Critical Climate

Rally 4 Free Public Transport!

2010-08-29T07:38:00.000-07:00

Having free, frequent and accessible public transport will increase the amount of people using it and we already spend way more money than we would need to do it on stupid things like locking up refugees (we're still the only 1st world country that does that), invading Iraq & Afghanistan and supporting the 'War on Terror' or just giving it to big business. Just 2% of the $6 billion energy & transport subsidies for big business could replace Adelaide Metro’s fare revenue for an entire year.

Protest 2pm Sat Oct 30 @ Hindmarsh Square, Adelaide.

Download a PDF of the above leaflet in A4 or A6 and start getting the word out!

Plus, join our Facebook event.

Radical Bloc @ Walk Against Warming

2010-08-04T04:30:00.000-07:00

Chalk Rundle Mall red! It's a climate emergency!

* 100% Renewables by 2020! (Read the plan at beyondzeroemissions.org)
* Free, Affordable, Accessible Public Transport Now!
* Government investment for Green Jobs!
* Ban Old Growth Logging!

“An extreme illness cannot be cured with a moderate medicine."

Wear red & black, grab some red chalk and join the Climate Radical Bloc at Walk Against Warming.

Sun 15 August 11am Victoria Square

With current emission rates, scientists estimate that we will hit a climate tipping point that will trigger unstoppable run away global warming within the next 10 years (WakeUpFreakOut.org). We can not wait for politicians to act. Delay is denial. We must force action. Petitions & lobbying DO NOT force politicians to act. Even when an issue has massive popular support they will ignore it if it seriously challenges big business. This is why Labor never seriously engaged with the Australian anti-war movement even when half a million people were protesting in the streets. This is why even The Greens don't set policies in line with the climate science (VoteClimate.org.au). It is safer for a party to lose an election than it is to lose the support of big business and their media.

In order for a movement to be powerful it needs to be based on people power NOT lobbying. For instance, in 2000, despite the pro-corporate World Economic Forum being supported by both Labor and Liberal parties, a 10 000+ strong protest blockade shut down their meeting. More recently, after years of being ignored, Melbourne's taxi drivers won safer working conditions by organizing a wildcat strike & blockade of Melbourne streets. These are just a few examples that show that people power can make real change. We all saw how quickly the anti-Iraq war movement grew. Climate movement can grow just as fast but we need to make sure that it understands how to force real change. Nothing else can make the dramatic changes necessary.

Reclaiming Rundle Mall and decorating it with climate action slogans in red chalk is a way to demonstrate that we are not waiting for politicians and we are not playing by their rules. We can take control of public space back from corporate and government interests and as we get stronger we are going to set our sites on increasingly bigger targets.

Fossil Fools Day Picket

2010-03-24T21:21:00.000-07:00

Critical Climate will be supporting the CLEAN SA (www.cleansa.org.au) initiated picket of Penny Wong's (Minister for Climate Change, Energey Efficiency and Water) office on April 1st. Her office is located at 19-21 Gouger St in the City. The picket will begin at 4:30 and wind up around 6:30.

Everyone is welcome and it will be a great opportunity to talk to other climate activists and also spread the word about Critical Climate in this high pedestrian section of the city.

See ya there!

New Leaflet

2010-03-22T23:05:00.000-07:00

A new Critical Climate leaflet. Updates include Michael Moore's quote being included, recent Australian examples of mass action replacing the historical US ones and the SMS phone number contact has been updated.

Download the PDF for this file below for printing.

Get it out there! :)

http://www.mediafire.com/file/xwkgytnzxzo/Critical Climate Leaflet.PDF

Film Screening: Shutdown: The Rise and Fall of Direct Action to Stop the War

2010-02-18T00:40:00.000-08:00

Created to gain insight, inspire, and draw lessons - Shutdown: The Rise and Fall of Direct Action to Stop the War is a documentary about the 2003 protest occupation and disruption of the San Francisco Financial District in opposition to the invasion of Iraq. It tells the story of how social justice organizers and everyday people came together to plan and shut down the financial district of a major US city.

Wednesday, 10 March @ 6pm at Bliss Cafe - 7 Compton Street (which runs off Gouger St near Bank SA) in the city. Price $4 concession (includes health care card) $8 full.
Bliss will open at 6pm for people to order food. It would be greatly appreciated by the staff if people ordered food & drinks before the film starts at 6:30. There are limited seats - so please message criticalclimate@gmail.com a head of time to book a seat.

