energy efficiency.

"It is in the interests of the fossil fuel industry to claim that renewable
energy and energy efficiency are no solution to climate change and that we must
rely instead on an experimental and costly technology," Greens senator Christine
Milne said.

Democrats leader Lyn Allison said the report's claim that Australia could cut
greenhouse emissions by 30 per cent without resorting to nuclear power showed it
underestimated the potential for alternative, low and zero emission
technologies.

AAP


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Capital’s endless pursuit of new outlets for class-based accumulation
requires for its continuation the destruction of both pre-existing
natural conditions and previous social relations. Class exploitation,
imperialism, war, and ecological devastation are not mere unrelated
accidents of history but interrelated, intrinsic features of capitalist
development.

Full:

http://monthlyreview.org/0207jbf.htm

Sorry - I thought I was forwarding on a message with that last email.
Here's the details for the climate action day...

*_come to the ultimate cliamte change awareness event at Bondi Beach:_*
please advertise our Climate Action Group event through your network,
and come down to the beach to support this fundraiser event.
If you haven't seen "Inconvenient Truth" yet, this is the chance, or if
you want to introduce someone to the topic

See attached Flyer. The schedule for the day is:
**
*_Bondi Beach Climate Day_*
*Bondi Pavilion 10th February 2006 - 2pm till late
  *
Climate Action Bondi is organising a range of activities to raise
awareness on
how you can reduce your impact on Climate Change.

*2 - 6PM AFTERNOON SESSIONS*
_Free Entertainment & Workshops
_* Children's workshops and activities
* Eco Products & NGOs Exhibition & stalls
* Film screenings
* 3.30 PM - 4.30 PM *Green Home Panel discussion
*Dick Clarke - Envirotecture, http://www.envirotecture.com.au/
Rick Roberts - The Natural Paint Place
www.energyandwatersolutions.com.au
<http://www.energyandwatersolutions.com.au/>
Michael Mobbs - Sustainable House http://www.sustainablehouse.com.au
<http://www.sustainablehouse.com.au/>

*6 PM till late - The Climate Openair Forum *
_(bookings essential)_
Bondi Openair presents a Climate Action Bondi Event:

* 6 - 7 PM *Climate Change - Our Choices*
Climate Change Experts Panel Discussion:
- Chair - Wendy Frew Environment Reporter SMH
- Dr Mark Diesendorf Institute of Environmental Studies
http://www.ies.unsw.edu.au/research/ACADEMICS/Staff%20pages/M_Diesendorf.html
- Prof. Frank Stilwell Faculty of Economics and Business
http://www.econ.usyd.edu.au/staff/fstilwell/
- Ben Pearson, Climate Change Campaigner, Greenpeace
http://www.greenpeace.com.au/ <http://www.greenpeace.com.au/>
- Imogen Zethoven, Nuclear Campaigner - The Wilderness Society
http://www.wilderness.org.au/


* 7. 00 PM - 8.30 PM *Declan Kelly and the Rising Sun Band*

* 8.30 - 10.30 PM Bondi Openair film screening: *An Inconvenient Truth*
   followed by ACF slideshow of the AUS key facts

* Time for interaction: After party at a venue in Bondi TBA

*Book your ticket now on: **www.bondiopenair.com.au*
<http://www.bondiopenair.com.au/>
($12.50 online, $15 box office - booking advance, this one will sell out
fast!)

Funds raised will go towards installing a educational solar panel at
Bondi Beach Public School.

The Climate Day @ Bondi Pavilion is sponsored by Origin Energy, Neco and
Mobile Muster.
The event is being made Climate Friendly through Solar Power by Global
Carbon Exchange.

More info on: www.climateactionbondi.com
<http://www.climateactionbondi.com/>

Marc Pop
Climate Action Bondi
BondiBeachClimateDay@... <mailto:BondiBeachClimateDay@...>
0404 314 935


Julien Gronbach wrote:
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> For those who are able to attend this, or anyone who might know someone
> who can come along....
>
> I feel like I must endorse and encourage you to come along to this event
> - I've recently met people involved in this group and there
> energy/enthusiasm/drive is just brilliant - it is bound to be a
> fantastic event.
>
> Cheers,
>
> --
> Julien Gronbach
> Clean Energy Campaigner
> Greenpeace Australia Pacific
>
> Level 4, 39 Liverpool St
> Sydney NSW 2000
>
> Ph: 02 9263 0348
> Mob: 0419 179 529
>
> Want some good news? Sign up for Switched On - the Greenpeace Energy
> team's monthly email update on clean energy solutions:
> http://www.greenpeace.org.au/climate/index.html
> <http://www.greenpeace.org.au/climate/index.html>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>

Hi everyone,

For those who are able to attend this, or anyone who might know someone
who can come along....

