This Saturday was a momentous day! GetUp members joined Australians around the country in the Walk Against Warming. Stories, photos and video are flowing in about the fun, the FABulousness and the community spirit. Nearly 100,000 people around the country marched to call for strong action on climate change, as Australian and world leaders meet in Copenhagen to determine our climate fate. The Walk was part of a global day of action, but our team on the ground in Copenhagen have told us that Australia’s Walk Against Warming was the most talked about action at the Copenhagen Conference.
It was a FABulous day, which meant GetUp members in Orange and dressed FABulous. Check out this slide show of photos, to get the pulse of the day:
Of course, FAB also meant sending a message to our leaders to bring home a treaty that is Fair, Ambitious and Binding. Fair means helping developing countries adapt to the affects of climate change and to develop their economies sustainably. Ambitious means cutting global emissions to achieve a maximum of 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Binding means a legally binding treaty on all parties.
Melbourne achieved a massive 40,000 person turnout and it was a picture perfect day for 15,000 walkers in Sydney. In Perth, participants were walking in the Warming, with 37 degree temperatures (but we’re told it was a dry heat). In Brisbane, rain dampened the crowd, but not their spirit. In Darwin, several hundred dedicated Top Enders braved cyclone conditions to walk the harbour foreshore–they know that the storms will be more fierce and frequent if we don’t get action on climate change. That’s not to mention thousands more in Adelaide, Canberra, Hobart, Launceston and other towns and cities around the country.
So, neither rain, wind nor heat of day prevented Australians from taking to the streets to voice their demand for a Fair, Ambitious and Binding treaty from Copenhagen. But participants didn’t just walk the walk, they talked the talk. As the Copenhagen Conference struggles to reach a global agreement, Walk participants sent a message to Penny Wong and the Australian negotiators to do their part to bring home a treaty.
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14 Billion years give or take a million years or so, Our Universe expanded from something rather than nothing, from a gain of
sand to the cosmos you see when you look up to the heavens today in a flash of less than a second. The background radiation,
temperature, of the Universe from anywhere is mostly consistent and suggests that our Universe had expanded evenly, like a
balloon with 5 cent pieces spread over its surface, representing ( huge leap in time) the globs of matter that collect due to
gravity and dispersed relative to the expansion. As the Universe cooled these globs of matter formed the Billion Billion
stars that make up Galaxies. Within just one of these Galaxies, One stars had just the right conditions, a solar system
formed, and one Planet, third from the Sun, had just the right distance from the Sun, with just the right orbit, with just
the right chemistry, a moon that ensured night and day, water henceforth plants animals . We call this planet, Earth, our
home some 5 billion years old.
But it has only been a mire 100,000 years since an animal called Man walked upright on this third rock from the Sun, and
sadly it has only taken 200 years for Man to contribute so much damage to this world, that conditions now have sufficient
empirical support and urgency to gather together the leaders of the World at Copenhagen to debate our future survival.
What is difficult to comprehend, as opposed to logic and reason, is that our survival, for all of us, seems to be absurdly
contingent upon yet another human construct “money”. This nonsensical, eclectic and ridiculous position fails absolutely to
correctly understand the implications of our own anthropology will lead to our own oblivion. This is an insult to all sapient
beings, and I recall only the recent arguments during the financial melt down, an argument to save corporations who on the
brink of financial destruction must be saved for the sole reason that these businesses were ” To Big To Fail”. Surly if the
bases of all wealth is derived from the same source, Earth our 5 Billion year old home, then it is equally imperative that
the earth is to big to fail still applies.
Who knows if the future includes Man, but perhaps this is the right moment, the right conditions in space- time, when we have
this one, a one in 14 billion year opportunity.