Climate Chaos

CLIMATE CHAOS
A PROJECT OF THE RAINFOREST INFORMATION CENTRE
http://www.rainforestinfo.org.au

Take Action Now on Getup.org - Our farmers are crippled by drought. Bush fires are breaking out earlier every year. We're facing record-breaking heat waves, increasing water scarcity and intensifying cyclones and storms. Each of us with hopes for our future, or with children and grandchildren who will be left with our mess, must act now. Another email group who are lobbying hard: citizens climate change: climatez@aapt.net.au - send out monthly updates with research info and email addresses of pollies. You just click and paste and send them.

Educate yourself. See "An Inconvenient Truth" and the DVD of Ross Gelbspan's "Boiling Point". Read Tim Flannery's "The Weathermakers", Ross Gelbspan's "Boiling Point" and George Monbiot's "Heat".

Check out the links at our Climate Links Page

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14 January Human rights abuses, land conflicts, broken promises - the reality of carbon 'offset' projects in Uganda

13 January great article "A Storm of Denial" by Paul Rogat Loeb

12 January http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=64&Itemid=33 good article about melting ice and rising seas

11 January "Bridging Peak Oil & Climate Change Activism" An excellent and sober analysis of how these two groups might better cooperate to the benefit of all of us.

20 December http://www.earthday.net/edntv/
Earth Day Network now has an online television network with a good
range of high-quality programs on climate change and alternative
energy. Needs broadband.

15 December Joanna Macy: THE END OF OIL, CLIMATE CHANGE , AND THE GREAT TURNING

5 December A licence to carry on polluting? by Larry Lohmann New Scientist, 5 December2006

4 December Ross Gelbspan's talk at MIT

15 November 2006 Global Warming Increases Species Extinctions Worldwide
Source: University of Texas at Austin

23 October 2006. Biofuels will be of very limited use in combating climate change and may be a major source of distraction and confusion.. Beware the hype. See http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/12/06/worse-than-fossil-fuel/ , www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/ & www.newstatesman.com/200608070031 Beware also Carbon Trading and the attempt by "business as usual" to ply its trade under this disguise.

21 October 2006 In Australia, an estimated $6.5 billion a year in public subsidies to the fossil fuel industry are undermining our sustainable future. see www.sustainabilitycentre.com.au/Subsidies.pdf Meanwhile the Australian government's offers a pathetic 2% renewable energy target. Even China has 15%. The Australian Cooperative Research Centre for Renewable Energy was not funded beyond June 2003 and funding for the CSIRO’s atmospheric research department has been cut. Government policies have forced the closure of the Roaring 40s wind farms in Tasmania and South Australia and the Pacific Hydro wind farms in Victoria. Now the Vestas Nacelle wind turbine assembly plant has announced it too will be closing with 100 jobs lost. Worldwide, over US$200 billion in public subsidies go to the oil and coal industries. Little wonder that wind and solar find it hard to compete.

18 October Reduce air travel. Aviation is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions, already accounting for over 8 million tonnes of of carbon dioxide each year. At present aeroplane fuel is untaxed in Australia, this has to change - more than 10 per cent of the UK total emission from aeroplanes, what are Oz figures? See http://environment.guardian.co.uk/travel/story/0,,1924388,00.html and www.planestupid.com/

14 October Lightbulb giveaway is switched off. A scheme to cut greenhouse gases by giving away millions of low-energy lightbulbs and shower heads has been shut down after households installed less than half of the products. See http://theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20578570-2702,00.html

9 October 2006, Herald Sun - Tim Costello writes: THE urgency of climate change grows by the day.

Sept 2006 Climate Friendly -- 'offset' for carbon emission through investing in clean energy.

June 2006 - Citizens Climate Campaign: Putting Climate Change on the Political Agenda. The aim is to get thousand sof ordinatry people all over Australia sending a short message every month by letter or email to let our goverment know that climate change is an issue of major concern to the voting public. To join this campaign, send an email saying "Yes!" to climatez@bigpond.net.au.

16 May 2006 Visit this new website -- www.globalclimatechangeaction.org -- to send a letter, sign a petition, collect signatures etc.

Feb 2006 Email the Government about their submission to the UN on the Kyoto Protocol! Visit www.foe.org.au

31 Jan 2006 Expose Exxon - One minute Movie and Action to urge ExxonMobil to change direction

16 Jan 2006 Article in The Independent of London : James Lovelock: The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years . Each nation must find the best use of its resources to sustain civilisation for as long as they can

Ever since reading Ross Gelbspan's Boiling Point -- www.heatisonline.org -- the realisation has been growing in me that climate change is not just an environmental issue but a civilisational issue which will soon swamp all others.

As important as it remains to try and save a bit of rainforest here and a bit there, it seems more and more that it is the Cenozoic Era itself that is at stake and climate change is the ultimate challenge.

So I would like to commend Gelbspan's book to you or if you don't have time to read, an hour-long DVD is available of a talk that Gelbspan gave last year to the World Affairs Council in San Francisco.

The owners of this material (WaterPlanet Environmental Broadcast Service (WEBS) zena12@earthlink.net ) have given me permission to reproduce 20 copies of this DVD and if you are willing to screen this for your community or friends, send me a mailing address (and if possible a small donation to cover duplication and postage), and I will send you a copy as long as copies last.

I will be summarising Gelbspan in my talks around the US next April/May as well as the material in the two important articles below which debunk the myth of the market-based so-called solutions to the impending climate chaos crisis and "the current obsession amongst the wealthy of the western world with offsetting their guilt by paying spurious companies to pretend to lock in carbon by (often only) pretending to plant trees."