A spokesperson for the elves said “the north pole is melting and we want K-Rudd to know we’re not happy.

“We want K Rudd to care more about Australia and the north pole than coal.”

“The last thing K Rudd needs in these economic times is a bunch of homeless, unemployed and wet elves seeking refugee status due to climate change.”

Def Video and images at http://gallery.me.com/bellis_brisbane

At the same time, a coalition of over 60 Australian environment and community groups have united to condemn the Rudd’s announcement of what amounts to an ineffectual greenhouse reduction target.

Statement by the Climate Movement

In a joint statement issued by the Australian Climate Movement, the interim emissions targets have been denounced as a total failure of climate policy, a demonstration of the Rudd Government’s capitulation to pressure from the big polluters, and simply unacceptable.

The statement confirms that if adopted globally, this target would guarantee the loss of the Great Barrier Reef and the Kakadu wetlands, and would steer the earth on a path towards catastrophic climate change.

Right from the moment of the announcement, peaceful protest actions have been initiated by community groups, concerned individuals and environmental organisations, right across the country. All are united by their position that the emission targets represent a failure of the Federal Government to act on the climate science, a failure to act in the public interest, and a failure of international diplomacy.

The statement from the Climate Movement reinforces that this decision will send a signal to the world that Australia is reneging on the agreed Bali range of 25-40% for developed countries.

This makes the likelihood of a global agreement all the more remote, and unified global action all the more difficult to achieve.

It calls for the Australian Parliament, the media, and all sections of the community to ensure that this weak
target is not allowed to stand, and to make sure that 2009 is the year that Australia begins to show real
leadership on climate change in the lead up to the international negotiations in Copenhagen.

Rudd’s Office Occupied

Shortly after the announcement, five protesters from the Brisbane Southside Climate Action Group occupied the Brisbane electorate office of Prime Minister, describing the government’s emissions targets as weak and defeatist.

They were joined by around 15 other members of the group, who staged an accompanying peaceful and colourful protest outside Mr Rudd’s office.

Group spokeswoman Kristy Walters told the media that the targets were a recipe for climate chaos. In a statement issued by Ms Walters, she said:

“These targets are based on industry preferences rather than scientific necessity. With such low targets more extreme weather events like the recent storms in Brisbane and more severe droughts are likely to occur more frequently. In short, they are a recipe for climate chaos. This irresponsible plan is simply unacceptable”.

Nicole Rankin, a member of the group sitting inside Rudd’s office said “As a mother, I am extremely concerned about what Rudd’s climate change plan means for future generations. The government is clearly pandering to industry and in doing so is sacrificing a safe future for generations to come”.

Outside, the group displayed a range of banners which read “Rudd’s Plan = Climate Chaos” and other signs reading “Thank you Kevin, Love from the Coal Industry”.

These ongoing acts of dissent will culminate in February, when the climate action groups from across the continent converge at Australia’s Climate Action Summit in Canberra in February 2009.  Organisers have encouraged all of the people involved in the protest actions around the country to be part of a huge community action on the 1st day of the second year of the Rudd Government  - to put climate change at the very top of the Rudd Government’s agenda.

Power from the ground up

by Michael Green
December 13, 2008

A FEW weeks ago, a small group of parents and young children - in orange T-shirts and sensible hats - sat in the park at the corner of Spring and Lonsdale streets. The parents sipped drinks and gossiped, and their kids squealed and bolted around the grass. Placards leaned against the fence: “All I want for Christmas is a future”, and “My future is priceless”.

The Walk Against Warming protest had just finished. This group was Families Facing Climate Change, a collection of 10 Ashburton women and their families. They live in Peter Costello’s electorate, Higgins, and formed their group in 2006 in the playground of their kids’ primary school.

“We just were really worried about our children and their future,” Anna Mezzetti said. She’s a 37-year-old mother of three. “We’re just families. We’re just ordinary people, but it’s about being empowered to go and talk to the local MP and say, ‘This issue is really important to us.’ ”

Her co-founder, Dimity Williams, added: “We read the science. When you read that, you can’t understand why nothing’s happening - we’re still frustrated. We thought rather than just complaining about it and getting depressed we would actually try and do something.”

They’re not alone. Grassroots climate action groups are appearing like white blood cells at a wound. Over the past two years, an unprecedented, unreported and largely underestimated climate movement has sprung up throughout our cities and regions. Many of the members have dedicated decades to living simply and sustainably. The great majority though, are new.

Groups start up so rapidly it is difficult to know their numbers, but according to Melbourne’s Climate Action Centre, Victoria probably has about 50, and most are less than two years old. Nationwide, there are well over 200, and Australia is not unique in this trend.

Before long we will see whether such groups can make a real difference in the wider world - one of rising temperatures and melting ice caps on the one hand, and the forces of status quo and instant gratification on the other.

The worldwide climate movement is comprised of small groups with different goals. It has no single agenda or set of policy proposals, but collectively (in some cases unknowingly), it is working to influence negotiations at the Copenhagen Climate Summit in December 2009, where all countries will establish the successor to the Kyoto Protocol. There, our leaders must agree on swift, strong emissions cuts if there is to be any hope of averting catastrophic climate change.

