Calls for climate action strike Australia
Over 300,000 school and university students, families and ordinary Australians took to the streets to protest climate inaction at the latest School Strike for Climate on 20 September.
Protests occurred in over 150 countries - from the Solomon Islands to Scotland, Kenya to Antarctica.
Climate action protesters in Australia called for:
- no new coal, oil or gas projects
- 100 per cent renewable energy generation and exports by 2030
- funding for the transition for all fossil fuel industry workers and communities
The impacts of climate inaction on future generations was a key highlight for keynote speaker Dr Robert Glasser at the Australian Disaster Resilience Conference.
“As our planet continues to warm, we will be entering an unprecedented time. An era of disasters unlike anything we’ve experienced before,” said Dr Glasser, who is the Former Head of the United Nations Office of Disaster Risk Reduction.
If the current conditions continue, experts warn the average sea level rise to be 24-30 centimetres by 2065 and 40-63 centimetres by 2100. This was a focus at the recent Pacific Islands Forum in Tuvalu, as Pacific countries gathered to declare a climate emergency.
Earlier this year, former fire and emergency service leaders also released a joint statement through the Climate Council regarding the "worsening" and "dangerous" impacts of climate inaction.
AFAC has published a Climate Change Discussion Paper and explored resilience to climate change in an episode of AFAC TV.
Australian organisers described the September protests as the most attended protests nationwide since 2003. People also took to the streets in Brisbane, Sydney and Hobart.