Our plan to kick the big polluters out Sam LR – GetUp!

Recently you took a survey to help determine GetUp’s priorities on climate change. We’ve taken your feedback and turned it into an ambitious plan to give the big polluters a run for their money. Can you chip in to make it a reality?

This is absurd, NEVILLE.

French mining company Engie (previously known as GDF-Suez) owns Australia’s dirtiest coal plant Hazelwood, and guess what? They’re sponsoring the UN climate talks!¹

The UN conference at the end of this month will be crawling with big coal and their mates trying to block action on the climate disaster they’ve created. For the past two decades, the coal lobby has funded think tanks for dodgy sceptics like Bjorn Lomborg, bankrolled lobbyists to pollute our politics behind closed doors and devised misinformation campaigns straight from the big tobacco playbook.²

So while they’re on the inside trying to hold us back – we need to be on the outside pushing forward. Forward to a safer climate and a better life free from polluting energy. That’s why we’re mobilising en masse for People’s Climate Marches across Australia to show the world we’re ready to play our part in tackling global warming.

To take on the big polluters in the lead up to the Paris climate talks, right through to the next federal election, we need resources, which is why we’re asking you to step up and become a GetUp core climate member. Can you make a small weekly donation?

We’ve already hit the ground running. Your money will provide organisers on the ground, phones for phone bankers, t-shirts for volunteers, clipboards for doorknockers, and the promotional materials we need to make these marches the biggest we’ve ever seen.

Big coal might have a lot of money, but we’ve got something much more powerful: YOU, NEVILLE, and a million more GetUp members ready to kick polluters out of politics.

As a core member, you’ll join hundreds of Australians to fund:

1. The biggest, coordinated doorknock for climate action the country has ever seen.

1. The massive People’s Climate March for 2015, which last year was used as real-time evidence of the world’s demand for climate action by leaders like Ban Ki Moon and President Obama.

1. A people’s policy platform led by researchers, policy experts, economists and movement partners to show politicians the pathway to a 100% renewable powered future.

1. All the hard-hitting ads, high-profile actions, and electoral organising we need to turn climate change into a major issue at the next federal election.

If fossil fuel lobbyists are running the show on the inside, whispering nonsense in the ear of our Prime Minister, let’s raise an alarm on the outside that they can’t ignore.^3,4 Our plan is designed to get global media taking our actions here at home all the way to Paris.

But to change everything, we’ll need everyone. Click here to fund our fight for a cleaner, safer future.

If big polluters are going to keep trying to hold us back then we need to step up and show the way forward.

Are you in? www.getup.org.au/power

In hope,
Sam and Adam, for the GetUp team

PS – There’s never been a more important time to fire up our movement and demand action with a strong, united voice. Last week we saw what happens when big coal writes the PM’s political propaganda – a whopping 72% of Liberal Party supporters still don’t realise human activity causes climate change.⁵ Thanks Tony Abbott. But now is the time for Malcolm Turnbull to do better. Chip in now to support our plan to tackle the big polluters.

References
[1] France defends ‘imperfect’ fossil fuel sponsors for Paris climate summit, The Guardian, 30 May 2015
[2] Fossil fuel firms are still bankrolling climate denial lobby groups, The Guardian, 26 March 2015
[3] Coal industry lobbying Government ahead of climate change talks, ABC Online, 27 October 2015
[4] How the Minerals Council of Australia has government’s ear on coal, The Saturday Paper, 24 October 2015
[5] Most Coalition voters do not believe in human-induced climate change – CSIRO, The Guardian, 4 November 2015