Reflections: James Whelan

James Whelan is one of the optimists. He runs the Change Agency, a Brisbane NGO that consults for activists. He has been around the block with any social issue you care to name and says the climate campaign is different.

“In the history of social movements in Australia, you can’t find a parallel. There’s nothing like it for its diversity, for its rate of growth, and for its inclusiveness. It includes coal miners. It’s rural. It’s urban. And it’s a mistake for anybody to think the climate change movement is part of the environment movement. The climate movement is a much bigger beast.

“You can hold a public meeting in any urban centre in Australia now, and initiate one or more climate action groups,” he says. “This is a movement where the grassroots element is taking the lead and the NGOs are following, some of them faster than others.”

At Melbourne’s Trades Hall, the Climate Action Centre has just opened. It will be run by, and for, these local groups. It aims to strengthen the movement by developing, supporting and forging links between groups. It will hold forums on current issues, and share resources and research.

Broadly, there are two types of climate groups, though often they overlap: political action groups, such as Families Facing Climate Change, and practical action groups. The latter may be solar bulk-buying collectives such as the Dandenong Ranges Renewable Energy Association, (or personal carbon-footprint cutters such as the Westside Carbon Rationing Action Group.

Their diverse membership bears witness to a wellspring of concern rising from deep within the nation’s psyche. But they face a HUGE task.

Reflections: David Karoly

Recently, I saw climate scientist Professor David Karoly speak to a one-third full auditorium at the State Library. He is professor of meteorology at Melbourne University and was a lead author on last year’s report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Karoly said many rates of change are already at the upper limit or outside the range of the IPCC climate change projections - including increases in emissions, sea-level rise and arctic sea ice melt, and decreases in rainfall in southern Australia. The climate is changing faster than the IPCC projected.

Even under the most ambitious targets spelled out by the Federal Government’s climate-change adviser, Ross Garnaut, there is a 50 per cent risk of global warming exceeding 2 degrees, a rise that would cause extraordinary human suffering. Karoly noted that not many people would take a train with a 50 per cent chance of heading off a cliff.

In this light, the Federal Government’s proposed Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme will be nowhere near enough. Labor’s pre-election commitment to a 60 per cent emissions reduction by 2050 will not meet Australia’s share of the worldwide burden. Cuts must be swifter and deeper.

As I listened to Karoly, I scanned the room and saw wide eyes and empty seats. Later, I left with a shocking and surreal message: the immediate future of our civilisation is threatened. The conditions of life on earth are certain to change.

What we do now will determine by how much.

I’d just learnt about the globally accepted scientific research, but oddly, back on the street, my new knowledge felt radical and subversive, and somehow too confronting to share. This emergency is not widely understood. The climate action groups may be multiplying, but among the public at large, alarm about climate change has fallen from its peak.

In November last year, just before the federal election, 50,000 people crowded Federation Square for the Walk Against Warming. They wanted Howard out and, shortly after, they got it. At this year’s walk, however, numbers were way down. The organisers, Environment Victoria, estimated 15,000; The Sunday Age reported 5000. It was a disappointing turnout.

Has an opportunity been lost?

Social researcher Hugh Mackay believes the public was ready for tough sacrifices earlier this year. “The willingness of the community to act in the first six months of this year was palpable. They were waiting to be asked to do something.” That attitude could only last so long. “People’s attention span on issues like this is quite short, unless they can convert their concern into action very quickly,” Mackay says.

For many people, the climate emergency is no longer so pressing: the global financial crisis has emerged to divert public attention. Also, the Rudd Government has taken some of the pressure off by at least acknowledging the existence of the climate problem and initiating some green policies. But even the Government is sending mixed messages. In the furore over rising petrol prices, nearly all voices argued that rises must be restrained. As Mackay notes, when our leaders say we can use petrol as freely as ever, many people assume there isn’t a carbon emission catastrophe after all. The same logic applies when the public sees that the biggest polluters are likely to receive compensation under Labor’s proposed emissions trading scheme.

There’s one caveat to all this gloom. Alongside the community’s waning concern, Mackay says he has observed a contrary trend. He says we have woken up from a long stretch of disengagement from social, environmental and political issues. He’s not certain how these two trends match, or what will happen next. But the grassroots movement has already influenced the debate. Last month, Tony Windsor, independent MP for New England in northern NSW, introduced a private member’s bill, the Climate Protection Bill 2008, to Federal Parliament. Windsor calls it “the people’s climate protection bill”. It was born about six months ago in his electorate office, following a visit from concerned constituents. Since then, 65 climate groups have been involved in its drafting.

The bill would bind the Government to deeper emissions cuts: by 2020, 30 per cent below 1990 levels; and by 2050, 80 per cent. Among other things, it also sets steeper renewable energy targets and mandates greenhouse impact statements on new legislation. (According to Karoly, even those targets are not strict enough.)

