A great climate action summit in Canberra

I attended the first ever Australian climate action summit in Canberra.

More than 500 people from around the country gathered for three days from 31/1/09 to 2/4/09 to produce a national, unified set of objectives for the community campaign of climate action for the crucial year ahead.

Over 140 community climate action groups united in their decision to oppose the Federal Government’s proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), saying that it will fail make the required cuts to greenhouse pollution.

At the summit there was:

• Two days of facilitated meetings and workshops to build a unified national climate campaign.
• One day of dynamic training in climate campaigning skills for taking action, facilitating climate action groups, effective lobbying and more.
• On the first day of the 2009 Federal Parliament, thousands of people were mobilised in a high profile demonstration for real action on climate change by encircling Australia's federal parliament.

In 2009, the united Community Climate Action Groups will campaign to:

• Prevent the CPRS from becoming law as it will fail to make emission cuts necessary to stop the climate emergency.
• Build community-wide action to demand green jobs, a just transition for fossil fuel industry workers and 100% renewable energy by 2020.
• Aim for stabilisation at 300ppm CO2 and strong international agreement in line with what science and global justice demands.

I was amazed at how much common ground there was between the people who attended, from all walks of life.

More information (and soon some photos) is available on Greenlivingpedia here