our charter

 

 

In rebuilding our economy following the global COVID-19 pandemic, and Australia’s horrifying Black Summer before that, we recognise that:

  1. The paramount duty of government is to protect its citizens from grave threats
  1. Rapidly accelerating anthropogenic climate change places the very future of human civilisation and the ecosystems upon which all life depends at dire risk
  1. Urgent action is required to avoid further damage and to restore healthy ecosystems
  1. Financed through an ambitious Green New Deal model, the necessary action will require society-wide mobilisation of resources at a scale and speed never before seen in peacetime.

The steps required to address the climate and extinction emergency, as well as to address deeply inequitable and dysfunctional economies:

  1. The rapid phase out of all fossil fuel extraction and combustion and petrochemical usage
  1. Urgent reduction of Australia’s carbon emissions to zero coupled with site-specific natural climate solutions (regenerative farming, re-afforestation, re-vegetation and soil biomass building projects) guided by best available science and delivered through Green New Deal finance models in collaborative partnerships with local communities on a mass scale to draw down the excess carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere
  1. An urgent transition to 100 per cent renewable energy across all sectors of the economy
  1. An end to the profligate waste of resources via mandatory standards which ensure energy efficiency and sustainable agriculture, manufacturing, recycling, transport and waste management
  1. Acknowledging that:
  • disadvantaged developing nations have done little to contribute to the climate crisis and bear less responsibility than advanced economies
  • people displaced by climate chaos are properly recognised as climate refugees and are entitled to the protections that refugee status affords
  • as a nation that has accumulated wealth from ecocidal activities, Australia should provide disadvantaged developing nations with fair assistance to implement the changes required and to cope with the impacts of the climate emergency
  1. Laws that facilitate demands 1 to 5 above including:
  • the imposition of absolute caps on fossil fuel extraction and combustion to ensure that fossil fuels remain in the ground save where extraction is absolutely necessary
  • a requirement that polluters must pay for the true costs of their pollution
  • an end to all subsidies that support fossil fuel extraction and use as well as pollution intensive agriculture, manufacturing and transport
  • monitoring and legally binding enforcement mechanisms
  • carefully tailored just transition programs to support and retrain all workers who are impacted by the necessary changes
  • the rapid creation of a substantial sustainability fund via an equitable levy to assist disadvantaged developing nations to make the necessary changes and to cope with natural disasters
  • a requirement that all Australian commercial lenders make at least 20 per cent of their loans in the form of micro financing for environmentally and socially sustainable projects proposed by and for local communities
  • immediate amendment of all free trade agreement ISDS clauses to ensure that they do not compromise the above steps

In advancing our cause, we collaborate with climate, environment and social justice organisations large and small, and are always keen to connect with caring individuals.

Our charter has informed many submissions to government inquiries.

We are also inspired by The Leap movement and signatories of its manifesto: a bold and determined call for fair and sustainable economies based on caring for the Earth and one another.