The bill was loosely based on UK legislation, originally driven by grassroots organisations and just passed by their parliament. Windsor says his bill’s success depends on the public will.

“The people can actually drive this, if they activate themselves. But if they just sit around and wait for the Parliament to do something, my guess is they’ll end up with a watered-down arrangement probably not worth pursuing … I think people will ratchet the pressure up (on their MPs). I hope they do.”

Community Organising

They might. Community organising is back in vogue - most notably in President-elect Barack Obama’s grassroots campaign, which was fuelled and funded by record individual donations of time and money. American writer Paul Hawken, in his book Blessed Unrest, argues that the start of the 21st century has seen the emergence of a compassionate, thriving global movement for environmental and social justice. He sees a movement of more than 1 million organisations, from neighbourhood associations to international charities, that is causing profound societal change, step by step.

Hawken writes that when asked for his view of the future, he always replies the same way. “If you look at the science that describes what is happening on earth today and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t have the correct data. If you meet the people in this unnamed movement and aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a heart.”

Dr James Goodman has long researched social activist movements. He is a senior lecturer in the school of social and political change at the University of Technology, Sydney. He and his team have interviewed climate activists in Britain and in Australia. “One of the things we explore is what motivates people, given the scale of the problem and given that governments don’t seem to be listening,” he says.

“It’s a very intense personal responsibility. It’s almost like an emotional reaction. It’s the sense that ‘we’ve got nothing else to lose’.”

SO FAR, he says, the UK activists are generally pessimistic about the future, and the Australians are more hopeful, believing their actions can bring about the changes they want. In February, action groups from all over the country will meet in Canberra for the Climate Action Summit. Over four days, they will hold workshops, protests and strategy meetings. They will petition MPs and encourage one another to keep badgering their representatives all year.

That’s what Families Facing Climate Change plans to do. It ran candidates before the last state and federal elections, and has met state Labor MP Bob Stensholt and Peter Costello. “When we met with Peter Costello, he didn’t know what green power was,” said Dimity Williams in the afternoon sun.

“We explained to him what that was and how he could get 100 per cent green power for his house. I lent him Tim Flannery’s book The Weather Makers, which he hadn’t read even though Flannery was the Australian of the Year. I think we’re doing him a favour. The politicians learn from us.”

But at this year’s Walk Against Warming, for a while at least, it was hard not to feel despair. Afterwards, I sat in the park for a while, hungry and tired, at first contemplating the science and then, the improbability and complexity of the response required.

I thought about what makes individuals form grassroots groups, about why some feel compelled to leave their lounge rooms and stride out against the gale, willing the whole world to do the same.

Families Facing Climate Change

Anna Mezzetti explained her group’s motivations: “If you don’t try and do something, then you just despair. It’s better when you band together with other people, rather than being alone, worrying. We actually felt uplifted when we discovered each other.”

Dimity Williams went on: “It’s harder and harder to remain hopeful, but I don’t want my children to turn to me in 15 years’ time and say why weren’t you doing anything?”

A newspaper blew across the grass, its loose pages catching and spreading in the wind. Instinctively, the kids in orange T-shirts ran and gathered them as best they could.

There is hope in action.

See the original article here…

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The Problems of Geosequestration

Geosequestration is sweeping the problem of CO2 production, and the Greenhouse problem, under the carpet on a geological scale. It is fraught with dangers and is irresponsible on a generational scale. It is a short term political solution for a means of maintaining the status quo of consuming fossil fuels at a great rate, pleasing the powerful energy companies, and maintaining the flow of money to them regardless of the consequences.

The energy used to sequester the CO2 will require more fossil fuel to be used and so produce more CO2 which will also have to be sequestered. So the problem is exacerbated instead of relieved. If it were genuinely being thought of as a means of temporary storage of CO2 until it could be disposed of some other way then geosequestration would be a valuable topic for study. However, it is clear from the politics involved that geosequestration is being thought of as a final solution.

It is cheaper to use renewable energy sources and it is better to save coal for other uses. Geosequestration is not a suitable solution for the Greenhouse problem.

The main problem is escape of CO2. The choice of reservoir also is critical and the idea of using coal as a reservoir is unacceptable. The volume of CO2 is mind bogglingly enormous, and there may not be sufficient room to accommodate it. Enormous quantities of CO2 will need to be sequestered, at least 5,000 million tons per year. Timing considerations are paramount and costs are prohibitive.

RESEVOIR SIZES AND TYPES

Sandstone is generally considered the best reservoir for CO2 storage. It has fewer problems than coal or limestone. CO2 can be placed in sandstone where there is some permeability and porosity. CO2 could be stored in sandstones with saline water in them. It could even be used in oil reservoirs to help push out the residual oil. Of course the water would then be unusable but as it was already saline does it matter? What would the reactions be with the salts in the water and the CO2? If the gas could drive out the oil could it not then escape easily? It would be difficult to contain it. Also if the reservoir has water in it then there is less room for the CO2. Although Peter Cook considers saline aquifers to be the best option based on what they are doing overseas one has to ask what reactions the CO2 will have with the salts in the aquifer, how can water movement be stopped forever in the aquifer, and could the CO2 escape through solution?