I feel like I must endorse and encourage you to come along to this event
- I've recently met people involved in this group and there
energy/enthusiasm/drive is just brilliant - it is bound to be a
fantastic event.

Cheers,

--
Julien Gronbach
Clean Energy Campaigner
Greenpeace Australia Pacific

Level 4, 39 Liverpool St
Sydney NSW 2000

Ph: 02 9263 0348
Mob: 0419 179 529

Want some good news? Sign up for Switched On - the Greenpeace Energy
team's monthly email update on clean energy solutions:
http://www.greenpeace.org.au/climate/index.html



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

http://www.alternet.org/subscribe/envirohealth.html

Special Message
Our free EnviroHealth newsletter


Dear Reader,


The world's leading scientists have reached a consensus on climate change.

They agree that we need to take decisive action to drastically reduce
CO2 emissions, or else face continued rising temperatures and seas. At
this crucial moment, we at AlterNet want to do our part to help you
stay informed.

Next week AlterNet will launch a new EnviroHealth newsletter that
highlights our expanded environmental health coverage.


Find out how you can make a difference. Click here to sign up for the
new EnviroHealth newsletter!

We'll keep you up to date with stories on breaking science, human
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Click here to start your FREE weekly subscription to AlterNet's
EnviroHealth.

This grim prediction from the world's scientists has the potential to
change the face of humanity -- for the better. We can begin by seeing
climate change and the related human health risks as an opportunity to
switch from dirty energy to clean power. The United States can step up
its actions and re-emerge on the world stage as a leader worth
following and show in no uncertain terms that we really care about our
global neighbors.

But for all that to happen, we need a motivated and informed public.

Our new weekly newsletter will provide you with our best EnviroHealth
stories, blogs, and even a few surprises. Best of all, you can find
out how you can make a difference. Right now, we have almost all the
tools we need to change the world -- scientific consensus, public
support, and political momentum -- we just need you.

Click here to subscribe to EnviroHealth now. It's free, and it's our
way of doing our part to help you stay informed.



Think globally, read liberally,

Don Hazen
Executive Editor
AlterNet.org

----- Original Message -----
From: Mrs Lyn Welsh-Kirk aka Kirky
To: anne@...
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2007 9:47 PM
Subject: Easy Being Green | Best Viral Artist


Easy Being Green | Best Viral Artist
Artists can submit artworks that are 'creative and catchy' to a campaign that
spreads the word on becoming carbon neutral. The winning artist will receive
$2,000 and the chance to earn a commission of 5% whenever a customer clicks
through an online artwork and becomes carbon neutral. The competition is open to
any form of digital art, video, flash, photography, stories, poems or music.
Work should be related to climate change and whether it is beautiful, hilarious,
informative or whacky – it should inspire others to be green. Website
www.easybeinggreen.com
Closing 10 February

PEACE & GOD BLESS

Kirky a Koori in Parkes. Oz.
Wife, mum, nan, sista, aunt, cuz & friend 2 all.
http://kirkys-world.tripod.com
1 stick can B broken ~ a handfull 2gether can't B broken ~ In Solidarity iz
Strength.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

environment people
-----------------------------

Largest Youth Mobilization on Global Warming, Jan. 29-Feb. 2
Posted by: "Anna Rose" anna.starr.rose@...   anna_starr_rose
Wed Jan 31, 2007 5:33 pm (PST)
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Contact: Michael Crawford, Communications Director, Campus Climate
Challenge,
202 247-0965 or Michael@...

Contact: Will Duggan, Better Days Alliance, 860 345-0000,
info@...

