Oscar takes action, via a mouse click

Groups like Get Up have been successful in effecting change through online activism, but overall, people seem to be zoning out over the emails they get from campaigners. This article in the Guardian summed it up

The truth is that as the novelty of online activism wears off, millions of formerly socially engaged individuals who trusted digital organisations are coming away believing in the impotence of all forms of activism. Even leading Bay Area clicktivist organisations are finding it increasingly difficult to motivate their members to any action whatsoever. The insider truth is that the vast majority, between 80% to 90%, of so-called members rarely even open campaign emails. Clicktivists are to blame for alienating a generation of would-be activists with their ineffectual campaigns that resemble marketing.

How do we change the world for the better now?

It's hard to think about getting old

I was recently floored by a question that I have never had from a client in 11 years of full time cartooning:

Do you have a superannuation fund (Australian pension)…?

and even more surprisingly:

…because we would like to pay into it.

I replied that cartoonists don’t retire – we keep working until we die at the drawing board. The client persisted:

Would you like to consider setting up a [superannuation] account…? It might not add up to an awful lot, but it’s an amount you are entitled to. Hopefully you’ll be with us for a while and we can keep contributing to it.

(I really love this client). So that made me think… and search on the internet…and find that it might really work out to have a superannuation account as I could claim it back against my tax, or have the government pay into my pension (getting money from the government is always a persuasive prospect).

A search online showed only one superannuation company that was really worth considering: Australian Ethical. They invest in truly environmentally sustainable companies that care about people as well as profits. Coincidentally, one of their (recycled paper) leaflets showed up in the ACF’s Habitat magazine. And they were launching a new fund called the Climate Advocacy Fund, a joint venture between Australian Ethical and the Climate Institute. I went to a presentation by one of their directors, James Thier, last night. It’s a weird new thing. They aim to effect change by investing in the Australian Stock Exchange (including companies they wouldn’t previously have touched with a barge pole) and then tabling resolutions with some of those companies to try and get some of the most carbon-intensive ones to change their game. From the AE web site, the aim and objective of the Climate Advocacy Fund is to:

• Provide returns consistent with the broad Australian share market index and provide an avenue for active engagement with the companies included in the index.
• … track the return of the S&P/ASX 200 share market index
• … improve the corporate behaviour of companies through engagement on climate change issues.

I like the idea that this company,  having invested in ethical, sustainable companies for 20+ years is now prepared to try another tack – to take on some of the companies who would make a bigger difference to our future, if they would only change the way they operate.

I’m going to get myself a pension plan.

The military response to climate change

National security blanket

the commercial answer to climate change

The Earth Goddess, Gaia, appears in Arctic Circle

Gaia shows Oscar what the Arctic could become

A happy ending for the Arctic

Climate change scientists have started a fightback against sceptics who argue that the observed changes in the Earth’s climate can largely be explained by natural variability. This comes after the email hacking furore.

A major Met Office review of more than 100 scientific studies tracking the observed changes in the Earth’s climate system finds that it is an “increasingly remote possibility” that human activity is not the main cause of climate change.

Met Office data presented graphically by the Guardian

Oscar makes a stand against climate change

Prevention is better than cure

It's a strange microclimate in Snowpeak

From today's Age newspaper

The organisers expected 10,000 people to turn up at the State Library yesterday to walk against warming.  We wanted to send a strong message to the politicians at Copenhagen that we want a deal that will tackle climate change.

Meeting at the State Library

It takes a long time to walk down Swanston Street

Passing the centre of consumerism - Bourke Street

Flinders Station in a sea of people

Once on the bridge, we were corralled into letters

To try to spell Safe Climate Do It

We were in the cross bar of the E of SAFE. You can’t tell, even when you look at the biggest photo on the Walk Against Warming web site. But we were there.

Frank sending a message to Copenhagen

Philip Wollen at Melbourne Sustainability Drinks

We went to a Melbourne Sustainability Drinks last week. The speaker was Philip Wollen:

Philip Wollen, former vice-president of Citibank, general manager at Citicorp and once one of the top 40 head-hunted executives in Australia – now facilitator of kindness will discuss how to use venture capital for good causes, radical banking and his aim to “give it all away”…

This was partly true, but the main thing he talked about was how not eating meat is by far the biggest thing any of us in the room could do to prevent climate change. Probably true and difficult to do. One of my friends left, depressed, shortly after he said that everyone in the room had one thing in common:

They all want to change the world as long as they don’t have to change themselves.

Ouch. After the talk, boyf and I went to dinner. I had aubergine parmagiana. He had spag bol.