From May 4-16, 2016, a global wave of mass actions will target the world’s most dangerous fossil fuel projects — to keep coal, oil and gas in the ground and accelerate the just transition to 100% renewable energy.
In Aotearoa, there will be actions in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin. All of the actions will adhere to a strictly non-violent kaupapa and will be accessible for all with different levels of involvement available.
When it comes to the future of our planet, it’s fossil fuels or us. So we encourage everyone who can to get involved in these actions. You can sign up for actions here: https://nz.breakfree2016.org/ and you can also join each action on Facebook:
What are you planning to do on Saturday November 28th? Got any plans?
You could be part of the global People’s Climate March. In over 160 cities around the world (London, Hong Kong, New York, Sydney to name a few), people will be marching to demand that their governments work to find solutions to the challenges posed by climate change. People, organisations and companies are working to find solutions – now we want our governments to take action to reduce carbon emissions. As world leaders gather in Paris for the climate summit we’re sending a clear message that we need more action.
This is your chance to be part of a global phenomenon and the largest climate march in New Zealand history, and in the world.
Events will take place in Auckland, Hamilton, Christchurch, Wellington, Dunedin, Nelson, Wairarapa, Napier/Hastings, Invercargill, Rotorua, Marlborough, Ashburton, Whanganui. You can find full details at peoplesclimatemarch.org.nz. All marches will be family-friendly opportunities for anybody who cares about our planet to march with like-minded folks.
Coal Action Network has been busy working with organisations, including Caritas, the World Wildlife Fund, First Union, 350 Aotearoa, Action Station, Greenpeace, Unite, Generation Zero, the PSA, the Maritime Workers Union, the P3 Foundation, Forest and Bird, the World Wildlife Fund and Oxfam New Zealand to make this happen; Harvey is part of the Wellington organising group and Jeanette is representing CANA on the Auckland committee.
There are many more groups than the ones listed who will take part.
We’re looking for individuals who care to come and take part. If you are in Auckland, look for the black and orange CANA banner and march with us.
Sir Geoffrey Palmer said recently, “Never think that democracy doesn’t work. It does. But the citizens have to made a lot of noise!
Please come. Bring home made signs and banners and your whole family. Make your voice heard.
As Naomi Klein said in This Changes Everything, “to Change Everything, we Need Everyone”.
Global Divestment Day spans continents and time zones. It’s being held worldwide on February 13th and 14th – and there are five New Zealand events for you to get involved in.
So what is Global Divestment Day? It’s a day organised by 350.org to increase the pressure on banks and other institutions, as well as individuals, to withdraw their investments from fossil fuel companies: the miners, drillers, frackers and their backers who are ruining our planet’s climate by their continued extraction of fossil fuels.
Let’s keep all the coal in the hole – and stop investing in companies trying to remove it
And it’s a movement that’s gaining momentum. Here in Aotearoa, thanks to the efforts of 350.org.nz, Coal Action Network Aotearoa and other groups, we’ve seen churches, universities and local bodies divest from fossil fuels. On Valentine’s Day, let’s come together to show how much we love the planet and how little we love fossil fuels and those who seek to profit from them.
We’re aware of five events in New Zealand – each is listed on the GDD global map and on Facebook. Please note that the Dunedin event is on Friday 13 February. The other events are on Saturday 14 February:
Rosemary Penwarden writes: Coal Action Network Aotearoa’s Jobs After Coal report (PDF, 3Mb) has been a couple of years in the making. Writing it was like one of those relays where you hand the baton to the next person, they go like hell and then pass it on. With Cindy’s eye for media deadlines and Jeanette’s capacity to work harder than anyone I’ve ever seen, we kept on track and have even managed to stay friends. We could not have done it without the constructive feedback from Geoff Bertram, Dave Kennedy, Conor Twyford, Edward Miller, Sam Huggard and Geoff Keey. About 100 people attended the Wellington launch on 22 May. Co-author Tim Jones was able to take a moment out from the depths of his Save the Basin Campaign Board of Inquiry hearing to join us. Most encouraging for me was to see union organisers in the audience, and ongoing discussions since with the unions around one of the report’s main issues – a just transition to a low carbon economy. Jeanette has made Jobs After Coal her winter project roadshow, describing it as a bit like being on the campaign trail (which she does not miss). She presented in Christchurch on 30 June and gave four talks in the Top of The South 25-28 July, well received, with good sized audiences at each venue. Passing the baton to Jeanette Fitzsimons here…
A great weekend with my old and dear friend Debs with whom I worked on the campaign to stop Project Aqua, the diversion of most of the low flow of the Waitaki river. We won that one, and we will win this one too! One of the precious things about this roadshow is reconnecting with friends I’ve worked with – like Mike and Joe and Robina from Mataura in the days of the lignite scare, who drove through to Invercargill.
