Global Climate Change Action

1) Wind Generator could be available next year (story dated June 2007)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/06/27/1963676.htm

2) Graeme Attey gets funding!
http://tiny.cc/9xf1B
http://tiny.cc/tVDLA

3) How do we contact Graeme Attey?
I've left a message here:
http://tiny.cc/11BBo
stay tuned!!

John Brumby and Kevin Rudd say that climate change is the biggest challenge humanity faces and their top priority, but their actions tell a different story.

Date: Saturday, July 5, 2008
Time: 1:00pm - 4:00pm
City Square
Cnr Swanston & Collins Sts
Melbourne, Australia

We are calling for Victorians to join the Climate Emergency Rally on July 5. We want to send a wake-up call to state and federal governments that they are heading in the wrong direction. New coal, new freeways and desalination plants increase our use of and reliance on fossil fuels dramatically at a time when we must be cutting our use even more dramatically. We are calling on governments to implement sustainable alternatives to these irresponsible and expensive projects. Alternatives such as renewable energy and public transport.

We call on all community groups and individuals to join us to send this important message to the government. We are going to form a 140-metre-long human sign to spell the words "Climate Emergency". Please organise your group to send endorsement, tell everyone you know, and come on the day wearing something red to symbolise emergency.

We are facing a climate emergency, the time for real action is now!

Come for the rally, stay for the giant human sign.

http://climaterally.blogspot.com
Flier attached

Facebook event:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=14090931459

**Please forward this to help spread the word!**
The Camp for Climate Action, at Kingsnorth, Kent, 3rd to 11th August, 2008
JOIN WITH THOUSANDS IN MASS ACTION TO SHUT DOWN KINGSNORTH POWER STATION

CHOOSE YOUR ADVENTURE – LAND, SEA OR AIR

This summer the Camp for Climate Action will be located in Kent near Kingsnorth coal-fired power station, where 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide are pumped into the atmosphere every year. On Saturday August 9th, the camp will culminate in a spectacular mass action to shut down the power station. (click "read more" to get full details...)

Greenpeace and the Total Environment Centre would like to invite you to their exciting public forums, discussing how Australia can end its reliance on coal and shift to a renewable energy future.

Host: Greenpeace Australia Pacific

Phone: 0292630359 Email: sara...@greenpeace.org

Greenpeace has just released a ground breaking new energy scenario for Australia. The scenario has been modelled by Sven Teske from Greenpeace International and Dr. Hugh Saddler, Managing Director of Canberra-based company Energy Strategies and one of Australia's leading experts on energy and environmental policy. It provides a blueprint for an energy transition in Australia, and shows how we can achieve drastic cuts in emissions up to 2050 through a combination of aggressive energy efficiency measures and the acceleration of renewable energy.

Sven Teske is in Australia in June to launch the report and will speak at the forum alongside (in Sydney) Dr. Mark Diesendorf, from the Institute of Environmental Studies, UNSW, and Tim Ayres, NSW Assistant Secretary of the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union.

All are welcome to attend, but please make sure you RSVP to sara...@greenpeace.org

One day a year is not enough, let's start a movement..

Every month on the first of the month.
******

Our household's power will be turned off between 8-9 pm on the first of the month, every month.

My son and a few friends of ours will meet under the coconut palms outside the surf life saving club at Picnic Bay.
Where we will share an hour of peace together.
Everyone is invited, hope to see you there.
:-)

A little history on the nuclear industry...

Nuclear Industry "Strategic Plan" for Australia...

http://www.listenupaustralia.org/

The Pledge to LISTENup!
http://www.listenupaustralia.org/the_pledge?page=7

We pledge to LISTENup! to Aboriginal and Islander Voice and support the Principles of:

by Dr. Alison Broinowski
(Published with permision from the Author for not-for-profit public awareness purposes)

"In late June and early July, just as the Howard Government was dispatching the army to Aboriginal communities to deal with sexual abuse, the U.S. military was involved for two weeks in northern Australia in the biggest ever joint exercise, Talisman Sabre.

Most Australians saw no connection.