Cap & Trade

2009-12-08T04:54:00.000-08:00

The Story of Cap & Trade is a fast-paced, fact-filled look at the leading climate solution being discussed at Copenhagen.

"ClimateGate" "Con-spir-a-cy"

2009-12-07T18:51:00.000-08:00

A solid run down on why "ClimateGate" is not the conspiracy some media pundits are saying it is...

"Climategate" Emails: Scientists Defend Science

2009-11-28T07:14:00.000-08:00

by Renfrey Clarke

Climate change deniers, conservative politicians and right-wing newspaper columnists were all but incontinent with delight. Deluging the internet in mid-November were thousands of documents and private emails that had been exchanged over more than a decade by prominent climate scientists. The materials were posted anonymously after hackers penetrated the server of one of Britain’s main climate change research centres, the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia.

Here was the chance, opponents of orthodox climate science evidently told themselves, to discredit forever the "theory" of anthropogenic - that is, human-caused - global warming.
What would the emails reveal? Doubts about the climate change case, bullying of scientific dissidents, suppression of evidence, outright scientific fraud? Even if the messages revealed nothing of the kind, the myth would have taken wing: that the great global warming scam had met with its "Climategate".

"These emails reveal at least prima facie evidence that supporters of the theory of anthropogenic global warming are going to considerable lengths to doctor evidence and to suppress information and intimidate those who don’t support that theory," the Australian on November 24 quoted right-wing Liberal Senator Nick Minchin as saying.

Adelaide University Professor of Mining Geology and leading climate change denier Ian Plimer was still more categorical. "This substantiates what I hinted at," Plimer told the November 24 Australian. "Here we have the Australian government underpinning the biggest economic decision this country has ever made and it’s all based on fraud."

Confident words indeed! But what have the deniers actually trawled from their ocean of stolen messaging?

The most damning single allegation, perhaps, relates to a remark by CRU chief Dr Phil Jones about the use he made of work by a colleague, Dr Michael Mann of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University.

"I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline."

To believe the denialist bloggers, that is a confession to gross falsification - signed, sealed and delivered. But take its context into account, and the passage becomes completely innocuous.

A "trick", in the jargon of scientists, is an ingenious way of overcoming a problem. Mann’s "trick" involved juxtaposing observed temperature records in order to "hide" a false decline implied by tree-ring temperature data known to be partly inaccurate.

What else, then? Might scientists be artificially boosting temperature rises through choosing to believe computer models, rather than the objective evidence? Dr Kevin Trenberth of the US Center for Atmospheric Research complains in one of the emails that modelling of sea surface temperatures "shows there should be even more warming."

"We can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment," Trenberth laments, "and it is a travesty that we can’t." The observed data, he surmises, "are surely wrong", and the observing system, he maintains, is inadequate.

But has Trenberth reacted to the discrepancy by suppressing or "doctoring" evidence? There is no suggestion, in the emails or anywhere else, that he has.

On the falsification of research results - a career-ending offence for scientists - all the scouring through the emails has come up with nothing. But not to worry. As propagators of the anthropogenic warming myth, the scientists are clearly the sort of people who WOULD do such things. And for true deniers, that is enough.

More mentally balanced readers of the emails, meanwhile, have been struck by what is NOT there. Where is just about everything that the denialists have confidently maintained goes on in climate research institutes? As the RealClimate site observes, the e-mails reveal "no evidence of any worldwide conspiracy, no mention of George Soros nefariously funding climate research…no admission that global warming is a hoax, no evidence of the falsifying of data, and no ‘marching orders’ from our socialist/communist/vegetarian overlords."

The denialists, of course, are by no means simply buffoons - and correspondingly, the materials released onto the internet have a darker, almost tragic side. They reveal a very human bitterness among climate scientists at attacks that have intensified in recent years. Modern-day Galileos, the scientists confront an Inquisition based in wealthy right-wing circles and the "think tanks" that serve them. The pressures on the scientists are described eloquently in a November 23 Washington Post blog interview with physicist and historian Spencer Weart.

"We’ve never before seen a set of people accuse an entire community of scientists of deliberate deception and other professional malfeasance," Weart observes. "Even the tobacco companies never tried to slander legitimate cancer researchers."