Debs drove me over the hill to Blenheim (we talked Denniston all weekend) where I presented at the opening of the art exhibition “Oil on Canvas”, a fund raiser for the active campaign aginst deep sea oil drilling, organised by the amazing Verena Maeder. A ready made audience and companion speakers Rod Morris, whose photos have built love and awe for the Denniston Plateau nation-wide, and entrepreneur Nick Gerritsen, about his latest project to make liqiod fuels from wood waste.
I foresee waste wood from forestry operations becoming the next scarce resource as people realise it is our lifeline to an economy without fossil fuels. Boiler fuel, home heating, transport fuel, even coke for steel making, and of course the ultimate finite resource is land, on which it all depends. Even with renewables we can’t keep growing forever.
Beautiful art works, all local, including one of Rod’s images of Denniston which I coveted, but wasn’t feeling rich. One that particularly took my eye was a disturbing painting called 2L8. I know in my head it probably is, but I refuse to believe it and the only way to live is to try to still make a difference.
You learn something every time you stand up to talk to a group. I’ve been singing the praises of NZ innovation LVL, a strengthened timber building material that can substitute for steel and concrete in multi-storeyed buildings – very low carbon, in fact stores carbon for the life of the building. I’ve been lamenting that Christchurch was not rebuilt in this sustainable material, partly because there is no fabricating plant here to cut the stuff to order. A voice from the back row in Takaka called out “not true. Nelson Pine opened one this week”. Turned out to be Piers McLaren, doyen forester with whom I have corresponded but never before met. Led to a useful discussion with the CEO of Nelson Pine the next day.
So Blenheim, Takaka, Motueka and Nelson – lots of great people all working in their own way on a fossil free future.
Then to Dunedin where I met up with Rosemary. We managed our “Two Ronnies” act OK at the university presentation. The Chamber of Commerce wanted a rather different slant – business opportunities in a low carbon economy. They booked quite a small room so it was a good experience for them to find it booked out a day ahead and they were squeezing people in on the night. More general public than business, but some of the latter too and I’ve heard it did make an impression on the Chamber. Back to Rosemary….
I teamed up with Jeanette again for the two Dunedin presentations on 29 and 30 July, to audiences of around 50 at each venue. The following afternoon, armed with cups of tea and sandwiches for non-stop travel, we headed to Invercargill where fellow CANA organising member Jenny Campbell had a precisely timed two days awaiting. A pot luck tea, catch-ups with fellow Southland anti-lignite campaigners and our JAC presentation followed – complete with our very own climate change sceptic in the front row. Neither Jeanette nor I needed to respond as the Invercargill audience deftly dealt with his comments.
Rosemary Penwarden, Nathan Surendran, Joe Nowak…
…Jeanette Fitzsimons and Mike Dumbar in conversation with old friends at the Invercargill event
The following morning we met with Steve Canny and others at Venture Southland for an exchange that lasted the entire morning, with an interlude to pose for the Southland Times and a TV interview with the very patient and charming Cue TV reporter. Thanks to Dave Kennedy for organising the Venture Southland meeting – their work is inspiring. I spied their speedy little electric car being delivered as we left. A couple of spare hours were filled with unexpected discussions with bank staff when Jeanette’s plastic card was swallowed up by the ATM machine, never to be returned. They were so nice. (Jeanette: So they should have been – Bank’s mistake, not mine! ) You just can’t get angry with Southlanders! We kept hearing about the next event on Jenny’s itinerary: the Environment Southland Awards. It’s big, we were told. Southlanders are not known to exaggerate, even so, we were both surprised at the scale of the evening at the Ascot Hotel – live TV, over 500 guests for a full meal and accompaniments, anyone who’s anyone there and, as is always the case down this end of Aotearoa, they all seemed to know each other. The best part of the evening was the very last prize being awarded to Jenny’s group, Southland Forest and Bird, for their remarkable 25 years of restoration and care of the yellow eyed penguin reserve, Te Rere. A very early morning at Invercargill airport completed this leg of the JAC roadshow. We look forward to being invited to other parts of the country to continue the discussion. For me, it’s about more than phasing out coal mining. It is a good place to start the necessary work we must all now participate in – to build and manage a fair and durable shift to a low carbon economy, where workers do not bear the brunt of that shift. From here, our little JAC relay looks like part of an enormous marathon. Change is emerging but we’re racing to a deadline. A just transition to a low carbon economy has to be fair and it has to be swift. We need everyone’s diverse, creative skills to keep that baton moving, run like hell, and pass it on. We have advantages many other countries could only dream about, and we look forward to taking charge of our own futures instead of being at the mercy of unjust market forces and a dying industry. It’s already happening.