*LARGEST YOUTH MOBILIZATION ON GLOBAL WARMING: EVENTS ON 575 CAMPUSES
AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH SCREENINGS WILL ANCHOR WEEK OF ACTION, JAN. 29 - FEB.
2*

In the largest mobilization in the history of the youth global warming
movement, students are rising up to demand immediate action to end our
addiction to fossil fuels. Students on over 575 college and high school
campuses across the United States and Canada are urging their campus
administrators to enact clean energy policies as a key solution to the
impending climate crisis. The demands are part of Rising to the Climate
Challenge: Visions of Our Future, a week-long series of actions coordinated
by the Campus Climate Challenge. "The Challenge" unites young people to win
100% clean energy policies at their schools.

Anchoring the week of action are hundreds of screenings of the
Oscar-nominated documentary An Inconvenient Truth. In partnership with The
11th Hour Project and Truth on Campus, the Challenge is making copies of the
DVD and public screening licenses available to college and high school
campuses across the U.S. and Canada.

In addition to the film screenings, students are organizing rallies,
educational forums and requesting meetings with members of Congress to urge
that the U. S. take a leading role in reducing greenhouses gases. Events are
planned in 49 states and 8 Canadian provinces.

Events include:

- Students at Rutgers University have collected 200 invitations sent
to Rep. Frank Pallone D-NJ to invite him to attend a screening and
discussion of An Inconvenient Truth. The screening will also kick-off a
campus-wide dorm competition to save energy.
- Students from Ivy League universities are joining together to call
for their campuses to go climate neutral.
- January 30: Billionaires for Coal rallied outside the New York
headquarters of Merrill Lynch to protest its investment in TXU, a company
proposing to build 11 new coal power plants in Texas.
- January 31: West Virginia elementary school students presented
letters to Governor Manchin urging him to build them a new school away from
the coal silo that sits 150 feet from their current school.

For a complete list of events during the week of action, please visit
http://www.climatechallenge.org/woa<http://actionnetwork.org/ct/Yp__Nxd19Xuk/>
.

"Students recognize that climate change is the most critical issue facing
their generation. Throughout the Week of Action they are demanding less talk
and more action to end our addiction to fossil fuels," said Michael
Crawford, communications director for the Campus Climate Challenge.
"Beginning with their college campuses and extending to the halls of
Congress, young people are sounding the alarm about global warming and
providing real solutions that move us towards a clean energy future."

"At American University, we have already held a successful student
referendum to move the university towards wind-generated energy," says
student Claire Roby. "But that's not enough. We are joining with students
from around the country during the week of action to demand real solutions
to stop global warming."

"There is a growing sense of urgency about global warming among young people
because we are the generation that will be most affected," says Andrew
Nazdin, a freshman at the University of Maryland. "The week of action is a
way for students to demand real solutions to end our addiction to fossil
fuels."

The Campus Climate Challenge, a project of the Energy Action Coalition,
unites young people to organize on college campuses and high schools to win
100% clean energy policies at their schools. Energy Action Coalition is a
network of 41 organizations from across the United States and Canada,
founded and led by youth to help support and strengthen the student and
youth clean energy movement in the United States and Canada.

Energy Action Coalition partners are: Americans for Informed Democracy,
Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, Black
Mesa Water Coalition, Brower New Leaders Initiative, California Student
Sustainability Coalition, Campus Progress, Chesapeake Climate Action
Network, Clean Air Cool Planet, Climate Crisis Coalition, ConnPIRG, CoPIRG,
Dakota Resource Council, Earth Day Network, Energy Justice Network,
Environmental
Justice and Climate Change
Initiative<http://actionnetwork.org/ct/T1__Nxd19Xu9/>,
Global Exchange, Greenpeace Student Network, Indigenous Environmental
Network, INPIRG, Kids Against Pollution, League of Conservation Voters
Education Fund: Project Democracy, League of Young Voters, MarylandPIRG,
MASSPIRG, MoPIRG, National Association of Environmental Law Societies,
National Wildlife Federation's Campus Ecology Program, NJPIRG, OhioPIRG,
OSPIRG, Rainforest Action Network, Restoring Eden, Sierra Student Coalition,
Sierra Youth Coalition, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, Student
Environmental Action Coalition, Students United for a Responsible Global
Environment, Sustainable Endowments Institute, SustainUS, Utah Clean Energy,
WashPIRG, WISPIRG, Young People For and Youth Environmental Network.

