Labor Environment Action Network
I attended this week the CrunchTime Policy Conference in Sydney put on by leading Progressive ThinkTanks.
In the coming blogs, I report on the speakers and organisations. Here LEAN, the Labor Environment Action Network.
I had heard of LEAN in NSW and recently in Victoria, but it was the first time to experience such a good presentation about the environmental crisis from Dr Gabrielle Kuiper (an urban planner with a background in science, sustainability and active transport).
I urge all ALP members to be involved, to speak at and pass resolutions at ALP meetings and lobby the government.
The Lean Ambassador program is working. Here is more info.
‘ LEAN is a broad based group of ALP activits for protecting and enhancing our environment.
We have a number of state and federal MP’s as members, as well as many trade union activists.
All ALP members are welcome to join, or attend our functions. LEAN is proud of Labor’s record on environment protection, but believe there’s more to be done.
We are committed to rank and file involvement in shaping the direction of our party and we want to ensure that environmentalism is a core part of our future.
We want to educate ourselves and our fellow branch members about the challenges we face and some of the solutions. We want to make contact with people in the community who are working on these problems, and get to know them and learn from their experiences.
Our core focus is the Labor Party itself – since our party is frequently in Government we want to make sure that our policies and programs reflect our environmental goals. But we encourage our members to be part of broader community campaigns to influence environmental outcomes.
We hold regular forums and discussions, often with prominent environmentalists. We circulate resolutions for consideration by branches, to promote debate on environmental issues.’
The LEAN brochures are well presented and professional.
The political reality is that voters put action on the environmental crisis high, but at present are being sold out by PM Rudd and Minister Wong.
Since the GFC, it is clear that the ETS cannot work on the same market principles established by the same financial types, with money devices, privatising air, property rights and trading – the ETS idea collapsed when the fiancial system collapsed in reality, it was proved wrong. Pressure on Rudd and Wong has to defeat the big corporate lobby – why should the polluters continue to rule?
The environmental crisis is code RED.
At X-mas I was given Climate Code Red by David Spratt and Philip Sutton, and am very alamarmed. I know that my two grandchildren fine boys are in for total collapse of our environment unless we can force the government to act to take on the corporates.
right to strike on the environment
