This piece was originally published on Eco Business.  By Blair Palese, 350 Australia Chief Executive  In an attempt at window dressing to cover up the slow, painful death of the Great Barrier Reef due to ocean warming, the government earmarked A$500 million (US$379 million) to ‘protect’ it, as reported in a recent article on Eco-Business.

By Glen Klatovsky, 350 Australia Deputy CEO  I spent ten years living in the Hunter. It is a place close to my heart. It is also one of the most important regions globally with respect to our future and how we deal with the scale and impacts of climate change. Newcastle was founded in the late 18th century by John Shortland who saw a coal seam in a hill as he sailed up the coast from Sydney.

Despite the urgent climate crisis, fossil fuel companies and their financiers are still supporting new projects to extract, transport, and burn coal, oil, and gas. These projects don’t just threaten the communities in their path: they also lock us into fossil fuels for decades to come at exactly the time we need to stop. 

Now is the time to accelerate climate action. 350.org founder and world-renowned climate defender Bill McKibben visited Australia for the Accelerate Climate Action tour in late April, early May to talk to people about what we need to do to accelerate our response to climate change, move money and influence from the fossil fuel industry, and bring on clean energy.

A Plan to Repower Australia is a new blueprint for transforming the nation’s electricity system to 100% clean energy by 2030. The plan has been prepared by the Community Power Agency on behalf of six of the nation’s leading progressive climate and environment organisations working on the clean energy transition. Read the report here.