New analysis done by the Australian Conservation Foundation shows that while funding and subsidies for solar power and climate change related programs has increased by $500 million per year, subsidies and concessions for fossil fuel carbon pollution related activies soared by $1.5 billion per year, 3 times as much.
Since the Australian Conservation Foundation launched its campaign against the proposed nuclear waste dump at Muckaty in the Northern Territory some 2700 signatures have been collected on the 'Dump the Dump' petition. Today, Dave Sweeney, ACF nuclear free campaigner, went to Energy and Resources Minister Martin Ferguson's office to deliver the petition, accompanied by anti-nuclear activists including members of Friends of the Earth ACE collective, who brought a trailer loaded with drums of 'radioactive waste' to highlight the message.
The 2010 Walk against Warming in Melbourne was different from previous years, being in fact largely symbolic. Instead of the usual march through the city, participants gathered in three critical electorates, Melbourne, Deakin and La Trobe before engaging in a mass letter-box with a message for climate change. In central Melbourne the initial rally attracted a larger than expected number, about 500, and there was a short backwards march to highlight the direction the major parties have been taking the country.
Conservationists and scientists have reacted angrily to the breathtaking act by the Rudd Government in taking the emissions trading scheme - the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme - of the legliative agenda for two to three years, delaying central action on climate change - the setting of a carbon price.
The Getup organisation have launched a public No confidence vote saying that Kevin Rudd has lost the courage of his convictions. He needs to hear loud and clear that he just lost our confidence as a result.
Protesters gathered today at the Melbourne head office of BHP Billiton "in solidarity with communities around the world affected by BHP's mining activities, and to show dissent to the proposed expansion and proposed open pit at Olympic Dam uranium mine" (FoE Media release).
The rally also marked the release in London of an 'Alternative Annual Report':
[Quote from FoE media release]
To whom it may concern,
In response to the ACF media release “Population boom will bust environment and quality of life” (22 September 2009):
The opinion presented is overly simplistic and inherently flawed as several of the implicit assumptions cannot be backed up by robust arguments. Exposing the nationalist agenda of this statement is in the interests of fairness in informing a free-thinking, democratic society. A nationalistic perspective on climate change is inconsistent with the inexorably global nature and scale of the manifold impacts of a modified climate.
