The Ocean & Climate Challenge...
Got 30 seconds to demand action on climate?
That's how long it takes to send a letter - a real paper letter - demanding action to save the planet.
And what's more we will print it, stick it in an envelope and deliver it for you.
Click on the swarm to send your letter now. ☞
About the MailSwarm campaign
Send the government and industry your protest with two key-strokes
Most of us are very anxious about Climate Change, but we are unwilling to take confrontational action. That doesn't mean we don't care!
Our politicians would have us protest quietly. They'd prefer emails that they can dismiss with a key stroke.
Well, fine! You want us to write to you? We will. In our hundreds, and by mail!
Click on the swarm to send your letter now. ☞
No easy-to-swipe-away emails from us! Letters in their hundreds.
Use MailSwarm to choose a letter then send it with two keystrokes. We will print and hand deliver your letters to the Minister or CEO in bulk to their offices on a pre-set day
We will use our politicians' plea to 'Just write to your MP' as a form of protest. We will force on them the significant administative burden of hand processing hundreds letters delivered at the same time.
MailSwarm will deliver all letters on the same day. We will make sure you are heard and you are noticed.
To the Premiers and Environment Ministers of NSW and Queensland
Dear Premier and Environment Minister,
I write to urge you in the strongest terms to immediately stop all clear-fell logging in the state. "I was shocked to see bulldozers used to remove trees. I had not expected Australia to employ this sort of logging." Only in The Amazon and Congo Basin is this method still used. "Even China's sub-tropical forests are better protected than in Australia" [Prof Helge Bruelheide, Professor for Geobotany at the Institute of Geobotany, Martin Luther University ]
This method of logging "destroys the soil. It is complete habitat destruction, not only of trees - Australia's trees are some of the oldest family of seed plants on earth - but threatens the extinction of Koalas, Gliders and Gondwanan frogs. In my point of view the government must stop on-going logging immediately" [Prof Helge Bruelheide on a visit to NSW with 30 world forestry experts 3rd September.]
On a purely monetary basis, logging is making no sense. The state's forestry companies cost tax payers millions in losses each year, while "Forest clearing in two years can wipe out $1.5 billion of federal tax-payer funded climate change policy"*. In the last decade alone, NSW and Queensland have bulldozed over 3 million hectares of forest. That is a double hit for the nations emissions: the CO2 emitted by the machinery and from widespread burning, and the loss of ability of those trees to sequester Carbon in the future.
As ministers of the government, you must be aware of your legal duty to consider the climate-change effect. In Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action v Environment Protection Authority [2021] NSWLEC 92 it was clearly established that the EPA have a duty to consider climate change, yet they have made no attempt to change the logging rules to account for its growing impacts.
Repeatedly, your government is failing your citizens and electors by ignoring the urgency of the Climate Emergency. Under your management, we are heading for temperature rise of 2 to 2.5 degrees this century which will - by your own National Security's findings - lead to the probability of famine, drought, immigration pressures and, ultimately, if you do not act, the collapse of the very democracy that you rely on to keep your citizens safe. Once again, I strongly urge you to reinstate all moratoriums, and to immediately stop all clear-fell logging.
Yours sincerely
Penny Sharpe, NSW Environment Minister
cc Tanya Plibersek, Federal Environment Minister
23rd August 2023
Dear Minister,
I am writing to you and to the Federal Environment Minister to urge you both to stop granting new and extension Coal and Gas licences.
A significant reason for Labor's Federal and NSW election successes was strong public discontent with Scott Morrison's disregard of Climate Change. Mining and fracking cause extensive ecological and hydrological destruction as well as fuelling global warming.
We do not need any more coal or gas mining. 75% of all Australian coal and gas is exported, yet even on the most callous cost-benefit analysis - using your own data* and without weighing any externalities - coal and gas mining are unjustifiable liabilities.
Fact: In 2021-22, NSW coal mine royalties brought just $3.5bn of the state's $100bn annual revenue. Weigh that against the state's $2.7bn of infrastructure damage in the same year caused by the Climate-change driven Lismore floods, then add another $4bn in state and federal emergency support.
Fact: Tourism in Australia earns more money and employs ten times more Australians than coal and gas, yet the catastrophic emissions-driven fires of 2019-2020 wiped out $20bn of tourism income. In the same year national coal and gas royalties were $12bn.
Fact: Australia's 1,250 megatonnes of exported emissions is only surpassed by Saudi Arabia and Russia . Our exports contribute 7% to the world's climate destruction yet bring Australians no net profit.
