One of the terrific plans that came out of the NSW Grassroots Climate Summit was a blitz on local Federal members in the lead up to the release of the White Paper for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.

Check out the gorgeous dedicated blog: stepitupaustralia.wordpress.com

Phase One: Contact your MP and try and get an appointment.
For help on how to contact your local member and to prepare for the meeting, see the ACF’s useful resources here.

Phase Two: upload information here about the response you got
Did they say they wouldn’t meet you? Did they say it would take months? Did they say “it’s no good, we can’t do without the coal industry?” or even “I agree totally”??
Let everyone else in the movement know - leave a comment below.

Phase Three: Get ready to react when you here the announcement of the mid-term emissions reduction targets.
If they don’t promise that 2010 will be our peak emissions year and that they will wind back the concessions for the major emitting industries, it’s time to step-in to step it up.

Why take national climate change action in December?

December is going to be a big month. We know that the Federal Government is going to make major climate change announcements in December. They will be going to the Conference of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol meeting in Poznan in Poland on 1st December. They will release the policy “White Paper” for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and they will announce their 2020 greenhouse pollution reduction targets. As a movement, we want to be ready for those announcements and have as much influence on them as we can.

The medium term emissions reductions targets are widely expected to be weak and ineffective. If they are, then please join with people all around Australia as we STEP-IN to the offices of Federal Parliamentarians, to STEP-UP the campaign for real action against climate change.

Both of these policies are going to be finalised in November and announced in December and to have a hope of influencing them, we must work together.

What you need to do:

1. In the next week, ring or write to your local Federal member and ask to meet with them to discuss the CPRS and emissions reductions. You can do this as a member of a group, or as an individual.
2. Meet them and present the two key asks for this action:
   1. The Government must announce in December that 2010 will be Australia’s peak carbon emitting year, and emissions will decline from then on.
   2. The generous concessions offered to emissions-intensive industries in the Green Paper will be ditched, to ensure rapid decline of emissions and maximum investment in alternative industries.
3. Upload the response that you get to the Climate Movement Collaboration Space (ask Erland if you don’t know what that is or how to get on it) in the spreadsheet of MPs - to start a ’shame-file’ of climate inaction.
4. Some time during the first two weeks of December, the CPRS White Paper will be released and the interim emissions reduction targets announced.

If they don’t commit to both of our key asks at that time, it’s time to step it up.

Step back into your local members office to let them know that you are outraged.

A kit is being prepared to give you some ideas for how you might do this, but check out the following videos for inspiration:

If we all do this in the same week after this announcement it will generate political will to adopt the policies we need. Your local member will be embarrassed to have to defend policies the community rejects – they will go to the party room and complain that the policy isn’t good enough.

For further details, check out the collaboration space.