Depleted oil and gas reservoirs look like good places to put unwanted CO2. These have held hydrocarbons before so should be good for re-use. This is by no means certain. Once the gas and oil have been removed from the reservoirs the nature of the reservoirs change. The reduction of pressure can allow fractures to develop and permeable pathways to open. Previously clogged pores can open up. The holes drilled into the formation need to be sealed forever.

There is also debate about whether reservoirs were gas-tight to start with.

All the depleted fields could probably store only one year of world emissions altogether.

COAL

Because coal can hold large proportions of CO2 it is being considered as a reservoir. Coal can hold twice as much CO2 as CH4 or more depending on the type of coal. However, this would sterilise the coal if it was successful and so would waste a valuable resource. Even if the coal is poor quality and is too deep for current exploitation it should not be thought it will always be an uneconomic resource. Who knows what technology we will have in a hundred years time when our descendants will probably be desperate for coal? It has a great many more uses than being an energy resource. What is un-minable coal today could be a most valuable resource in the future. The concept that Australia has vast amounts of un-minable coal has to be questioned. We have only a small amount of the world’s coal.

Enhancing coal bed methane production by injection of is also a wacky idea. It not only sterilises the coal remaining after the methane extraction it adds expense and decreases efficiency. Furthermore the fractured and punctured coal will leak like a sieve. Some methane has to be drawn from the coal before the CO2 can be introduced. The system of coal, water, salts, CO2 and CH4 has to be juggled, and the long term interactions accounted for.

LEAKAGE OF CO2

The environmental risks include the possibility that the CO2 would leak - either slowly over time, or suddenly if there was seismic activity. Very slow leaks would be hard to detect. CO2 is heavy and would sit in hollows where it could asphyxiate people and animals.

In 1986 a deadly eruption of volcanic CO2 bubbled up from the waters of Lake Nyos in Africa suffocating 1800 villagers and thousands of animals. Could such a disaster be re-created by Geosequestration?

To hold CO2 you need a trap, reservoir and seal. The trap must have no faults and no water floors. It must also be crack-proof even in an earthquake. All seals leak. Limestone seals crack or dissolve. Evaporite seals are too mobile. All shales leak to some extent, especially if the pressure is high. Even hydrocarbons leak at low rates by diffusion even if there is no fracture system or porous bed to follow.

There is no perfect seal. We are currently loosing CH4 from the sea bed from naturally leaking reservoirs. Some geologists think that all full reservoirs are only full because they are actively being replenished for the petroleum they are losing.

Will changes of pressures cause the reservoir rock to fret and crack? Increasing or decreasing pressure on rock is likely to stress it.

It is expensive to make space underground. Fracturing to increase space may break seals. The ground may naturally fracture or fret especially if injection rates are high. Leakage also could occur in well bores and through reaction with cement.

With a coal reservoir CO2 would interact with coal causing shrinkage and swelling. It plasticises coal. It also dissolves and precipitates minerals. It can leach metals out of coal and release them to ground water.

Even a perfect reservoir can be fractured by an earthquake. Residual stress is often active in the Earth and this could help open fractures with the help of compressed CO2. Currently some boreholes in the Bowen Basin change shape due to residual stress.

What reactions CO2 by microbes have yet been studied in relation to gas storage and escape?

SOLUTION AND UNSTABILITY

CO2 liquid floats on water and dissolves in water to form carbonic acid. It may take hundreds of years for the CO2 in the reservoir to dissolve. The CO2 saturated water is denser than other water so it will to sink to the bottom of the reservoir where it my more easily be flushed out. This carbonic acid can attack minerals and dissolve them. It can widen cracks and dissolve cements and other components. CO2 is more soluble under pressure.

Limestone reservoirs and sandstone reservoirs with calcite cement, or matrix, will dissolve in carbonic acid. Mineral matter in coals sealing cleats is likely to be dissolved as these are mainly calcite, clay or pyrite.

The gas may simply dissolve in groundwater and travel out of the reservoir in solution.

MONITORING

Monitoring is a serious and novel problem. How is leakage to be tested? How can very slow leaks be detected? Who is responsible on a 1000 year time frame? How can leaks be distinguished from natural CO2? What will we do if the reservoirs do leak? What is the legal status of CO2? If it is waste it comes under one jurisdiction. If it is simply being stored it may come under some other jurisdiction.

There is no standard for testing isotherms. Analysis is expensive and our models are poor.

We need to model basins not just areas of wells and to handle large time frames. eg 25 years.

We need isotope studies to characterise the natural CO2 and on the waste CO2 pumped down the hole. Then what about isotope exchange complications? Seismic monitoring is currently employed but this just shows the gross movement of the gas. It is not suitable for studying slow leaks.

DEPTH CONSIDERATIONS

Because it has to be stored as a liquid it has to be kept at a super critical pressure which corresponds to a depth of about 900metres.