Military training areas, uranium mines, sites for future nuclear waste dumps and now Aboriginal land seized by the Commonwealth are dots across the Australian map.

Several of them are connected by the Adelaide-Darwin railway. Having been many times promised, the $1.3 billion link from Alice Springs to Darwin was surprisingly found viable in 1999. By January, 2004, the train was running. The only tenderer, according to research at University of Technology Sydney, was the FreightLink consortium led by Halliburton (then headed by US vice-president Dick Cheney), with state, territory and federal contributions.

FreightLink owns the railway and can operate it for 50 years. It has contracted UK firm Serco, to staff and service the train.

Serco, which manages British nuclear power plants, gained a reputation in 2000 for sacking workers without AWAs at Australian naval bases in Jervis Bay.

In November, 2006, FreightLink was reported to be facing its third annual loss in a row. It tried to sell a majority stake in the railway for $360 million, without success. The owners promised to invest an additional $14 million over three years, presumably betting on the line's long-term profitability.

It must expect - or have been promised - the railway will serve the potentially lucrative nuclear and defence industries.

Between 2004 and 2006, the Australian and U.S. governments announced more collaboration between American forces and the ADF, including missile defence (Star Wars) training, and interoperability. Several defence facilities in northern Australia have been built or expanded:

at Bradshaw and Delamere in the Northern Territory, Shoalwater Bay in Queensland and Yampi Sound and Geraldton in Western Australia.

The railway passes near several bases, the biggest uranium deposits in the world and the mines at Olympic Dam (Roxby Downs), Beverley, Ranger and Honeymoon.

Freightlink's main business now is transporting iron ore, manganese and uranium to Darwin for export. In June, 2006, just before Prime Minster John Howard set up a nuclear power inquiry, businessmen Hugh Morgan, Robert Champion de Crespigny and Ron Walker registered Australian Nuclear Energy. It later emerged they had discussed with Mr Howard a plan to build a nuclear plant near Port Augusta.
----
(Learn more about Hugh:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Morgan_%28Australian_businessman%29
> snip from Wikipedia

>In June 2006, Hugh Morgan formed the company Australian Nuclear Energy with Fairfax chairman Ron Walker and fellow mining executive Robert Champion de Crespigny, planning to build nuclear power plants in Australia. Morgan has a 20% stake in the company.

Controversially, Prime Minister John Howard revealed that he had a discussion with Mr Walker about the company days before he announced an inquiry into nuclear power (the inquiry predicted that Australia could have 25 nuclear reactors producing a third of the country's electricity by 2050)

Formerly an outspoken opponent of Aboriginal Land Rights (Morgan claimed Native Title threatened Australia's sovereignty), Morgan has more recently spoken of reconciling mining with Aboriginal welfare. With newly introduced, less transparent conservation agreements under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act , Morgan has flagged how an internationally owned nuclear waste repository could now be built (such as the one recently announced on Aboriginal land).

see more about Ron and Robert
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Walker
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Champion_de_Crespigny
------
The railway would take uranium ore to Darwin for export, enrichment and fabrication, and bring it back to Port Augusta as nuclear fuel for the reactor. The spent fuel
would then go back by rail to Darwin for export, or return to the NT for disposal at a waste site.

The only "suitable" sites for disposal of nuclear waste under federal government control are in the NT. If the Commonwealth takes control of as many as 80 Aboriginal communities through five-year leases in the name of
protecting children, it will put vast land areas at the Federal Government's discretion.

The Government has begun to repeal parts of its 1999 legislation prohibiting nuclear activities.

But it is unlikely before the 2007 election to say where or how Australian nuclear waste will be stored.

The U.S., meanwhile, has more than 47,000 tonnes of high-level nuclear waste to get rid of, because its new site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, does not meet safety requirements.

The controlling American interest in the railway indicates Australia will store American waste too.

It takes more than the Ghan railway to connect the dots in an election year. A lot more is happening than Australians are being told.
---------
Dr Alison Broinowski is a former Australian diplomat
and is now a visiting fellow at the Australian National
University's Faculty of Asian Studies. Her latest book
is Allied and Addicted.