Truthoncampus.org <http://truthoncampus.org/> is helping colleges,
universities and high schools across the country increase the positive
outcomes from their screenings of "An inconvenient Truth." Coordination is
being led by Better Days Alliance, a Connecticut-based 501(c)(3)
organization with support from Aveda, Annie's Homegrown, Ben & Jerry's
Homemade, Clif Bar, Stonyfield Farm and the 11th Hour Project.

###

------------------------------
Visit the web address below to tell your friends about this.
Tell-a-friend!<http://actionnetwork.org/join-forward.html?domain=redefiningprogr\
ess&r=i7__Nxd12fQf>

If you received this message from a friend, you can sign up for Redefining
Progress<http://actionnetwork.org/redefiningprogress/join.html?r=i7__Nxd12fQfE>.

To update your account settings, or to unsubscribe from Redefining
Progress, please click
here<http://actionnetwork.org/redefiningprogress/smp.tcl?nkey=wixde7x4a6mj336&>.

<http://www.getactive.com/>

--
www.itsgettinghotinhere.org
www.asen.org.au
www.youthclimatecoalition.blogspot.com

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----- Original Message -----
From: <announce@...>
To: <announce@...>
Sent: Thursday, February 01, 2007 7:25 PM
Subject: [Announce] Palm Sunday Alliance for a Peaceful and Nuclear
FreeFuture


Greetings from the Palm Sunday Alliance for a Peaceful and Nuclear Free
Future in Melbourne!


*Below you will find:*
1. Welcome to Palm Sunday Nuclear Fools Day list
2. Update on plans around the country
3. How you can help in Melbourne
4. Invitation to submit news to future email updates


Thanks for signing up to the Palm Sunday update list! Let your friends
and colleagues know they can sign up on the front page of our website –
http://www.NuclearFoolsDay.org

----------------


*As you know, Palm Sunday falls on April Fools’ Day this year.*

Shortly before the Christmas break it dawned on many of us in Melbourne
who have been involved in the peace movement over the years that this
was a significant congruence of dates as Australia heads into an
election year with a Government intent on establishing a nuclear
industry in Australia.

We called a meeting, brainstormed a lot of ideas, and in Melbourne
planed a Public Meeting with Helen Caldicott and others on Thursday 1
March and a parade and festival on 1 April, ending at the Sidney Myer
Music Bowl. We think now is the right time for an iconic anti-nuclear
peace event in Australia.

Following the April Fools Day theme, we decided to plan an up-beat,
theatrical and comedy based approach to the serious issue of peace. We
will protest war, the fool on the hill and the nuclear fool cycle!

We came to consensus on the following demands:

Stop nuclear power in Australia: Renewables not reactors!
Stop uranium mining: Leave it in the ground!
Stop nuclear weapons and wars: Reject the US nuclear umbrella!
Stop nuclear waste: No waste dump in Australia!

More about these demands here: http://nuclearfoolsday.org


----------------

*Update:*

- 39 organisations have signed up! http://nuclearfoolsday.org/endorsers

- A leaflet is available on the http://www.NuclearFoolsDay.org website.
Let us know by emailing info@... if you would like to
adapt it to advertise your activity
http://nuclearfoolsday.org/files/PalmSunday2007FINAL.pdf

- Leunig’s poster artwork nearly finished! Let us know if you would like
to use it for your event. info@...

- Next Adelaide Palm Sunday Alliance meeting 31 January, 6pm at the
Conservation Centre, 2nd meeting will be 6pm 20 February at the
Community Meeting Room, Christie Walk

- Next Melbourne Palm Sunday Alliance meeting 13 February, Trades Hall, 6pm

- Brisbane, Palm Sunday Peace Rally and March, 11 am, 1st April, Queens
Park, crn Elizabeth and George Streets, Brisbane

- Townsville Palm Sunday group started to organise.

- Advertise your meeting in the next email update!

----------------


*Help!*

If you are in Melbourne….

Do you have a few hours to help out with outreach? We need help in doing
mail outs and reaching out to organisations via fax, email and calling.
Please email Louise if you can help louisemorris@...

Do you need some exercise and would like to help with letterboxing?
Please email Fiona if you can help fijroberts@...