I took a picture of the shiny silent mothballed briquette plant on my way home, for old times’ sake. Still think it would make a great whisky distillery
We at Coal Action Network have a vision for Aotearoa: that we are coal-free by 2027. We’ve arrived at this date as it’s when all the current coal mines in operation around the country will reach their end date.
Our new report released today.
It doesn’t include new mines such as Bathurst’s plans for the beautiful Dennison Plateau, where operations have stalled and 29 workers were recently laid off as the coal price has plummeted in the face of a global oversupply.
But imagine if the Government was to draw a line in the sand and state that there would be no more coal mines in Aotearoa. If they did that today, this would give coal mining communities the time to adjust, to plan a transition away from coal that involved the entire community, and led to a sustainable future. Continue reading →
Press Release from Coal Action Network Aotearoa & 350 Aotearoa
Westpac banks right across New Zealand will be the focus of a week of action this week, calling on the bank to stop funding Bathurst Resources’ bid to mine the Denniston Plateau.
The campaign, organised by 350 Aotearoa and Coal Action Network Aotearoa, began at a leading branch of Westpac in Christchurch on Saturday with around 20 activists staging a “die in” (see YouTube video). Actions will begin rolling out in other centres today, and will continue until next Saturday, with a total of 13 different towns confirmed at this point.
Bathurst Resources plans to dig up to 84 million tonnes of coal from the West Coast’s beautiful Denniston Plateau that would add up to 218 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and have a devastating effect on the area’s unique ecosystem. Westpac is providing financial backing for Bathurst Resources.
‘Westpac has not responded to calls to live up to their own promises and stop funding climate change, so we’re calling on them to do so. We don’t consider investing in coal mining is at all consistent with Westpac’s claims that it is ‘future proofing’ its business,” said Ashlee Gross of 350 Aotearoa.
Tim Jones of Coal Action Network Aotearoa said the two groups had recently met with bank executives for a discussion about the campaign.
“In our meeting with Westpac, it became very clear to us that their so-called ‘sustainability’ policy is more about PR than it is about real action,” he said.
At least 80% of fossil fuels reserves must remain unburned in order to keep global warming to 2 degrees. The World Bank and European Investment Bank have recently announced their intentions to stop lending to coal projects, based on climate change concerns
The groups have launched a website where the public can send letters to Westpac calling on them to ‘Dump Denniston.’. 1200 letters have already been sent.
There will be activities this week in Warkworth, Auckland (2), Hamilton, Tauranga, Gisborne, Wellington, Nelson, Motueka, Takaka, Dunedin, Gore and Invercargill.
Please note: Invercargill event is now a delayed broadcast on Thursday 13 June
The Invercargill event, which was originally listed as a live broadcast on 11 June, will now be a delayed broadcast starting at 6.45pm on Thursday 13 June at Level 3, 5 The Crescent.
Live broadcasts on Tuesday 11 June
Bill McKibben’s Auckland presentation will now be broadcast live to many other centres. Current details are below. For updates, please join the Facebook event to receive the latest updates, or check math.350.org/nz.
Tuesday, 11 June, 6.45pm-9pm by live video stream
Palmerston North – All Saints Community Centre
Gisborne – Gisborne District Council building
Tauranga- Wesley Centre, 100 Thirteenth Avenue
Hamilton – Room S.G. 03, Knighton Road, University of Waikato
Get your tickets now! Bill McKibben’s DO THE MATHS tour is coming to New Zealand
One of the world’s most respected speakers and activists on climate change, award winning author and journalist, leader of the Keystone XL pipeline protests in the US – Bill McKibben – is bringing his Do The Maths talk to New Zealand in June.