To their credit, leading climate scientists have fought back against demands that they make concessions to bad science. A prominent figure in this resistance has been the CRU’s Phil Jones - which perhaps explains why his institute was the target of the hacker attack.

As related by New Scientist, Jones and Michael Mann in a 2003 exchange of emails discussed urging scientific authors to boycott the journal Climate Research after it published "extremely poor papers" by known denialists. New Scientist notes that the journal’s editor-in-chief and half the editorial board resigned over the matter.

In 2004 Jules and Mann discussed ways of blocking two papers, whose content they regarded as unscientific, from being assessed for use in a report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In other emails ways are discussed of keeping temperature data, largely covered by confidentiality agreements, out of the hands of denialists.

As depicted by denialist bloggers, the atmosphere that has arisen inside the climate science community is one of arrogant intolerance, with dissenting voices ruthlessly silenced. But again, an understanding of the context is vital.

In the first place, anthropogenic global warming is no longer just a theory, but established fact. As Trenberth was quoted as saying in the Washington Post of November 22, "it is incontrovertible" that the world is warming as a result of human actions. Predicted by fundamental laws of physics, human-caused global warming has now been demonstrated by real-world evidence so overwhelming, and from so many sources and directions, that refusal to accept it is simply perverse. There are no legitimate sceptics any more, just ignoramuses and wilful deniers.

Secondly, within the climate science community there is no longer dissent on the basic concept of human-caused global warming. Effectively, all working climate scientists - that is, those who publish in peer-reviewed journals - now agree that anthropogenic warming is real. The unresolved questions - and there are many of them - relate to its degree and precise mechanisms. On these, debate is rich and generally cordial.

Thirdly, tolerance is not a virtue in dealing with people out to subject humanity and nature to intolerable risks. Jones and his colleagues are aware, like few others, that the consequence of failing to combat denialist pseudo-science would very likely be a catastrophe of civilisation-ending scope.

Finally, climate change deniers, especially in the US and Australia, are hardly isolated and picked-upon. Historically they have been well funded, not least by major energy corporations, and they have huge media resources at their disposal. Disturbingly, they are gaining ground. In a recent Pew Research Center poll in the US, only 36 per cent of respondents felt that human activities lay behind a temperature increase. That was down from 47 per cent in 2006. In Australia, the corresponding figure in September this year was a far-from-overwhelming 67 per cent.

So when Jones, Mann and others mount a tough, uncompromising fight for scientific rationality, do they deserve to be pilloried? Adelaide University Climate Change Professor Barry Brook has, perhaps, the best take on this question.

On November 27 Brook suggested to Green Left Weekly that anyone who wants to criticise the scientists involved should "first place the contents of their email archive for the last ten years on a public repository, such that anyone has the opportunity to download it, peruse it, and cherry-pick out-of-context statements."

Minchin and Plimer, to name just two, would not fare well.

ACTION: 2pm Sat Dec 19 Vic Sqr

2009-11-18T15:42:00.000-08:00

Climate Emergency Foot & Bike Protest Parade
2pm Sat Dec 19
Victoria Square

Grab your bike or just your shoes - Critical Climate is set to take over the streets again - Bigger and better than ever!

We need to demand action on the climate emergency. But to be a demand, there needs to be consequences for non-compliance otherwise it's just a request. So, we are building a 'union for the climate' - a network ready to carry out mass actions of non-cooperation to force a real response to the climate emergency. So grab a bike or just your shoes and help us to stand up to the climate vandals!Loading...

What is Critical Climate?

2009-11-17T21:01:00.000-08:00

There’s a famous story about president Franklin Roosevelt. A couple of years after he got in a woman came up to him. She said, “You promised us social security. Where is it?”

He said, “I’m not going to get you social security. You’re going to have to make me do it. Because I’ve got the banks against me. I’ve got the corporations against me... So you, the American people, are going to have to make me and congress do this.”

And they did.

- Michael Moore

Many of the Earth’s mechanisms for processing Co2 are on the brink of failure due to rising global temperatures. For example, warmer oceans will kill plankton which process enormous amounts of Co2. Warming oceans will also release Co2. This will create a cycle of increasing temperatures. There will be no going back to a safe climate. In time famine, floods and other ecological disasters will cause hundreds of millions of people to flee their homes (see www.WakeUpFreakOut.org).

