Friends of the Earth Australia - Blog

An opinion piece from Jim Green, our national nuclear campaigner.

MEDIA ADVISORY

Friends of the Earth International
October 1st, 2010

CLIMATE TALKS: DEVELOPED COUNTRIES MUST STOP STALLING

WASHINGTON DC (US) / TIANJIN (CHINA), October 1st, 2010 – On the eve of
a new round of UN climate talks due to start on Monday in China, Friends
of the Earth International called on developed countries to stop
stalling on deep emission cuts and to collaborate wi

By Kylie, a Friends of the Earth Sydney member currently working in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and who recently attended the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth.  This piece was originally published in Mutiny.

As the Copenhagen climate meeting went down in a mess of strong-arm tactics by U.S. negotiators, frenzied activity on NGO Twitter accounts and pre-emptive arrests of protest organisers by Danish police, Bolivian President Evo Morales announced plans for another conference.  This time, we were told, the voices of the peoples of the world would be front and centre, and the corporate interests that have driven the United Nations process would be conspicuously absent.  Last month, in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba where I live and work, more than 30,000 people descended on a private university campus to give life to that proposal.

Cochabamba is familiar to the global left for another reason – the ‘water war’ of 2000, where the city’s inhabitants filled the streets under the slogan ‘the water is ours, dammit!’ They were responding to a World Bank-backed water privatisation grab by Bechtel, a multinational based in California. Their victory (at the price of one death and massive police repression) in ridding the city of the company was a source of inspiration to people the world over. Five years later, Bolivia’s increasingly powerful social movements swept Evo Morales and his ‘Movement towards Socialism’ (MAS) party to power on this tide of anti-neoliberal sentiment and mobilisation. Morales’ election was hailed around the world as representing a fundamental change in Bolivian politics – and reflective of wider shifts in Latin America at large. 

The Victorian EPA has today released the application for a Works
Approval to build a new coal-fired power station near Morwell.
Environmental organisation Friends of the Earth is urging the State
Government to reject plans by HRL Dual Gas Pty Ltd to build this power
station.

“In recent weeks the state government has announced a range of
ground-breaking climate initiatives, including the lo

Friends of the Earth Media Release
Wednesday 21 July, 2010

Support for large scale solar a bright move

National environment group Friends of the Earth has welcomed Premier
John Brumby’s announcement of a gross-feed-in tariff to support the
development of large scale solar power plants in regional Victoria.

“This is a bright move that will help Victoria get ahead of the pack in
the shift to renewable energy, said FoE campaign coordinator Cam Walker.

“It will be a popular initiative among the millions of Victorians who
are looking for strong leadership on climate change.”

“By

We need a strong Climate Change Bill for Victoria

The state ALP has committed to developing a Climate Bill for Victoria. The draft structure will be released before the state election in November.

This is our last chance to have influence over the structure of the Bill. Given the failure of the federal government to act decisively to reduce greenhouse gases, it is now imperative that the Bill be as strong as possible.

There is rapidly growing awareness of the fact that, without concerted global action now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, many millions of people will be displaced from their homes by global warming in coming years. Perhaps the worst case scenario envisaged by the many groups and organisations researching climate induced displacement comes from the International Organization for Migration, which has warned that climate change stands to drive as many as one billion people from their homes over the next four decades.

Stop Martin Ferguson Dumping on Traditional Owners

Information evening, photo exhibition, film screening

Muckaty Traditional Owners Dianne Stokes and Mark Chungaloo will be in Melbourne to speak at this important event. Please come along and publicise widely.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010 – 6.45pm to 8.00pm

Northcote Town Hall, 189 High St, Rooftop Room

At the 'earth summit' in Rio De Janerio in 1992, when the leaders of the world were beginning to grapple with the depth of the climate change problem, US president George Bush senior famously stated that "the American Way of Life is not negotiable". The unwillingness of the rich world to acknowledge the size of it's 'carbon debt' to the rest of the planet was then cleverly illustrated by a cartoon that began to circulate not long after, showing the driver of a gas-guzzling luxury car who yells at a hungry peasant cutting down a tree, “Yo! Amigo!!