Public forum featuring:
George Monbiot – UK author of Heat, Guardian journalist
Holly Creenaune – Friends of the Earth Australia and the Camp for Climate Action

Coal is Australia's number one contribution to climate change. Learn what people in the UK and here in Australia are doing to combat our coal addiction and how you can get involved.

Footbridge Theatre, University of Sydney

Parramatta Road, Broadway

6pm for a 6:30 start, Thursday June 19 2008

Australia is addicted to coal. We mine it, we burn it, we export it – coal is our number one contribution to climate change. The greenhouse pollution from Australian coal exports eclipse all domestic emissions combined. But instead of phasing out this dangerous industry, a reckless expansion of coal infrastructure is underway.

We are faced with a choice: do we carry on with business-as-usual when we know it is costing lives? Or can we find the courage to kick the coal habit, and reinvent a future for ourselves that doesn't threaten us and every other living thing on the planet?

Join George Monbiot via video link up from Wales at this Sydney public forum. Monbiot is the UK author of Heat, The Age of Consent and Bring on the Apocalypse; Guardian journalist and activist. He will speak on fossil fuels in the growth economy and peaceful direct action in the movement to stop climate change.

Holly Creenaune is spokesperson for the Camp for Climate Action Australia and climate campaigner with Friends of the Earth Australia. Creenaune will explore coal dependency in Australia as hundreds of people prepare for peaceful direct action to stop the expansion of the world's largest coal port in Newcastle.

History has shown ordinary people can create change through direct action. We can draw inspiration from Gandhi, the US civil rights movement and suffragettes who won women the right to vote. After twenty years of inaction on climate change, direct action increasingly becomes strategic and necessary.

The Camp for Climate Action is a chance for everyday people to take action for a future free of dangerous climate change. By being a part of it – in Newcastle in July, at the coalface of climate change - you can be part of the transition to a just and sustainable future.

"I left the camp on Sunday evening convinced that a new political movement has been born."
George Monbiot, The Guardian on the UK Camp for Climate Action 2007

This event is hosted by Friends of the Earth Sydney, The Cosmopolitan Civil Societies Research Centre and University of Sydney Union.