In line with climate science, the grassroots climate action movement (ClimateSummit.org.au) is calling for 100% renewable energy for Australia by 2020. Research groups like Beyond Zero Emissions (BeyondZeroEmissions.org) have detailed plans which show that the technical transition is affordable and achievable provided we can muster the political will.

But to do this we must learn that petitions, waving signs and other forms of begging do not work. In 2003 the 500 000 people strong Australian anti-Iraq war protests showed that it’s not enough to be correct or even popular. If an issue seriously challenges big business politicians will ignore it. It is safer for a party to lose an election than it is to lose the support of big business and their media. This is why even The Greens don't set policies in line with the climate science

(VoteClimate.org.au). In order for a movement to be successful it needs to be based on people power ie. sustained mass civil disobedience.

For example in 2000, despite the pro-corporate World Economic Forum being supported by both the Labor and Liberal parties, a 10 000 people strong protest blockade shut down their meeting at Melbourne’s Crown Casino. In 2008, the APDSE war profiteers conference (scheduled for Adelaide) was cancelled because the government feared a repeat of the radical protests at the 2007 Melbourne pro-corporate G20 meeting. In 2009, after years of being ignored, Melbourne's taxi drivers won safer working conditions by organizing a wildcat strike & blockade of Melbourne streets. The anti-Iraq war movement quickly grew to a massive size. The climate movement can do the same. But we need to make sure that it has an understanding of how to be successful. Critical Climate is a growing network of hundreds of people. But in order to carry out the types of mass actions that can’t be ignored it will need to be much bigger. Help us grow the network. Join our 'union for the climate' - a network ready to support and carry out mass actions of non-cooperation in order to force a real response to the climate emergency.

&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://criticalclimate.wufoo.com/forms/z7x4z5/" title="Join Critical Climate" rel="nofollow"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Fill out my Wufoo form!&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Oct 24th Protest Parade (+video!)

2009-10-27T07:45:00.000-07:00

October 24th was an international day of action for the website www.350.org. The day was devoted to raising awareness about specific targets for carbon levels in the lead up the the UN climate change talks in Copenhagen in December. In Adelaide, October 24th was that and a little bit more. It was the first protest action held by Critical Climate. At first our action only coincidentally coincided with the 350 day of action, but we were supportive of the event and felt that our actions could complement each other.

People began to gather at Tarndanyangga (Victoria Square) at 1pm. The ABC shot some footage which made it into a national piece they were doing on the 350 day of action. The beginning of the action was a bit clunky. This type of protest action was new to a lot of people and scarce details were relayed to those assembled. After a speaker from the Climate Emergency Action Network (www.cleansa.org.au) and a brief plug for people to take copies of Critical Climate's unofficial manifesto (How To Win Climate Justice) an announcement was made that the bicycle parade would soon be departing eastward down Wakefield Street.

Several motorists who had attended in hopes of joining a car parade opted to join a march that was going to meet up with the cyclists at Hindmarsh Square. This was due in large part to their not being a person specifically assigned to integrating the vehicles into the parade. However, the police made regular efforts to corral cyclists into one lane to allow vehicles passed. If in future there is the potential to have some protesters in their own cars to assist the bicycle parade.

After a brief announcement by the sole bicycle cop assigned to the protest, the cyclists launched into the streets. For anyone who has never done this it can be quite an empowering feeling. The sensation of redefining the use of public space through mass action is something quite different to the feeling you get when partaking in a permitted march. I've been to many rallies where group cohesion has been almost nonexistent. This was not like that. After a period of relative quite, where it felt like many people adjusting to the new environment, the parade erupted into some of the most passionate chanting I have ever witnessed. It was particularly surprising coming from a group of less than 200 people. "Whose streets? OUR STREETS! Climate justice now!" could be heard ringing out from almost the entire parade.

The awkwardness with which the action began seemed a distant memory. By the time we had cycled around North Terrace, down King William St and started heading back east to meet the marchers at Hindmarsh Square the energy was electric. Clapping and chanting had reached a fever pitch. Just before we entered the playground at Hindmarsh Sqaure the parade stopped defiantly covering both lanes of traffic against police orders. This announcement was made...

It was a small but important demonstration. Not for the media or any politicians benefit, but for the people who were on the streets. Many people were heard saying after wards, "We could have done more!""Let's do this every month!" They are right. We will.