When we get our posters, we will need help to paste them up and get them
into shop fronts, leaflets too. Please email Nuclear Free Australia if
you can help hillelfreedman@...

Do you have access to a photocopier and would like to generate some
leaflets for distribution? Please email Felicity if you can help
felicity.hill@...

Does your organisation want to have a stall at the Palm Sunday parade?
Please email Kylie kymoonisnow@...

Do you know clowns, fools and entertainers who might juggle, unicycle or
adopt a foolish character on the day? Invite them! If they want to
register to coordinate or get more information, email
fun@...

Are you someone who would like to offer some time to create props,
banners and decorations ? Please email creative@...


----------------

These updates will not clutter up your inbox too much – please check the
website often as it is being updated constantly.

Please send news and updates on what you are doing on Palm Sunday and we
will include them in the next update, and post the details on the website!


Best wishes


Palm Sunday Alliance for a Peaceful and Nuclear Free Future in Melbourne

--


_______________________________________________
Announce mailing list
Announce@...
http://nuclearfoolsday.org/mailman/listinfo/announce_nuclearfoolsday.org

If you feel like getting mad take a look at the following article
denying coral reefs are dying:

Article by Jennifer Marohasy:
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21144521-601,00.htm

Discussion of the right-wing Institute_of_Public_Affairs that she is
a director of:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Institute_of_Public_Affairs

Begin forwarded message:

On 01/02/2007, at 16:03, <Anthony.Richardson@...> wrote:

Hi Brooke



Check out the articles below and then the link to the IPA - you probably
know all about it.



Cheers

Ant





    _____

From: spatial.ecology-bounces@...
[mailto:spatial.ecology-bounces@...] On Behalf Of Adam
Dinsdale
Sent: Thursday, 1 February 2007 3:26 PM
To: Simon Linke
Cc: Spatial.ecology@...
Subject: Re: [Spatial Ecology] Light entertainment (courtesy ofJennifer
Marohasy)



Compelling.  Water goes up, corals go up.  It's so obvious now.

I think you all may have been pointed to Sourcewatch by Michael Bode,
but if not check out the little blurb on the Institute of  Public
Affairs.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Institute_of_Public_Affairs




______________________________________________________
Adam Dinsdale
PhD Candidate
Spatial Ecology Lab, The Ecology Centre, School of Integrative Biology
Building 8 Goddard, The University of Queensland, QLD Australia 4072

Tel: (07) 33657327 Mobile: 0402 250 557
Email: a.dinsdale@...
www.uq.edu.au/spatialecology/
www.homepage.mac.com/c_riginos/RiginosLab.html
______________________________________________________



Simon Linke wrote:

Our old friend Jennifer Marohasy strikes back:


Jennifer Marohasy: Reef may benefit from global warming


http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21144521-601,00.html

and remember...

The Murray Darling is just fine
http://www.ipa.org.au/publications/publisting_detail.asp?PubID=249
and smoking only causes a wee little bit of cancer
http://www.ipa.org.au/files/news_678.html







    _____




_______________________________________________
Spatial.ecology mailing list
Spatial.ecology@...
http://doolot.sols.uq.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/spatial.ecology
<ATT425965.txt>

--
Brooke Smith <brooke@...>
You will always get the greatest recognition for the job you least like.
PGP: http://keyserver.veridis.com:11371/export?id=4427400912143993659




--
Brooke Smith <brooke@...>
You will always get the greatest recognition for the job you least like.
PGP: http://keyserver.veridis.com:11371/export?id=4427400912143993659





[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

-------------
Let laugh them out of power!
a
-----------------

April Fools Day - why aren't nukes at the top of the
Posted by: "FoE Sydney - Nuclear Campaign" foesyd4@...
johnhallam2001
Tue Jan 30, 2007 7:35 pm (PST)
The below is from Felicity Hill, who is well - known to all of us.

Particularly in Sydney, there is a desperste need to re-invigorate
the anti- nuclear and anti-nuclear-weapons movement.

We had hundreds of thousands of people in the streets about it in the
1980s, when it was an 'end-of-the-world' issue.(for Palm Sunday
rallies).