These depth requirements cut out all relatively shallow aquifers, and that means the technology will be more expensive and less certain.

TIMING

At the moment, renewable energy only provides 3% of the world’s energy needs, and 2.7% of that is hydro-electric power. Solar, wind, everything else is only 0.3 of a percent. Even 30 years from now, fossil fuels are expected to provide 85% of the world’s energy. So for the next few decades, what happens to carbon dioxide levels is going to be critical.

Geosequestration will, at best, reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 7% by 2020, according to research by Dr Ben McNeil from the Centre for Environment Modelling and Prediction at Sydney’s University of New South Wales. Over the same time he predicted Australia’s CO2 emissions would increase by around 40%.

McNeil said geosequestration could reduce CO2 emissions from electricity production by a maximum of 40% by 2030, assuming all new coal power stations sequestered 100% of their CO2 emissions. This means a reduction of just 7% in total CO2 emissions by 2020, he said.

Professor Colin Ward, head of geology at the University of New South Wales and researcher at the CRC for Coal in Sustainable Development said current coal power stations do not have the technology to separate CO2 for sequestration and cannot be modified to do so.

LOCATION

Sequestration sites need to be near the source of CO2 production and these sites may not be near any suitable sites. If coal was sold at a real price in relation to its value it would kill off its use as a fuel source and sequestration would not be an option.

It is questionable about putting sequestering stations near coal power stations. There may not be suitable reservoirs available, and there would be political or economic pressure put on geologists to try to present favourable scenarios. Power stations are usually near coal fields and any sequestration presents problems for the gas to leak into the coal. Outside the coal the reservoirs would probably be associated sandstones and these might leak into the coal or elsewhere via groundwater or faults.

SEQUESTRATION SITES OVERSEAS

The first attempts at geosequestration had many failures so it can be anticipated that the process will not be a s straight forward as it would seem.

Norwegian oil company Statoil, has already injected five million tonnes of carbon dioxide into a saline aquifer about one kilometre below the sea bed at Sleipner gas field in the North Sea since 1996. Time delayed, three-dimensional seismic surveys, have shown the CO2 is spreading gradually through the reservoir.

SEQUESTRATION SITES IN AUSTRALIA

The Sydney Basin and South East Queensland are prime sites for geosequestration because they have large coal fields. Professor Colin Ward said current coal power stations do not have the technology to separate CO2 for sequestration and can’t be modified to do so.

According to Professor Ward, Australia’s largest potential reserves for carbon dioxide is the Great Artesian Basin, an underground body of saline water that stretches across Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia and the Northern Territory. This has the capacity to hold 3000 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide, he said.

The most favoured area at present is the Gorgon Development area in a depleted gas field based at Barrow Island, 130 kilometres off the North West coast of Western Australia. The Gorgon project would be the world’s largest geosequestration project and is due to start in 2008. It involves burying 125 million tonnes of CO2. It is a project expected to bury 1.5% of Australia’s total CO2 production. It is set to become the largest geosequestration project in the world when it is up and running. Whereas Sleipner will inject 20 million tons of CO2 underground, Gorgon with sequester 125 million over the life of the project.

The companies in the Gorgon venture are Chevron Texaco, Exxon Mobil and Shell. According to John Torkington from Chevron Texaco, “Our project on Barrow Island involves taking natural gas from below the sea floor and converting it into liquefied natural gas which we can then transport in ships to the Asian market”. The gas liquefaction process involves the use of gas turbines and compressors. The exhaust emissions from those gas turbines and the cost involved in capturing CO2 from that source is really not practical at the moment. So we are unable to really deal with those parts of the emissions.

John Torkington listed five criteria for the site selection. These are reservoir size, capacity to take the gas at the rates of injection required, security of the reservoir, and ability to monitor the gas in it.

COSTS

It is difficult to get cost figures on geosequestration as it is a new and untried technology. Furthermore politics clouds the issues.

John Wright said that “some cost estimates that we’ve done on capturing carbon dioxide from the stacks of existing coal-fired power stations, and then sequestering that CO2, one into the ocean, and another into a used gas field, puts the price of carbon dioxide, something like $50-$60 per tonne. Now that is a huge impost on electricity for getting rid of that carbon dioxide. So under present technology, we’re looking at ways and means of reducing that cost. But the major cost in that is actually the capture, not necessarily the sequestration.”

DR PETER COOK:” We’ve done a lot of work on this in Australia and we know that in many areas it is likely that you will be able to store that CO2 in the ground for $10 a tonne or less. However this does not include the costs of capturing the CO2. “Yet Dr Batterham has repeatedly cited a figure of $10 a tonne as the full cost of taking carbon dioxide out of coal, capturing it and burying it in the ground.”

CATHERINE MCGRATH of ABC said “looking at the costs of geo-sequestration, Australia says the cost would approximately be $10 to $50 per tonne. The International Energy Agency says closer to $100, and the UK Department of Industry reported up to $245.”