After the massive success of the Do the Maths Tour, which sold out shows in every corner of the United States last year, 350 Aotearoa is bringing Bill McKibben to New Zealand for 3 big nights.
Wellington – Thursday, 13 June, The Embassy Theatre, 7-8.30pm
Live video links are being organised in several other centres – details available soon. For more information, or to offer to host a link in your area, email ashlee@350.org.nz
This is definitely not your typical lecture. Bill will be laying out the simple (but startling) maths on climate change – and calling on New Zealanders to join the global movement to change them.
A climate change maths lesson that might just change the world.
The maths are simple: we can burn less than 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide and stay below 2°C of warming — anything more than that risks catastrophe for life on earth. The problem? Fossil fuel companies have 2,795 gigatons in their reserves, five times the safe amount. And they’re planning to burn it all — unless we do the maths to change our future.
Details and tickets are available at maths.350.org/nz . If you have questions or want to volunteer to help, email ashlee@350.org.nz.
About Bill McKibben
Bill McKibben, a well-known environmental author and activist, is the founder of 350.org, an international climate change campaign, which is named for the maximum safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, 350 parts per million.
When he’s not busy organising, Bill is a writer on the climate crisis and other environmental issues. His 1989 book The End of Nature was the first book to warn the general public about the threat of global warming. Bill is a contributor to The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, Orion Magazine, Mother Jones, The New York Review of Books, Granta, Rolling Stone, and Outside. He is a board member and contributor to Grist Magazine. He has been awarded Guggenheim and Lyndhurst Fellowships, and won the Lannan Prize for nonfiction writing. He is currently a Scholar in Residence at Middlebury College and lives in Ripton, Vermont with his wife, author Sue Halpern, and daughter Sophie.
Bill McKibben’s New Zealand visit is being organised by 350 Aotearoa, and supported by many partner organisations. You can check them out at www.350.org.nz or email them at 350@350.org.nz.
Rob McCreath, our main guest speaker at the 2013 Keep the Coal in the Hole Summer Festival, has kindly agreed to speak in Dunedin on his way south – Wed 16 January 7pm at English Language Matters, Level 2 Evan Parry House, 43 Princes St.
We’re looking forward to hearing how Rob and Friends of Felton stopped the coal mine and chemical plant in their area. And we’re hoping we can apply what he has learned to our own situation – how best to continue supporting our Southland neighbours, as well as protecting our own coastline and Otago region from more mining.
Posted onApril 22, 2012bytjonescan|Comments Off on Denniston Public Meeting To Be Held In Dunedin, Thursday 26 April
Forest and Bird, with Students for Environmental Action and Coal Action Network Aotearoa are organizing a public meeting to expose the issues surrounding proposals to mine public conservation land on the Denniston Plateau. The meeting will be held on Thursday 26 April in Castle One, Otago University at 7:30. It is co-sponsored by the Otago Botanical Society and the Entomological Society.
The conservation groups say that the distinctive plateau with its strange rock formations and suite of specialized plants and animals should be protected and the coal left in the ground to help meet New Zealand’s climate protection commitments.
Photographer Rod Morris will show off Denniston’s secretive creatures and spectacular geckos and landscapes, and eminent botanist Sir Alan Mark will tell tussock and other tales about the Denniston’s distinctive plant diversity. Denniston’s lichens will be exposed by Otago University Student Lars Ludwig. Coal Action Network Aotearoa representative Tarsh Turner will discuss the climate change implications of turning Denniston into New Zealand’s largest open cast coal mine.
Australian owned Bathurst Resources has applied to open cast mine and destroy 200ha of public conservation land on the Denniston Plateau and has permits across the plateau which would dig up more than 50 million tonnes of coal.
Tarsh Turner said ‘Mining the Denniston Plateau will significantly increase New Zealand’s coal exports, at a time when we need to be transitioning away from fossil fuels to avoid catastrophic climate change.’
‘Digging up Denniston is the wrong direction for our valuable clean green image,’ she said.
“Open cast mining will destroy the landscape, and the existing indigenous ecosystems. These can not be picked up in a digger and replaced,” Forest and Bird’s Otago Southland Field Officer, Sue Maturin says.
Forest and Bird believe the area should remain protected and that mining should be prohibited forever, just as in our National Parks.
Comments Off on Denniston Public Meeting To Be Held In Dunedin, Thursday 26 April
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