Since its incorporation in January 2006 CCBR has been relentlessly trying to slow down the expansion of the coal industry and speed up a transition to clean energy.

Updated May 2010

 

(See also Past Activities & Campaigns, Letters to Newspapers)

Jan, 2006 - 5 people decided to incorporate "Climate Change Balmain - Rozelle"

Feb, 2006 - Website development, formation of vision and mission.

April, 2006  - Letterboxed 10,000 postcards in the local area - launching CCBR, raising awareness on Climate Change, raising awareness on coal fired power and it's connection to greenhouse gases and promoting our inaugral fundraiser

May, 2006 - Ist monthly Newsletter. Informing locals on current news and activities about Climate Change. Each newsletter includes a letter to lobby politicians.

May 6, 2006  - Cool Change Curry Night Fundraiser. Over 100 people gathered for a very successful fundraiser dinner. Speakers Geoff Evans, Bev Smiles and Cate Faermann.

May 19, 2006 - Article in the SMH. Solar Sell: residents provide the energy to halt climate change. http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/solar-sell-residents-provide-the-energy-to-halt-climate-change/2006/05/19/1147545529277.html

May, 2006 - Started a short regular news spot in the local school newsletters - outlining tips, facts, and upcoming events about Climate Change  - fortnightly

May, 2006 - local Balmain resident donates $40,000 worth of photovoltaic solar panels to be put onto local schools. (April, 2008 - still battling it out and wading through red tape to be allowed by the state authorities to do so!!)

June 5, 2006 - World Environment Day CCBR  joined others in supporting a colourful flotilla to occupy the world's largest coal exporting port - protest organised by Newcastle's Rising Tide.

June, 2006 - CCBR distributed fridge flyers to children at local primary schools. Flyers had 5 tips to reduce your electricity usage - plus asked people to lok at and record their KwH usage over 3 billing periods.

June 10, 2006 - CCBR attends Australian Premier of Al Gore's, An Inconvenient Truth. Sydney Film Festival and Creates a prescence outside the State Theatre after the movie.

June, 2006 - Local environmental auditor offers to do free energy audits for CCBR supporters.

August, 2006 - CCBR holds stalls weekly at local markets. The stalls have proforma letters to sign, petitions and information on reducing your carbon footprint plus general info about Global warming.

Sept. 5, 2006 - CCBR & The Glebe Society host a community screening of 'An Inconvenient Truth' at Norton St Cinema. Speaker: Julie-Anne Richards.

..........Too busy to keep a proper record here :-(......

March 22, 2007 - Article in SMH: No campaign, No gain. http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/no-campaign-no-gain/2007/03/20/1174153064540.html

Sep 2008 Submission to Federal Government's CPRS Green Paper

Feb 2009 CAG Summit, Canberra (Jenny's speech)

Apr 2009 Submission to Department of Climate Change's Exposure draft of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme legislation

 Oct 2009 - CCBR provided a free public screening of "The Age of Stupid" at Leichhardt Town Hall.  Over 200 people attended.

Oct 2009  Submission to NSW State Government's Major Infrastructure Planning, Bayswater B Power Station Proposal The response can be found here.

Submission to NSW State Government's Major Infrastructure Planning, Mount Piper Extension Power Station Proposal.The response can be found here.

Dec 2009 Joint meeting with Tanya Plibersek and representatives of Vision Generation, the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, Climate Action Network Australia, Make Poverty History, and Climate Action Newtown.  

Dec 2009 Walk Against Warming (Jenny's Speech) 

Jan 2010 Submission on The Treatment of 'Solar Credits' Renewable Energy Certificates under the RET is here.


Letters to Newspapers

 Dec 2009

Tony Abbott's rough calculation that a 25% reduction would cost five times a 5% reduction betrays an alarming ignorance of what these target numbers mean.
Those two reduction targets are relative to 2000 levels.  Current levels are about 10% higher, and the business-as-usual prediction for 2020 is 30% higher.
So as a reduction on the anticipated 2020 level, 5% below 2000 is a 33% cut and 25% below 2000 is a 47% cut.
The corrected rough calculation says the stronger target would cost 50% more.
(That, though, is an underestimate because the whole point of a cap & trade scheme is to make the cheapest cuts first.)

 Jan 2010

Claims that global warming stopped ten years ago are like the old Irish joke about checking if the car's indicator is working ("Yes it is, no it isn't, yes it is..").
One glance at the graph (attached) from the NASA data (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A4.txt) for the last 130 years makes it clear that 10 years is a meaningless snapshot.  Even a 5-year weighted average (1-4-6-4-1) is jerky, but removes the hint of a pause.  Maybe we're approaching another local peak like 1940, but you wouldn't bet the farm on it.
Tony Jones quoted Kevin Trenberth's remark (Lateline, Nov 23rd) that we cannot yet explain these short-term fluctuations.  As a scientist, that troubles him, but the real travesty is when denialists use this to pretend the problem has gone away.  For The Australian to misrepresent this interview as "Tim Flannery tells Tony Jones the planet isn't warming" is simply indefensible.
Remember readers, if anyone tries to tell you it has stopped, show them a graph for the last 50 years or more and ask them to be serious.

Jan 2010

I'm pleased that Frank Furedi ("It's 15 below", The Australian, Jan 13th) agrees with George Monbiot that the current freeze in Europe is a single event, so does not constitute a trend.
But he is quite wrong to imply that Monbiot is being inconsistent.  Other commentators may have made that error, but not Monbiot.  Here, for example, is what he wrote in The Guardian on August 12, 2003: "we cannot say that the remarkable temperatures in Europe this week are the result of global warming."

