Climate Action Summit report
Here is a report on the National Climate Action Summit 2010 held at the ANU in Canberra on March 13-15 by Ewan Saunders
‘Three hundred climate activists participated in Australia’s second national Climate Action Summit , marking an important step forward for the grassroots climate movement in this country.
Over the three days, activists discussed a wide range of issues facing the climate movement and formulated campaign strategies for the coming year.
The summit opened with a plenary fronted by renowned climatologist Professor David Karoly, Greens Senator Christine Milne and Damien Lawson from the Melbourne Climate Action Centre.
Karoly, who has served as lead author for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, gave a summary of the science of climate change.
He addressed the climate deniers’ campaign to attack and discredit climate scientists around the world.
He exposed the myth, popularised through the corporate media, that global warming stopped in 1998 and since then the Earth has been cooling. He noted the Earth was warming in 1998 and has continued to warm since.
On the question of the relationship between scientists and the grassroots movement, he said, “Scientists can help”, but went on to describe the restrictions imposed on scientists by academic and other institutions.
Milne expanded further on the climate denialists’ campaign. She said: “The old vested interests have fought like partisans.
“These people had money, they organised, and they organised globally.”
Milne mapped out the strategy of the denial campaign: first, to cast doubt on the science as something irrational, dogmatic and religious; second, repeat the mantra the public will be worse off if action for a safe climate is taken.
She said the climate movement must respond by stating and restating that we must accept the science and condemn climate change denial as the irrational, dogmatic religion.
She said the movement must convey the message that acting on climate change will mean we will be better off. The movement must offer a vision of a clean future in which people lead healthy, purposeful lives.
Another major plenary featured Walden Bello, founding director of Focus on the Global South, Donna Jackson from the Australia Nuclear Free Alliance, Mark Ogge from Beyond Zero Emissions (BZE) and Clive Spash.
Spash resigned from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation last year when the organisation attempted to censor his report criticising carbon trading.
Ogge gave a preview presentation of BZE’s soon-to-be-released fully costed blueprint for Australia’s transition to 100% renewable energy by 2020, powered by commercially-available wind and solar-thermal technology.
Bello, via video-link from the Philippines, addressed climate impacts on the Third World and global climate justice.
Jackson condemned the federal government’s plan for a high-level nuclear waste dump in Australia.
This year’s summit was more ambitious than the last.
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2010/831/42748
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