For all those people that are keen to help organise future actions filling out this form will help us to let you know the best way to get involved.

Forget Shorter Showers

2009-10-24T04:47:00.000-07:00

Read Entire Article
Forget Shorter Showers
Why personal change does not equal political change

by Derrick Jensen
Published in the July/August 2009 issue of Orion magazine

WOULD ANY SANE PERSON think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday, or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons, or that dancing naked around a fire would have helped put in place the Voting Rights Act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”?...

Quick Report back from Action

2009-10-23T21:56:00.000-07:00

Action went well. Close to 200 cyclists. Very energetic. Great vibe.
If you want to get in contact with Critical Climate, or send us your pics & video of the event, email us at criticalclimate@gmail.com

The Australian gives Critical Climate a voice?

2009-10-22T03:52:00.000-07:00

That's right. We didn't expect it either. But the coverage is quite positive. Somebody out there likes us. Check it out.

How To Win Climate Justice

2009-10-15T00:21:00.000-07:00

You can download this article as a PDF A4 leaflet here...

“It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I ought to do.”
- Edmund Burke

We know that we need to bring about dramatic changes in order to address the climate emergency (www.wakeupfreakout.org). The question now seems to be how can we bring this change about? This is a question that many social movements face. Often we are great at getting the word out or raising awareness. But in order to actually effect change we need not only to know what the problem is, but also what to do about it. A social movement needs to be able to present the political and corporate establishment with some sort of consequences for not meeting their demands. Without consequences our demands are merely requests and we need to do more than just ask if we are going to make real social change.

"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favour freedom and yet depreciate agitation… want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters…. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
- Frederick Douglass, Slavery Abolitionist, 1857

There are two historical examples which help to illustrate the necessity of being able to present the political establishment with consequences. The first example is the 2003 Iraq War protests. In February 2003, 500 000 Australians went out into the streets to protest the pending invasion of Iraq. These were the largest demonstrations in Australia's history and were part of the largest global protests in the history of the world. Despite the over whelming support for the protests, the Australian military participated in the invasion of Iraq less than two months later.

100 000 people, almost 10% of Adelaid'es population, attended the February 2003 anti-war rally in Adelaide.

The second historical example is the 1970s US postal workers strike. It was illegal at the time for postal workers to go on strike. In spite of this 200 000 workers walked off the job. This caused major disruptions to many different industries. The strike was vigorously opposed by then US President Richard Nixon. Nixon specifically ordered the postal workers back to work and even deployed the National Guard to take over their duties. Despite facing such determined opposition the postal workers won virtually all their demands with in two weeks.

“We’ve got this great window right now where we’re in charge. But we’ve got to make the people that are supposed to represent us do this. There’s a famous story about Franklin Roosevelt, a couple years in after he got in a woman comes up to him, she goes, “Hey, where’s our social security?” It hadn’t passed yet. “You promised us social security. Where is it?” He said, “I’m not going to get you social security. You’re going to have to make me do it. Because I’ve got the banks against me, I’ve got the corporations against me, I’ve got the Republican Party against me, I can’t do this alone, so you, the American people are going to have to make, me and congress do this.” And they did.”
- Michael Moore, Film Maker.

The anti-war protests not only had a greater number of people, they also had a greater percentage of the population participating in them than the postal strike. Yet the postal workers won their demands in two weeks while the anti-war movement lost in two months. The two campaigns had very different strategies for seeing that their demands were met. The postal workers strike had a strategy of sustained mass civil disobedience (SMCD), where as the antiwar movement, where it even had a strategy, tended to be focused electorally, threatening to vote out the Howard government.

Most fundamentally what separates them is that the postal workers had no faith in the political establishment. At the same time they had enormous confidence in their own ability to win their demands. The antiwar movement was the opposite. They had very little faith in ordinary people’s ability to effect change and a huge amount of (evidently misplaced) faith in the political establishment and the idea that if the politicians realized people didn’t like what they were doing they would stop.

