An important petition - CPRS and Climate Change

To all members of climate, environmental and social justice groups, and concerned individuals,

Attached is a document that we would like your group to sign, or you may wish to sign it as an individual member of the public. It is asking the Greens Senators to vote No to the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) when it goes before Parliament in the next few months, and it also asks them not to vote through any amended form of the bill. We believe that the scheme is incapable of being “greened up” and must be rejected outright.

CLEAN ( the Climate Emergency Action Network) in South Australia has initiated this petition, and is collecting the signatures by email. We will put all signatories up on our website (www.cleansa.org.au) as soon as they arrive, and then we will present the final package to the Greens Senators well before the Parliamentary vote.

Some supports of action against global warming may well ask if it is it really necessary to lobby the Greens Senators on this issue. Surely they will oppose the CPRS in any conceivable form.

This is not necessarily so. There has been significant debate within the party on the issue, and their media release immediately after their National Council in Perth in late March (http://greensmps.org.au/content/media-release/greens-national-council-calls-cprs-rethink) does not call for a clear and outright rejection of the scheme.

In this context the climate movement and all concerned individuals must send a clear message to the Greens senators that we will support them in voting down this retrograde scheme, which would commit us to climate suicide.

Please send emails indicating your support for this statement to cleansa@yahoo.com.au or hard copy signatures to Unit 1/103 Sturt Street, Adelaide SA 5000.

For further information contact Stephen Darley on 08 82425121 or the Victorian Climate Emergency Network at convenor@climateemergencynetwork.org

Yours in the struggle for a safe planet,

Stephen Darley

Climate Emergency Action Network South Australia

Victorian Climate Emergency Network

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THE PETITION

A CALL TO AUSTRALIAN GREENS SENATORS

Reject the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme

To: Australian Greens Senators (Bob Brown, Christine Milne, Scott Ludlam, Rachel Siewert, Sarah Hanson-Young)

We, the undersigned, support strong action on global warming. We were greatly encouraged when the recent Climate Action Summit 2009 in Canberra—which involved many Greens members and MPs—adopted goals and plans for such action.

We support the strong position taken by the Australian Greens Senators against the appeasement of the fossil fuel lobby.

We reject the Rudd government’s proposed Carbon Pollution “Reduction” Scheme and support the goal, adopted by the Climate Action Summit, of stopping the CPRS from becoming law. We agree with the Greens’ assessment that the CPRS is “worse than useless” and “would actively prevent the change we desperately need”.

In particular the CPRS:

• Fails to set targets based on climate science. Its maximum 15% goal, if repeated by other countries, will encourage levels of greenhouse pollution that will be catastrophic for most people and most species.

• Does not cover all significant sectors of greenhouse gas emissions, omitting agriculture and deforestation.

• Rewards the biggest polluters and sabotages the efforts of ordinary consumers to reduce their “carbon footprint” by making their emissions savings available as extra polluting credits for the big carbon emitters.

• Opens the way for even more compensation to the big polluters by defining their pollution credits as a property right.

• Undermines many of the programs and policies already implemented at a state and local government level.

• Does not include effective border controls to prevent the exporting of carbon-polluting industries and would allow Australia—the developed world’s highest per capita polluter—to import an unlimited amount of offshore permits to maintain current emission levels.

The CPRS is already undermining momentum towards the December 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen adopting adequate greenhouse gas reduction targets. It is so poorly conceived that it could allow Australia's domestic emissions in 2050 to be as high as they are today!

Nothing by way of proposed amendments of which we are aware would make the CPRS a step forward in the fight against global warming. In particular, proposals to increase the “upper end” target to 25 per cent while making only much lower targets (like 5 per cent) compulsory are a hypocritical attempt to appear to confront the climate emergency while appeasing the big carbon polluters.

W e cannot support poorly-designed proposals like the CPRS that fail to promote a deep and rapid reduction in carbon emissions. The overwhelming, non-negotiable need is for committed leadership and action to save our planet’s environment and its people.

In the knowledge that many Australians and community climate action groups are standing with you, we urge Greens Senators—along with your positive initiatives like the campaign for effective gross feed-in tariffs for renewable energy—to maintain a strong and principled opposition to the CPRS.

NAME	SIGNATURE	ADDRESS	EMAIL

Return to: cleansa@yahoo.com.au or to Climate Emergency Action Network South Australia, Unit 1/103 Sturt Street, Adelaide SA 5000. For further information contact: Stephen Darley 08 82425121

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