Activities to support Australia Together

Australians want to stop global heating. And the good news is that we can. As Professor Lesley Hughes from the Climate Council has said: “There is no physical reason why we must accept the inevitable demise of life on the planet." She is right.

But we only have about a decade left to do it and there are two crucial things we must fix if we are to succeed. If we fix these things, then nothing will be in our way – not physically anyway.

The first thing to fix is Australia’s entirely uncooperative stance on the international stage in climate change negotiations under the Paris Agreement - the agreement we have signed with more than 190 other countries to stop global heating.
The second thing to fix is the world’s persistent focus on using negotiating frameworks in the Paris Agreement that will not stop global heating.

For this reason Australian Community Futures Planning has launched a petition calling on the Prime Minister Scott Morrison and the Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor to:

take a position of global leadership in COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021 to stop the planet warming by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius; and to
propose a Motion at COP26 to establish a new negotiating framework in the Paris Agreement - one that is capable of actually stopping the heating and doing so in a way that is fair and achievable for all countries.

The Paris Agreement uses a negotiating framework that was useful for encouraging countries to sign the Agreement in 2015. But it is not and will not be useful for stopping the actual heating. The current negotiating system - which relies on all countries' pledging progressively larger percentage reductions in their emissions over time - can no longer function to stop global heating because it does not oblige each country to reach net zero before too much carbon is emitted in total. It is the total emitted that matters, not the date by which we reach net zero.

The world needs to permanently cap the total volume of greenhouse gases that can henceforth be emitted to the atmosphere if we are to keep temperature rises to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius and all countries must reach net zero before we exceed the volume cap. Otherwise the heating will be locked in.

See how Australia can lead at COP26 to change the negotiating system for stopping global heating and help keep temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Learn more about Strategies in Australia Together for fixing climate change, including the Strategy for Australia's international leadership role on stopping global heating.

Watch the video - A plan for fixing climate change

The petition has been submitted with an open letter to the Prime Minister.

Read the petition and open letter here.

ACFP contributions to parliamentary inquiries into media diversity

Because a free and open press is vital for democracy and for Australians who wish to plan a better future in democracy, ACFP has made submissions to a range of media diversity inquiries and produced research papers and articles in contribution to this vitally important matter.

We have it in our power to create the world anew