“The kind of mass protest that always works, protest like the kind you saw in Pakistan, the kind you saw with people power in the Philippines, the kind you saw all over the Baltic states, is illegal just about everywhere in the United States today. Why is that? Because for a protest to be effective you have to stop traffic! You have to stop traffic! What keeps you from getting a permit? Stepping a foot into the street. Now, why do you have to stop traffic? Because for protest to do anything it has to disrupt business as usual. I don’t mean violence. I mean dissent. Martin Luther King, who wrote Letter from Birmingham Jail because he marched without a permit, said sometimes it is important for the tension to rise up, for people to see that all is not well, and you do that buy stopping traffic. That’s how citizen indicate that business as usual is not acceptable.”
- Naomi Wolf, Author.

SMCD is a much more powerful strategy than an electoral strategy. Elections only happen once every four years. Political parties get to choose what we vote for in elections. Elections only allow us to shuffle between two (maybe three) parties. Elections force us to vote for an entire party; we don’t get to vote on a single issue. On the other hand SMCD doesn’t need a political party to represent it. SMCD can set its own demands and agenda. SMCD doesn’t need to wait for an election to win. SMCD empowers ordinary people, not political careerists.

However, it is important to realize the difference between tactics and strategies. Very crudely, a strategy is your overall plan for achieving a goal and your tactics are the specific tasks you perform to fulfil that plan. A movement might chose an electoral strategy deciding, for instance, that if a particular candidate was elected they would pass particular legislation which would achieve their goal. That’s their strategy. The tactics that could fulfil this strategy (in other words get their candidate elected) are varied. They could include leafleting, public meetings, film screenings etc.

Likewise, SMCD is a strategic orientation not a tactical one. The US postal workers didn’t simply wake up one morning and decide not go to work. They had been organizing outside of official union structures and fighting for their rights for a long time before they decided to pursue an SMCD strategy. There is no reason that tactics like leafleting, public meetings and even permitted rallies can’t be part of an SMCD strategy. In fact, even electing a pro-SMCD (not just climate justice) political candidate could be a successful tactic for an SMCD strategy. Furthermore, even the tactic used for the civil disobedience itself can vary. Mass blockades, industrial action, tax boycotts and rent, bill or fair strikes are just some of many different forms of civil disobedience. The particular civil disobedience tactic(s) used by an SMCD strategy can be determined in each specific situation.

What is important to remember is that it is not so much the material disruption by itself that poses the most dramatic threat to system. Institutions can survive even significant interruptions. For instance, if a cyclone hit a coal fired power plant, damaging it to the point that it was out of service for many months, this would not by itself do anything to challenge the power of the coal industry or make the implementation of renewable energy any more likely. The coal industry certainly wouldn’t welcome such a disruption but they would not be fundamentally challenged by it either.

“The law is not a holy thing. I remember Dan Berrigan broke the law and they interviewed his 80 year old mother and they asked her, “What do you think about your son? What do you think about him breaking the law?” I guess they thought an 80 year old woman would have 80 years of respect for the law behind her and she’d give them the right answer. And Dan Berrigan’s mother said, “It’s not God’s law.” And she had it there. The law is made by very mortal people, very limited people, very opinionated people and people who have very special interests. They make the law. They tell us what the law is and then they act as if it’s holy writ.”
- Howard Zinn, Historian.

What the political establishment finds so threatening about SMCD is that it combines material disruption with political consciousness on a mass scale. This combination does more than simply disrupt business as usual. It begins to alter the inequitable relationship between people and the political establishment. People who normally have to follow orders from above are now able to send them back up the hierarchy. Not only that, but they now have an effective means to enforce the implementation of these orders. This turns the entire relationship on its head.

You can download this article as a PDF A4 leaflet here...

Critical Climate Bike & Car Protest Parades

2009-10-11T22:51:00.000-07:00

Join us in building support for a sustained mass civil disobedience (SMCD) strategy to seriously address the climate emergency!

Date: Saturday, October 24, 2009
Time: 1:00pm - 3:00pm
Location: Victoria Square
City/Town: Adelaide, Australia

With our planet being on the brink of being permanently ruined (1), asking for climate justice isn't enough. We are building a movement that knows SUSTAINED MASS CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE (2) may be necessary to force the dramatic change required to seriously address the climate emergency. We are joining the call, by hundreds of grassroots climate action groups, for a federal target of 100% renewable electricity by 2020 (3).

In the SMCD spirit, we are organizing 2 unpermitted parades. One for bikes (4) and a separate one for cars (5). They will both happen at the same time, but along different routes. The car parade will obey all road rules. Both parades will occur not over a distance, but instead will loop for a 60 minute period of time. To participate, ride a bike or drive into the city and assemble at Victoria Square and join us in showing that we're not asking for a safe climate, we're demanding it!