Capital costs are 70-90% of sequestration, and storage and transport are equal.

* costs US$4 to 16 per ton
* capture is US$16-84 per ton
* compression is US$8-10 per ton
* transport is US$0.7 to 4 per ton
* injection is US$4 per ton

Costs of capture of CO2 may be reduced a little by care in the way it is produced. Only about 5 to 15% of the gas emitted at a coal burning power station is CO2. Nitrogen makes up a large proportion of the rest. If the nitrogen is removed first then more pure CO2 is produced, 85-90%, and this is cheaper to sequestrate. David Harris is trialling a process called coal gasification which enables the carbon dioxide to be separated before combustion. But many of our existing stations still have life-spans of 15, 20 and in some cases even 50 years left… so whichever way you look at it these changes will come at a cost.

POLITICAL ASPECTS

The USA has put billions of dollars into geosequestration and looked for partners from around the world. Australia is one of those partners, and there’s a similar alignment between the government and the coal industry that is trying to protect its long-term future in a world that knows we have to start cutting greenhouse emissions. Both Australia and the United States are spending more and more on research into geosequestration.

Australia has the most emissions of CO2 per person in the industrialised world, mainly because most of our electricity uses energy from coal-fired power stations.

Will geosequestration save the planet or just save the fossil fuel industry?

To make geosequestration work is an engineering feat on a scale bigger than anything we’ve ever tried in Australia. It is far more pressing to spend our energy on technologies that do not create carbon dioxide in the first place.

Session 1

• A Queensland community-owned mobility bus service
• Targets to save the Great Barrier Reef: how to get to 350ppm
• How our food consumption effects our environment and impacts climate change
• Population and climate change
• Human displacement through climate change
• Urban sustainability

Session 2

• Nightly climate news: a campaign project
• Improving our forms of communication around climate change and responses
• Queensland energy generation and use
• Global safe climate covenant and coalition
• Why no-one’s fooled by ‘Clean Coal’: the science of CCS and geosequestration

Session 3

• Solar energy in the kitchen
• Queensland coal production and the actions and activities on coal in the next year
• Local re-skilling and lifestyle transformation (including sustainable homes)
• Illustrated overview of global issues and solutions: the need for a new holistic paradigm
• Greenhouse sceptics: where have they gone?

Session 4

• Grief and sadness: how to look after ourselves and each other in this crisis
• Step-in to step it up: how to stage an effective meeting in MPs offices
• Opposing the Greenhouse Mafia: creating a powerful people’s climate change lobby
• Radical rethink: following the paradigm shift
• Climate justice and development: international perspectives and actions

Below is a letter to the climate movement from Emma Brindal, one of the participants in a sit-in action in Brisbane in protest of the lack of meaningful action on climate change.

Dear Friends in the Climate Movement

At the end of September as part of a national week of action on climate change, a group of friends, including myself, held a sit-in in Kevin Rudd’s electoral office in Brisbane.

Sitting in Kevin Rudd

We had all been feeling increasingly concerned about our government’s lack of meaningful action on climate change.  We felt it was time to do more than write letters and bemoan our government’s inaction. The sit-in was really successful and great fun to be a part of.

In the first days of December, the Rudd Government will release the White Paper, outlining the Emissions Trading Scheme and emissions reduction targets for 2020 - the most important policy in contemporary Australia. I’m calling on you to do a similar action in your MP’s office in the first week of December – step in to your MP’s office and be part of stepping it up on climate change.

At our ’step in’, five people went into Kevin Rudd’s office and asked to make an appointment with Rudd.  I felt a bit nervous walking in, but having a group of us together made it a lot easier. After some discussion with a staff member and the office manager, we established that we weren’t going to get a meeting straight away. So we said, “That’s ok, we’ll wait” – and we sat down on the floor and pulled out our signs that we had prepared beforehand. With perfect timing, our other friends came around the corner with a banner that read ‘Great Barrier Reef – not negotiable’.

Soon, television crew from three different stations arrived.  Our media spokesperson conducted a number of interviews while we continued to sit on the floor in the office. After two hours, the police hadn’t turned up.  We felt we had succeeded in getting the media we wanted and decided to call it quits for the day… perhaps to return for a much longer sit-in in December!

I think the action was successful because we were really organised in advance. We’d had a couple of meetings before the day of the sit-in.  On the day, we met up near Rudd’s office about an hour beforehand to go over what we wanted to do.

Another key part to the success of our action was having two excellent media people (one a media spokesperson and the other a media liaison) who sent our media release and made follow-up calls to key media outlets once we were in the office. They had practiced by roleplaying interviews and were feeling well-prepared before the action. Sending out a media release with high resolution photos was also important so media outlets that didn’t make it were still able to do stories with photos on the action.

You can see some of the media on our action here:
http://climateemergencyqueensland.blogspot.com/2008/09/climate-emergency-launch.html

It was great having supporters chanting and with colourful banners outside. They kept us entertained with chants of “Save our Reef, Mr Rudd, Garnaut’s targets are a dud!’  Their presence provided us with moral support for what we were doing.