If we try to judge the actuality and nature of climate change by such events it will be decades before we have the answers.  By then it may be too late to avoid catastrophe.  What we can say is that we are changing the atmosphere to an extent that poses unacceptable risk.

March 2010, in response to this interview

To the Chair of the ABC Board, Maurice Newman
Subject: Climate Change balance
 
I see you describe yourself as a climate change agnostic.  That is a respectable position for someone who has not invested the time and energy to understand the science and the arguments.
But such an investment is necessary if you are to judge whether the media has provided balance.  Equal airtime to contradictory views is not balance.  Would you recommend the ABC give equal airtime to Osama Bin Laden?  To Holocaust deniers?  Fair coverage, surely, consists of finding speakers of equal authority and giving them airtime in a proportion which to some extent reflects their number.  And to do that, you do need some understanding of the issues.
 
As has been masterfully documented by Bernard Keane, the ABC's attempt to provide balance on the climate change discussion so far has failed to include any worthwhile sceptics.  Instead, we have been treated to the usual ratbag deniers with about as much credibility as Alan Jones.  How do you pick the difference?  Easy.  There are many popular denialist arguments that are trivial to shoot down.  The real sceptics don't go near them, sticking to the genuine unresolved questions, of which there are many.  Meanwhile, Monckton, Plimer and the like persist in trotting out these distractions, unperturbed by logic.
 
In short, the balance you appear to be encouraging is as a shopkeeper leaning on the scales to make the goods balance the weights.  I urge you to desist until you have found the time to acquaint yourself with the science.

 

April 2010 (The Australian)

Your editorial (April 9) focuses on the Liberal vote having been a fraction more than Labor's.  But McKim backs Labor for the obvious reason that he sees Greens' policies as closer to Labor's than to the Liberals'.  Labor almost surely does have a two-party preferred majority of the total vote.  That's why a Bartlett government is the likely more stable of the two options, why Hodgman has no right to feel robbed, and why the Greens, having in effect supplied one third of Bartlett's support, most certainly deserve a voice.

April 2010

Was it the Grattan Institute's damning report that made Rudd set aside the CPRS?  Could it really be that rational argument has prevailed?  Whatever the reason, it has so set back the schedule that there can now be no excuse for further delay in introducing a price on CO2 emissions.  The Australian renewables industry has suffered heavily from mixed messages and policy reversals from this Government; a decent carbon price would give it the security it desperately needs.

April 2010 (Innerwest Courier)

Re: Greens see red over Cr Byrne, Inner West Courier, 06.04.10

Three years ago the Leichhardt Council voted unanimously to call for a ban on all new coal mines, precipitated by the imminent approval of three massive mines in NSW (Anvil Hill, Moolarben and Wilpinjong). The council was rightly convinced that in a climate-changing world the expansion of the state's coal industry needed a change in direction.

In 2010, as the link between fossil fuel use and catastrophic climate change is obvious, the E.U. is developing a massive energy grid to deploy carbon-free renewable energy sources from Portugal to Norway to power Europe. The worlds' financiers are endeavouring to raise $30b for the world's poorest countries to assist their adaptation to impacts of climate change. U.N advisory groups are considering levies on international air travel. And China's renewable energy sector is growing exponentially and it's reliance on coal-fired power is shrinking.

Zoom back to NSW, where the state-owned coal-fired power stations can only be viable if they grow, i.e. consumers buy more and pay more, and the State's economy is increasingly reliant on export coal, at the expense of tourism and food exports (in a carbon-constrained world which would you be expanding at the expense of the others?)

CCBR's modest request for funding to spread the word about coal in this State has precipitated a storm in a tea-cup, "Greens see red over Cr Byrne" - but really no different to State parliament when the alliance between the State Govt and the expanding coal industry comes under the microscope. Tragically, in the term of this Labor Government, all mine applications have been approved by successive planning ministers - Sartor, Keneally and Kelly. Thousands of public submissions against coal approvals on the basis of their contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions have been ignored.

However it is only the weight of public opinion that will change the direction of this government's generous support of the expanding coal industry. It is only when it becomes politically unsustainable to continue the coal alliance, that government leaders will take steps to provide us with a safe, renewable energy sector.

Where do I get a sticker?

 May 2010 (The Age)

Chris Berg (National Times, May 2nd) sings the praises of international trade as driven by the free market.  He cites instances where, independent research concludes, long haul food supply has the lower environmental footprint.  But this ignores that well-known problem, the tragedy of the commons.  The Free Market does indeed work wonders where every process within it bears its true cost.  Right now, emissions of greenhouse gases cost the emitter nothing.  Instead, we all pay for the consequences.  It is therefore likely that, were an appropriate carbon price introduced, the average distance food is transported would drop substantially, and the overall result would be economically even better.  It is of course possible that some long distance shipments would still come out ahead, but being able to cite two or three is distinctly unconvincing as a general guide. 

The analysis also ignores the consumer's option of switching to different foods.  If a carbon tax were to raise the UK price of NZ apples, yet they remained competitive with the more local alternative, fewer apples would be bought in total.

If Mr Berg were just a private citizen airing his views these oversights would be pardonable; with a by-line of Research Fellow at the IPA it becomes disingenuous.