Climate Change

All over the Coast, hundreds of individuals, families and businesses are ‘doing their bit’ to limit their footprint on the environment.  It is time for the Government to step up to the plate and take real action on climate change.

We must take action and our Governments must act responsibly now.

Both political parties have completely failed to act on climate change.

The time for waiting is over.

I support the introduction of a carbon tax while details of an Emissions Trading Scheme are agreed upon. We must take action today.

The entire tax should be returned to the public, equal shares on a per capita basis (half shares for children up to a maximum of two child shares per family), deposited monthly in bank accounts.

We should stop the approximately $9 billion worth of subsidy given to the coal industry every year.

We must stop building coal power stations and new coal mines. We need to invest more in renewable energy technology and alternative fuels.

Our State and Federal Government must immediately move towards 100 percent renewables resources.

Beyond Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Plan is a plan to move Australia to 100% renewable energy in 10 years.

You can check out their plan online and download it for free from beyondzeroemissions.org

This plan is based around solar thermal power stations – large mirror arrays reflecting solar energy for storage. Once the system is setup, just one of these mirrors can replace 20 tonnes of coal.

The projected cost of funding the system is $37 billon dollars – this could covert the whole of Australia to renewable safe power. This sounds like a lot but when you compare it to Prime Minster Julia Gillard’s Building Education Revolution program building infrastructure and school halls which cost $42 billion – we can see that yes it is achievable – and could offer a much greater gift to our children’s future.

A world powered by clean safe energy – no more dirty coal mines, no more dirty coal power station, no more offshore gas drilling. Just clean safe energy to meet the growing demands of our communities for power.

Renewable energy creates more jobs more megawatt hour and these are safe places to work.

Here on the Central Coast we face the proposed Wallarah Coal Mine and I am concerned about its impact on the environment and water supply for the Central Coast.

The offshore gas drilling is still on the table – with the companies involved sending out media releases announcing their intentions to begin drilling in October this year.

This community and many others around Australia will suffer and our farming communities, marine environment and children’s health could suffer the consequences if we continue to allow our politicians to fail to take action due to the power of the coal and gas lobby groups.

Climate related natural disasters such as the floods in Queensland are on the increase – costing our national economy billions of dollars. We must insist our political leaders act today or we will all pay the price.

“Pollution must have a price tag. Currently it is too cheap to pollute, and too expensive not to.”
Don Drummond, Chief Economist, TD Bank, March 7, 2007
http://www.uofaweb.ualberta.ca/govrel/news.cfm?story=57676