Supporters outside Kevin Rudd

I think the only problem we had on the day was when trains were suddenly cancelled – just before our train was due to head to Kevin Rudd’s office! We had to go and find a bus and we were running about half an hour late. Leaving plenty of time before the event was due to start definitely paid off for us!

I encourage you to do a similar action in your MP’s office in the first week of December. Now is the time to step in and step up community action on climate change!

To get you started, download the great information kit on how to do a Step In http://stepitupaustralia.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/step-in-to-step-it-up-on-climate-change.pdf

Next, get together with your climate action group or your friends and talk about what you would like your ‘Step In’ to be like.  What will you do when you are there?  What are the core messages you want to convey to your MP, to the public, and to media? What do people in your group need to feel prepared?  Email hollycreenaune@gmail.com with any questions or for an experienced activist to visit your group to help you plan.

Then, a short time after the Federal Government releases their White Paper, step in to your MP’s office with a group of people from your community, and be part of stepping it up on climate change!

See the website for more information, tips and stories from a whole range of climate change groups who have ‘stepped in’ to their MP’s office already: http://stepitupaustralia.wordpress.com/ Get informed, inspired, and ready to STEP IN this December.

All the best in stepping in,
Emma Brindal

Some of the ideas presented in Graeme’s model for creating a sustainable future are captured below:

The Next Ten Years

The most critical time in human history. Rapidly rising oil and food prices are signs that our unsustainable global system is running out of cheap resources. The next decade will not only be a time of growing crisis, but also a time of growing opportunities.

The Global Emergency

Preventing runaway climate change. Why we have less than five years to stop global warming and prevent disaster, and why rapid constructive change is possible.

The Future is Our Choice

We will either create an ethical civilisation or suffer the catastrophic collapse of the environment and human societies. Why our immoral and destructive global system is unsustainable, and why a sustainable civilisation cannot be built without love, caring, peace and justice.

Paradigm Shift

The design of a sustainable economy and culture. The challenge is to quickly transform our environmentally, economically and socially unsustainable consumer society into a sustainable conserver society. Future economic growth is only possible if we use systems thinking, renewable energies, nanotechnologies, biomimicry, lean design and closed-loop manufacturing processes to efficiently produce products without waste or pollution.

On the Edge of Evolution

Why transformative societal change is inevitable. A new, sustainable level of civilisation (a new historical age) with holistic views, values, technologies and social structures has already begun to emerge. We can and must support this evolutionary process: the survival of our species is at stake.

If you would like to see Graeme’s presentation, please contact graeme[@]bestfutures.org

• How can we engage more people in our communities on climate change issues?
• What words or phrases are current in climate matters?
• What alternative messages could be effective?

How to get more people involved in working on climate change?

Multiple targets of climate change outreach and engagement:

• Influence the receptive
• Politicise the passionate
• Empower the committed
  

Making Use of Events

Events like Walk Against Warming provide a basis for large scale community participation in a low-key action on climate change. How can we make it more effective? Memorable? Eye-catching? Media-savvy? Moving beyond placards, t-shirts…

Making climate action a status symbol and developing role-models? How can we use marketing techniques to position climate action as sexy/fun?

We need to ensure that our events create opportunities for meaningful engagement and active participation. How can we create concrete involvement that equals rewarding participation?

How can we maximise media coverage of our events to build awareness/branding? A good local example was Greenfest, which was very well advertised, covered extensively in all local papers, and had the support of Quest News.

Another example is provided by the water revolution - media got behind it also. Can we build on the momentum of the water shortage and the success of getting on top of it? This campaign also relied upon personal self-interest, and promoted the message that we are all at risk, and all in this together.

Building Community

Difficult to do, but highly rewarding in terms of the outcomes. ‘If you want to go faster, go alone. If you want to go further, go together.’ The objective is the long term development of the movement –> keeping people empowered. Some suggestions:

• ‘Power of Community’ screenings
• ‘Plan it for the Planet’ community building slogan
• Getting support and building relationships around similar interests (farmers and environmentalists against coal)

Targeted letter-writing campaigns

We should recognise the power of the pen - there could be some very useful resources to be promoted including templates, skills and providing an organised structure to the process.

Could be extended to information campaigns - but we need to ensure high quality and consistent information, economic arguments, stats, $$ impacts. We can also make use of the opportunities provided by the impacts of climate change - for example, as food prices are rising, we can hand out brochures/letters at supermarkets.

Getting our messages right

There is no one silver bullet when it comes to messages and messaging about climate change - some people emphasise the emergency element, others stress the positive positioning over the negative. A number of ideas were floated, including:

• Ensuring that we use positive and empowering language - use terms like demonstration over protest
• Emphasing the opportunities that might be available, and using that to appeal to people’s rational self-interest - ‘green money making opportunities’
• Getting beyond terms like global warming (too cuddly?) and climate change (redundant) - moving to crisis and emergency language
• Stress the influence on the broad community, the common interest, all involved, all affected
• About our kids futures (long time frame)
• Affirm the value of lower consumption (of fuel, resources) - consume less, live more
• 70% of Australians are concerned about climate change, but may need to find meaningful ways to express this
• We need to be prepared with responses for people as they hurt.
• Identify and provide ways to create moments of organised collective action to support leaders and activists - reclaim democracy in the process of achieving collective objectives.