Basic economics alone tell us there is no reason to license more coal or gas. It gains us nothing and is costing us our present ecology and our future existence.
I urge you as strongly as I can to stop issuing any new licenses.
*NSW gov report on state finances 2021-22. 2022 Flood Inquiry
Yours sincerely
Your name will be inserted here
Your adress here
Your state and postcode here
The Hon Anthony Albanese
Prime Minister of Australia,
334A Marrickville Road,
Marrickville, NSW, 2204
cc The Hon Tanya Plibersek MP
Minister for the Environment and Water
1a Great Buckingham Street
Redfern
Sydney, NSW, 2016.
4th July 2023
Dear Prime Minister,
I write to strongly urge you to stop subsidising the fossil fuel industry.
A number of us are putting our names to these pro-forma letters because we are shocked by your continued financing of climate destruction. That we all phrase our demand in the same words, does not change the validity of our assertion that there is no economic justification for you to continue the Liberal Party's policy of subsidies to coal and gas.
Fossil fuel subsidies lose Australia billions annually while they perpetuate our reliance on fuels that you know are driving temperatures and extreme weather which costs Australians billions more in damage and disaster recovery.
I take it you do not contest the Australia Institute's figures of $10.3 billion in fossil fuel subsidies (AI 26 April 2021), and now $11.3 billion last year. I assume also that you do not fundamentally contest the figures published in the ABC article (ABC 7 Nov 2022) forecasting that revenue from gas taxation is due to fall from $2.6 billion today to $2 billion by 2026, meaning the subsidies are a net loss to tax-payers of $8 - $9 billion a year.
These subsidies are not there to prop up jobs in regional Australia. Tourism in Queensland directly employs more than double the number of Australians working nationally in coal, oil and gas combined (135,900 -v 62,500).
You do not subsidise fossil fuels for energy security, we clearly over produce liquefied gas since we exported 4,300 petajoules of it last year ‐ for which Australian tax payers saw almost no return.
Despite all this, your party continues in government, as it did in opposition, to hand out our money for new coal and gas exploration in the full knowledge that the United Nations, the IPCC and even the international Energy Authority all say there is no carbon budget left for any new fossil fuel extraction.
I, and those writing to you like me, defy you to make a cogent argument for these subsidies in the light of 3 years of unprecedented floods and fires caused without question by burning carbon. I understand that each day you have to focus on the country's economics, but you must balance that against the certainty of a catastrophic 2-3 degree warmer world in the life time of today's. school children if you continue to subsidise fossil fuels.
Which is why I, we, call on you to immediately stop all fossil fuel subsidies in this country.
Yours sincerely
Your name will be inserted here
Your adress here
Your state and postcode here
Philip Chronican Chairman NAB
National Australia Bank House, 2 Carrington St,
SYDNEY,
NSW, 2000
cc Ross McEwan CEO NAB
4th July 2023
Dear Mr Chronican,
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has declared that the world has already warmed by 1.1°C. Further, it is hurtling towards exceeding the maximum emissions possible if we are to meet the Paris climate goals and avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
In March 2023, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres summarised the findings of the latest IPCC report by saying there can be "no new coal", and that "ceasing all licensing or funding of new oil and gas" were crucial elements of defusing the "climate time-bomb".
The statements echo a UN expert group declaration in November 2022: "Non-state actors cannot claim to be net zero while continuing to build or invest in new fossil fuel supply".
Corporate finance has accounted for almost 70 per cent of the money the big four banks have loaned to the fossil fuel industry since 2016.
As CEO of National Australia Bank, you are in charge of Australia's most regressive bank. Despite attempts to paint NAB as a climate leader, NAB has been the most regressive bank in the last two years.
In common with the other "big four" you have no policies to limit your funding to companies expanding fossil fuels. In fact you are exploiting the loophole in government policy that allows NAB to continue pouring customers' money into companies steering us towards climate catastrophe.
This reckless financing of fossil fuel expansion, despite the bank's own climate commitments, is occurring whilst the world's leading experts are imploring financial institutions to cut the greenwashing and end finance for new coal, oil and gas.
The findings are clear. NAB and your fellow Australian banks' talk will continue to be nothing but greenwashing until they end finance for new or expanded fossil fuel projects and the companies pursuing them.
Increasingly, in Europe, courts are hearing - and finding for - plaintiffs who take big corporations to law over their failure to act against climate change.
I urge you to take my letter seriously and keep it safe. It may be required in evidence should I participate in a class action here in Australia.
Yours sincerely
Your name will be inserted here
Your adress here
Your state and postcode here