For goodness sake, especially since the moving of the hands of the
'doomsday clock' not so long ago, let us put nuclear weapons and
nukes generally right at the top of the activist agenda

Dear Colleagues,

As you may have noticed, in 2007 Palm Sunday falls on April Fools Day.

Shortly before the Christmas break it dawned on many of us in Melbourne
who have been involved in the peace movement over the years that this
was a significant congruence of dates as Australia heads into an
election year with a Government intent on establishing a nuclear
industry in Australia.

So we called a meeting, brainstormed a lot of ideas, and now have 35
organisations signed up. Following the April Fools Day theme, we decided
to plan an up-beat, theatrical and comedy based approach to the serious
issue of peace. We will protest war, the fool on the hill and the
nuclear fool cycle!

We are organising a public meeting with Dr. Helen Caldicott and others
on Thursday 1 March, and a parade and festival on 1 April, ending at the
biggest outdoor entertainment venue in Melbourne, the Sidney Myer Music
Bowl. We are involving comedians in all our events, and also asking
people to dress up and ride their bikes to protest the nuclear fool
cycle and foolish wars.

We came to consensus on the following demands which you can read more
about on our website www.NuclearFoolsDay.org :

Stop nuclear power in Australia: Renewables not reactors!
Stop uranium mining: Leave it in the ground!
Stop nuclear weapons and wars: Reject the US nuclear umbrella!
Stop nuclear waste: No waste dump in Australia!

The enthusiasm for holding an up-beat, theatrical and comedy based
approach to protest has attracted quite a bit of interest.

- 35 organisations have signed up

- Country towns and other capital cities are organising events,

- Michael Leunig, one of Australia's most popular cartoonists, has
agreed to create some poster artwork to help send a peaceful and
family-friendly message for the parade and festival,

- Some popular bands with diverse styles have signed up to entertain in
between comedy acts and speakers

- the International Comedy Festival, which starts two days after Palm
Sunday in Melbourne has cleared their artists to appear at Palm Sunday
events, and some will view this as a good dry run / dress rehearsal /
advertising for their shows during the festival

- a broad call has gone out to celebrities to send a video message
supporting a peaceful and nuclear free future

This email is sent out to NGOs outside of Australia in case you would
also like to organise a Palm Sunday event to protest war, your fool on
the hill and the nuclear fool cycle too! We would happily advertise your
event, however big or small, on our website.

Best wishes

Palm Sunday Alliance for a Peaceful and Nuclear-Free Future in Australia

1. Medical Association for Prevention of War
2. Australian Conservation Foundation
3. Friends of the Earth
4. Environment Centre of the Northern Territory
5. Peace Organisation of Australia
6. Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
7. Greenpeace
8. Australian Student Environment Network
9. Nuclear Disarmament Party
10. Global Climate Change Action
11. Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific
12. Socialist Alliance
13. Catholics in Coalition for Justice and Peace (CCJP)
14. Alice Action
15. Arid Lands Environment Centre
16. Stop the War Coalition
17. Nuclear Free Australia
18. Australian Peace Committee (South Australia)
19. Sustainable Living Foundation
20. Pax Christi, International Christian Peace Movement Victoria,
21. One World Network
22. World Dreams Peace Bridge
23. Beyond Zero Emissons, Zero Emission Network
24. University of Melbourne Environment Collective
25. Peace Convergence
26. The Australian Democrats
27. Justice and International Mission Unit, Uniting Church in Victoria
and Tasmania'
28. Moreland Peace Group
29. Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Melbourne
30. Women's Web - Women's Stories, Women's Actions
31. Japanese for Peace
32. The Wilderness Society
33. PeaceMouth
34. Global Sisterhood Network
35. No Waste Alliance

Nuclear Free Australia Internal Email Discussion Group
----- Original Message -----
From: nukefreeaus-internal@yahoogroups.com
To: nukefreeaus-internal@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 6:51 PM
Subject: [nukefreeaus-internal] Digest Number 1183


Nuclear Free Australia Internal Email Discussion Group
Messages In This Digest (1 Message)
   1. Fw: Coastal sites flagged for nuke reactors From: Hillel Freedman
View All Topics | Create New Topic Message
   1. Fw: Coastal sites flagged for nuke reactors
   Posted by: "Hillel Freedman" hillelfreedman@...   hillel_freedman
   Tue Jan 30, 2007 4:03 am (PST)

   Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only
   light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate;
   only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate,
   violence multiplies violence, and toughness
   multiplies toughness, in a descending spiral
   of destruction. The chain reaction of evil must
   be broken, or we shall be plunged into the
   dark abyss of annihilation.
   - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
   ----- Original Message -----
   From: Hillel Freedman
   To: Nuclear Free Australia
   Cc: nfanews@...
   Sent: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 11:02 PM
   Subject: Coastal sites flagged for nuke reactors

   http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=105091
   Coastal sites flagged for nuke reactors
   Tuesday Jan 30 22:35 AEDT
   Nuclear reactors are likely to be spaced out along the Australian coast from
Townsville in Queensland to Port Augusta in South Australia under a
nuclear-powered future, a new study says.

   Queensland would have six reactors and the coast around Sydney from Port
Stephens to Jervis Bay would have four power plants, left-wing think-tank the
Australia Institute says.

   Victoria would have four more and South Australia three, including one at Port
Adelaide, it suggests.

   In all, the study names 17 likely sites for reactors, based on criteria such
as proximity to seawater for cooling and access to the national electricity
grid.

   The institute also surveyed 1,200 Australians on their attitude towards having
a reactor in their local area and found that 66 per cent were opposed.

   A quarter of those surveyed, 25 per cent, were supportive and nine per cent
undecided.

   Fifty-five per cent were strongly opposed and just 10 per cent strongly in
favour.

   The study follows a determined push by the federal government towards the
nuclear generation of electricity.

   A government commissioned inquiry headed by Dr Ziggy Switkowski last year
reported reactors would have to be positioned within tens of kilometres of the
east coast national power grid.

   It found that nuclear generation was attractive in the battle against
greenhouse gas emissions and could be viable if there were to be a price on
carbon.

   That inquiry posed the scenario of 25 reactors producing a third of
Australia's electricity needs by the year 2050.

   The institute's director Dr Clive Hamilton said overseas experience showed
that the siting of power plants is one of the most politically contentious
aspects of the nuclear debate.

   "The prime minister has called for a thorough and full-blooded debate about
nuclear energy," Dr Hamilton said.

   "We cannot have this debate without considering siting issues."

   Report author Andrew Macintosh said the fact that nuclear energy attracted
moderate levels of support at a general level but fierce opposition from local
communities when concrete proposals were put forward suggested the presence of
the not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) phenomenon.

   "That is, even if people do not oppose nuclear power plants at a general
level, they often object to proposals to construct them in their local areas,"
he said.

   The report raised the possibility that governments might compensate
communities in a bid to placate local opposition to nuclear facilities.

   Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane declined to comment on the report, saying the
nuclear debate was too young to be talking about placement of reactors.

   "It's too early to start speculating," a spokeswoman for Mr Macfarlane told
AAP.

   "He just wants to talk about it and start investigating it. Deciding on sites
is something that's going to happen way down the track."

   Labor's resources and energy spokesman Chris Evans said people in the
communities identified by the report should expect a nuclear power plant in
their area if Prime Minister John Howard's nuclear plans are successful.

   Labor is opposed to a nuclear industry in Australia.

   "Instead of talking up nuclear power John Howard should be encouraging an
immediate increase in the use of renewable energy and the introduction of clean
coal technologies," Senator Evans said.

   "With Australia's existing energy resources, there is no reason for us to go
down the nuclear path."

   Labor's environment spokesman Peter Garrett said the report was further
evidence Australia should not go nuclear.

   "Australia needs to go on a low carbon diet, not a nuclear binge, and these
figures show John Howard is increasingly out of step with Australians who are
desperate for real action on climate change," he said.

   Greens senator Kerry Nettle said the report unsurprisingly showed that
populations close to the suggested sites did not want nuclear power plants.

   "Instead of talking about 25 possible nuclear power plants, the prime minister
should be looking for another 25 sites for major wind power stations and another
25 solar power stations," she said.

   ©AAP 2007
   Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only
   light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate;
   only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate,
   violence multiplies violence, and toughness
   multiplies toughness, in a descending spiral
   of destruction. The chain reaction of evil must
   be broken, or we shall be plunged into the
   dark abyss of annihilation.
   - Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

   [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


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