What features of the Target 140 Campaign were successful?

• Example of a community level campaign targeting the reduction in consumption
• Used a variety of media, including large scale and expensive advertising
• Offered freebies, but linked to the objectives of the campaign (shower timers)
• Conducted face-to-face meetings
• Provided feedback and accountability systems (metering and reports) to keep people aware of progress
• Turned wasteful consumption into a socially/morally unacceptable position

How can we do this with energy?

• Could consist of quarterly campaigns where we build on the water reduction to reducing: energy, transport, water, commodities.
• Provide people with the opportunities to re-think their lifestyles
• How do we engage with people who simply don’t want to know?
• Some scope for clever ideas - for instance, EPA has a “low carb diet” book in progress
• Gated communities and greenfield developments provide important opportunities
• Ensure that we maintain the face-to-face element
• Keep things present and visible, do things on streets and for neighbours
• Recognise that emergencies bring people together and create a sense of community (community of fate)
• Establish options which provide positive alternatives to the status quo: community-supported or co-operative food, freedom from the grid, pooling resources, SMARTer homes
• Provide opportunities for people to participate that are fun
• Make use of the power of arts: music, street theatre
• Recognise that people respond most to positive experiences
• Recognise that the awareness is there - we need to provide ways for people to incorporate sustainability into every decision

Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) Posts

Coalitions already do exist - what is proposed here?

How do new things avoid duplication? How does this coalition idea relate to what is already happening?

Current targets would move us quickly into catastrophic disasters. How do we turn ideas around by next year? To go back to zero and below zero emissions. Immediate, emergency need for urgent action. Concepts need to be out there. Can be get common agreement between groups. A compatible statement that is put out for public consideration. The question isn’t what it costs.

Are you targeting a certain level of emissions?

No, that’s one of the questions. 300-350 is the proposed target, which represents the concentration in the 1980s and the last time when we had a stable climate. It is really important not to let ’safe’ be distorted. Stern managed it. We do need specific numbers attached.

The 350.org movement is steaming ahead in the United States. We are currently at around 387ppm globally.

Coalition and/or Covenant

What is the difference between committing to be a member of the coalition and signing the covenant? None.

You could get people to sign onto a three sentence statement easily. The covenant is more detailed. Calling it a coalition might not help. It might be worth talking in terms of a safe climate objective. Earth Charter. Declaration is a good word - the Safe Climate Declaration. Almost the least amount you could say and still have something to say. Provides the least opportunities for objection.

Looking for getting with what other groups are saying. Encourage people to get on the same page.

Three demands: state of emergency, need for action, need to get back to safe levels.

What are the conditions under which we lose all the ice in the Arctic (or 70m sea level rise)? 425ppm plus/minus 75 ppm. We shouldn’t be within the risk zone at all. What about the conditions for Greenland, to get back the Artic sea ice, the permafrost, the Great Barrier Reef, the Himalayas, the Amazon? 300 - 325ppm. The target 350 campaign may not be enough.

Want to move away from ‘what will it cost?’ to ‘what is safe?’. The future of life on earth is now at risk.

“Safe Australia”

The Garnaut recommendations are recommendations for the death of Australia. Australians did not ignore the risks of WWII.

Individuals and groups to sign on. How will you disseminate it? Collect signatures? We’d now try to frame political campaigns, everything we do, through this approach. The continuity is the concept of ’safe’ - not necessarily 350. As the science strengthens, the concept of safe climate can tighten up.

We have a lot of fuzziness around the danger and very unclear ideas about who the enemy is (unlike wartime mobilisation). Surveys show public ideas are ahead of the politicians. But they are not doing it. They see hypocrisy from the government. Tunnels drilled and no public transport. Qld Coal industry racing ahead.

People have to believe that what they do makes a difference. This is lacking - which is debilitating.

If you change people’s beliefs, then they will change their behaviours.

Pictures of all of the species that are going to go extinct, People have to see it, get it and realise that they can do something about it.

It’s like we’ve been diagnosed with cancer, and we’re in a denial stage. We’ve been told go and take an aspirin - and not chemotherapy or the appropriate cure for the illness. Take 2 aspirin and you’ll be dead in six weeks. No! I want chemo! - need the right level of action commensurate with the terminal illness.

Concept of the Covenant

How to follow it through in action. Copenhagen is likely to be hopeless and dispiriting. How can we empower ourselves and get control.

Citizen treaty: cascade up through organisations, local government, from cities, to states to nations.

Why bother: we’re in a transition time where we’re realising that it is going to become much harder - 100% in ten years. What if all the people who share this aspiration are able to connect around the world.

Tiers to engage more and deeper levels.