Bryony Edwards of CACE gave a public talk to a small audience in at 'the Meeting Place' in Fremantle WA on 19 December 2019. 

Bryony also spoke to WA audiences in both 2017 and 2018. WA was quick to embrace climate emergency declarations, with Vincent Council, by some measures, being the second council internationally to pass a climate emergency motion. WALGA, the WA peak body for councils, also passed a climate emergency motion soon after. However the movement has languished since with only seven WA councils passing climate emergency motions, and none of those councils following up with a substantive response. Attendees spoke about the efforts made by the public to get these councils to do more.

Bryony's talk focused on how we bring about full-scale emergency mobilisation at the federal level, focusing on the role of councils in getting us there. 'We can either act like the house is on fire, or we can assign ourselves and future generations to an unspeakable future, ' she said. 'Councils that have declared need to start acting like the house is on fire'. 

From Queenscliffe Climate Action....

Tonight’s the night!
 
7pm, Queenscliff Town Hall, 50 Learmonth Street.
 
Our petition of 2145 signatures to the Borough of Queenscliffe requesting that they declare a climate emergency and commit to developing a response plan in partnership with the community is on tonight’s council meeting agenda.
 
We do not know if a vote will take place tonight - there is every chance that a decision will be held until their next meeting in January - but we must show Council that their community overwhelmingly supports this urgent call for action by showing up in person, wearing red.
 
And, if a vote doesn’t occur, we need to respect Council’s decision to hold off for another month – as frustrating as it will feel.
 
This is our final chance to gather together in 2019 to celebrate everything that our beautiful community has achieved since our first meeting in Point Lonsdale on 30 October. What an amazing few months!
 
Hope to see you there :)
 
PS. The Mount Alexander Shire Council (Castlemaine area) declared a climate emergency two days ago as it faces a predicted surge in the number and intensity of extreme weather events.

Its now three years on since Darebin acknowledged we are in a climate emergency.  Since then over 1200 councils and  20 countries have acknowledged we are in a Climate Emergency. 

The next step in our campaign is to get our governments into emergency response mode. Emergency mode is when a government mobilises all available resources to reverse global warming and making it their number one priority of government.

If we wish to avoid a climate collapse all levels of government will need to enter this mode in order to avoid a social and ecological collapse, reverse global warming and return our climate and ocean acidity to preindustrial levels. 

The sooner our governments enter emergency mode the greater the chance we have of saving our future and saving our children’s lives.

The burning of the East coast of Australia shows us that we have now run out of time to delay meaningful action.  Every year of delay means more death and destruction before we eventually reverse global warming.

Importantly, just as councils have lead the world on acknowledging a climate emergency, council can lead the world by being the first level of government to enter this mode and model this mode to higher levels of government.  

Despite this, no council in the world including Darebin has yet gone into full emergency mode. 

Find out how a council can initiate going into emergency mode here https://www.caceonline.org/entering-emergency-mode.html

Darebin has done lots of good things for climate change in the past three years including Darebin’s Solar Saver Program, supporting the council Power Purchase Agreement, and running a climate emergency conference but has not gone into full emergency mode and wont unless we can step up the community support. 

Darebin’s unique position as the first council in the world to acknowledge the climate emergency means councils from around the world look to Darebin to define how they will respond, hence it is vital that Darebin action on climate change is world leading and best practice and move in emergency mobilisation mode.

CACE is organising a meeting to gather community members and climate activists to discuss how and if we can get Darebin into emergency mode and do some preliminary discussions prior kicking off a public campaign to get Darebin into full emergency mode. 

We have one more chance with this current council to get Darebin into emergency mode prior to the next election through Darebin’s 2020 budget and after that we will face council elections. 

The meeting is a preliminary meeting to discuss campaign ideas on setting up an Emergency Mobilisation Campaign to kick off in early 2020. 

It will focus on building public support for an Emergency Mobilisation in Darebin and ensuring we have a council elected in 2020 that will support a full emergency mobilisation of Darebin. 

The agenda:

• Brief introductions from those present
• Outline what an emergency mode looks like for council and why this matters to global change
• Discuss some of the good and bad points that were encountered through the Climate Emergency Darebin Advisory committee process. 
• Brainstorming session on possible actions and allies prior to the 2020 budget
• Breaking into discussion groups based on ideas present in the Brain Storm and including discussions focused on community mobilisation, the next council elections, and the current council
• Discussions around the 2020 councils election and getting a new council that will back full emergency mobilisation

We will follow up this meeting with a second meeting in late Jan or early Feb.

We appreciate your support in this vital campaign. 

Time 5-7pm Sunday the 15th of December
St Andrews Alphington / Fairfield Uniting Church
85 Gillies St, Fairfield VIC 
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