Some say, "If you use a car, you can't join the climate movement."
But people need cars because public transport is lacking, which the climate movement could be big enough to fix, if only they were allowed to join. Car or Bike, join us!

(1) Learn about climate tipping points. This video is a great, quick introduction to the topic. Video: http://www.wakeupfreakout.org/film/tipping.html Transcript of video: http://www.wakeupfreakout.org/wakeup.html
(2) An informative video with Michael Moore, Naomi Wolf, Howard Zinn and grassroots activists explain how sustained mass civil disobedience is necassary for bringing about dramatic social change.Video: http://criticalclimateride.blogspot.com/2009/10/sustained-mass-civil-disobedience.html
(3) Beyond Zero Emissions is an Australian group looking at the logistics of moving Australia to a zero carbon economy in the next 10 years. http://beyondzeroemissions.org/
(4) Free Bikes: http://www.bikesa.asn.au/servlet/Web?s=2060570&action=changePage&pageID=530953101
(5) For more answers to the question "CARS AT A CLIMATE EMERGENCY ACTION?! ARE YOU CRAZY!!???" see here: http://criticalclimateride.blogspot.com/2009/09/cars-against-climate-change.html- see http://www.criticalclimate.net for more info

Tipping Point Ahead Sign

2009-09-05T23:39:00.000-07:00

New graphic from Critical Climate.

Graham Brown Speaking Tour - Green Jobs Are The Way Out

2009-08-19T16:19:00.000-07:00

Hosted by the CLEAN (Climate Emergency Action Networl)
www.cleansa.org.au

Price - donation.
Friday August 21st. 6:00pm - 7:45pm.
Adelaide University.
Napier Building (Napier LG29)

Phone: 0450392429

Graham Brown is a retired coal miner and climate change activist. He’s also a member of the Upper Hunter Greens in NSW, and is helping build a union and community alliance aimed at creating a “just transition” to a carbon-neutral economy. Such a transition would ensure workers in the coal industry move into alternative employment.

Graham will be giving a second talk at Flinders Uni Campus in the conference room at the student hub of the plaza from 10am on the friday.

Facebook Group

2009-08-09T02:44:00.000-07:00

Stay up to date and network with other Critical Climate activists through our Facebook group.

Howard Zinn on Civil Disobedience

2009-08-07T04:48:00.000-07:00

A look at Dr. Howard Zinn's views on non-violence and civil disobedience and his actions as a leader seeking to bring an end to the Vietnam War.

Organising Meeting

2009-08-04T23:29:00.000-07:00

Today, we're told voting is the pinnacle of political struggle. But in the 1960s voter turn outs remained at more of less the lass level they had always beem, yet at the same time grass roots political movements won historic gains which today would be dismissed as naive optimism. What many of these movements had was an understanding that political power is found in the streets not in a ballot box.

In order to re-inject this understanding into the climate movement we need to promote mass civil disobedience unapologetically and also practice it with the same boldness. In order to do this we must use civil disobedience tactics which are readily employable by as broad a section of the population as possible. There's no reason to add practical barriers to participation when there are already considerable ideological ones.

One tactic which is regularly employed by people both in Australia and in virtually every other western country is mass bicycle rides*. This seems like a suitable first project as it has a slightly more ambiguous legal status than an un-permitted protest march. We could even tweak the idea slightly and incorporate motor vehicle participation to broaden both the possibilities for involvement as well as disruption of business as usual.

This needs to start happening ASAP.

To get the ball rolling, this Saturday (8th) at 2pm there will be a meeting at the Barr Smith Library at Adelaide Uni on Nth Terrace. If anyone doesn't know where that is, let me know, plus there's maps (and people) all over campus who will direct you.

*I am aware that there are a couple of groups which organise mass bicycle rides in Adelaide but they are explicitly apolitical, wishing to keep there events focused on a celebration of bikes rather than an agitational political platform.

Critical Climate Logo

2009-08-04T22:58:00.000-07:00

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2009-08-04T22:47:00.000-07:00

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Naomi Wolf on how to protest properly

2009-08-04T22:39:00.000-07:00

This full interview is available for free at Flora.TV