Category Archives: Taking Action

What people are doing and planning for a secure and hopeful future.

Protect our land and water: Rally Martin Place, 11.45am, Tues May 1st

NSW Farmer's Protect Our Land and Water header

The NSW Farmers’ Federation has organised this rally to force the State government to provide real protection for the water and land we all need to live. To protect food production and water resources, we must have:

  1. Genuine upfront planning that does not subject our most productive and sensitive areas to the risks and uncertainty of exploration;
  2. Independent protection for water right across the state that applies before mining and coal seam gas activities interfere with those resources.

Coal markets are in decline, and we don’t need coal seam gas to generate electricity. The government claims it will not permit damaging exploitation of coal or CSG; if you won’t let them exploit, why let them explore?

Protecting food and water resources is not an issue for party politics or political ideologies. How can you have a good political barney if there’s no water to grow the beverages that fuel it? Next Tuesday, join the farmers, the Sydney Food Fairness Alliance, Lock the Gate, the CWA, the Nature Conservation Council, the Hunter Valley Wine Industry Association, Southern Highlands Coal Action Group, and many more.

Update 2 May 2012

Transport and meeting point details removed

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CANWin AGM and Film Afternoon 4 March

Sunday 4 March 2012, 1.30 – 5pm
Board Room, BDCU, 411 Bong Bong Street, Bowral.

Programme

1.30pm Registration opens
2.00pm Meeting starts
2.45pm Meeting ends; Light refreshments available
3.00pm Film and discussion.

Film: Design for Life: Permaculture — The Food Forest Story

This quietly inspiring film shows how Graham and Annemarie Brookman built their dream, transforming a bare paddock near Adelaide into a bountiful food forest, using renewable energy, appropriate technology and sustainable farming and living practices. They show that an ordinary family can grow its own food and create a productive and diverse landscape. The Food Forest is not just about sustainable gardening and farming. Energy wise projects at the farm include straw bale buildings, passive solar housing, solar hot water, and solar panels for electricity.

After the film there will be an opportunity to talk about it with a panel of experienced permaculture enthusiasts, including local identity Jill Cockram.

Film cost: Free to CANWin Members. Visitors welcome: $8
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Clean Energy: Everybody’s Doing It

Stylised Sun radiating in 4 directionsCoal and oil fuels are dinosaurs that hold media and market attention because they’re huge. But while the dinosaurs rampage, all around them thousands of people are entering the new era: the age of clean, inexhaustible energy. In the words of grass-roots organisation 100% Renewable:

Right now Australia faces a choice: we can continue our dependence on fossil fuels, keep mining and burning coal, keep polluting our air and water. We can keep damaging our farmland and heath, be left behind the rest of the world on investment and face an uncertain future with an unstable climate. Or we can make the switch to 100% clean renewable energy, creating a safer, healthier happier future for all.

The excitement of this new era is palpable in the planning for 100% Renewable’s 2-day Big Solar Boot Camp at Port Hacking on the weekend 11-12 February 2012. The programme concentrates on community action: how to make the clean energy message heard above the ruckus of the dinosaurs.

We saw the urgent demand for renewable energy in Wingecarribee shire at CANWin’s Clean Energy workshop last year. Plans such as Zero Carbon Australia 2020 and Sustainable Energy Australia show the ways 100% clean energy can be achieved in less than 10 years.

Big Solar is about solar-powered electricity generators on the same scale as coal-fired power stations. Big solar is one of the technologies that is making coal-fired power redundant. CANWin, along with hundreds of other groups in the Climate Action and 100% Renewable networks, can force governments to learn that the coal-fired dinosaur’s day is done.

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Want to reduce your electricity bills?

CANWin can help. We are offering a series of free workshops on ways to reduce your energy bills.

The workshops are part of the CSIRO Energymark program. They consist of eight sessions, held about two weeks apart.

You will receive your own copy of the CSIRO Home Energy Saving Handbook and build on it to:
Cover of CSIRO Home Energy Saving Handbook

  • Identify ways to reduce your energy consumption
  • Develop an action plan to save on power bills
  • Learn more about energy and climate change issues
  • Find and discuss how to lower our carbon footprint at home, at work and in our Highlands communities.

The groups will be small so that everyone can have their say with a minimum of pressure: local people talking about what matters to us in Wingecarribee.

Schedule and location will depend on what suits most participants.

Sign up now or ask for more information: just email Tim Edwards at email hidden; JavaScript is required

Check out the program at www.energymark.com.au

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Rally: Our Water, Our Land, Our Future

Saturday, 19 Nov 2011, 11.00am

Corbett Gardens, Bowral
(Wet weather venue, Bowral Memorial Hall)

Learn why we must say NO to coal and gas mining in the Southern Highlands and other special parts of Australia.

Speakers include radio host Alan Jones, Senator Bill Heffernan, Drew Hutton of Lock the Gate

For more information see Shoo Cockatoo

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