Climate Change

We can’t rely on the fossil fools in parliament. It is going to take people power to stop Adani once and for all, and to move to a safe climate future.

Gemma Weedall from Climate Emergency Action Network (CLEAN) and Socialist Alliance shares her insights into the early days of the campaign that won solar thermal for Port Augusta.

Capitalism’s constant drive for profits cannot be reconciled with Earth’s defined boundaries. Ecological destruction is not a side-effect of capitalism, it is built into the system: there cannot be infinite growth when the planet has finite resources.

The need for system change was a recurring discussion throughout this year's Students of Sustainability (SOS) conference. Conference participants were enthusiastic about practical next steps, wanting to know what they could do when they went back to their home towns, cities or campuses.

The disastrous Adani mine project illustrates why the entire mining and energy sector should be brought into public hands and dangerous fossil fuels rapidly phased out in favour of renewable energy.

There is ample evidence that people across Australia want a transition to renewable energy. But if we are serious about taking action on climate change and swiftly moving to 100% renewables, we need to take the banks and energy sector into public ownership.

For serious climate action to be a reality we need a society where the majority of people — workers, farmers, students, the poor, First Nations people and refugees, the victims of climate change — are making decisions in the interests of our collective future.  

Rational argument by the world's most informed scientists have not been enough to convince the decision-makers of the coal, oil and gas giants to voluntarily stop holding a blow-torch to the planet; nor to persuade the political leaders of the Coalition, Labor or Greens to go beyond what is palatable.

More than 2000 People's Climate Marches were held over the weekend of November 27 to 29. In Australia more than 140,000 people took to the streets to show they care, passionately, about climate change. They are also angry at government inaction, as illustrated by the many homemade placards and props.