Campaign goal: Our goal is for governments to declare a climate emergency and mobilise society-wide resources at sufficient scale and speed to protect civilisation, the economy, people, species, and ecosystems.
Key goal elements
• Building public awareness that we are in a climate emergency which threatens life as we know it. We can’t take appropriate action if we don’t recognise we are in an emergency.
• Demanding that governments declare a climate emergency as a public signal indicating that governments and society will be mobilised in emergency mode until the emergency passes.
• Demanding a climate mobilisation of sufficient scale and speed to protect everything we want to protect. War-time mobilisation examples indicate how quickly and thoroughly ‘business-as-usual’ and ‘reform-as-usual’ can change when we rise to the challenge of dealing with an existential threat.
Call to action
• People are great at rising to the occasion in an emergency. If you happen to be there when a fire or flood occurs, chances are you’ll pitch in alongside emergency service workers to do whatever is needed. Neighbours help neighbours, and strangers help strangers.
• We are now in the biggest emergency ever – the climate emergency. Already people are dying and ecosystems are being destroyed.
• We know what needs to be achieved – right now – and we already have the technology to do it. We must face up to climate facts, go into emergency mode, and throw everything we’ve got at restoring a safe climate.
• We know from our experience of full-scale wartime mobilisations that amazing economic transformations can be achieved in just a few years when we face an existential threat. Let’s demand equally strong leadership and action from our peacetime government in order to protect everything we love.
• Join us in petitioning your local council and/or the Australian Parliament to declare a climate emergency and mobilise society-wide resources at sufficient scale and speed to protect civilisation, the economy, people, species, and ecosystems.
Campaign organisation
Our strength lies in the many activists taking initiative and working together – or separately, or both – to achieve the campaign goal. The organisation model for this campaign is similar, but not identical, to the ‘million flowers blooming’ approach and the ‘swarm’ concept described in Swarmwise by Rick Falkvinge. Everyone working on this campaign is volunteering their time and energy – and creativity – in whatever way they think best for advancing the campaign goal. Campaign activities are conducted in an egalitarian and collaborative way, with nobody having the right to try to tell anyone else what to do. Giving helpful suggestions to the people working on a particular project or part of the campaign is welcome, or pointing out ways you think they might improve what they are doing, but ultimately the decisions about a project are made by the people instigating and working on that project. Key people involved in developing this campaign so far, building support, advising, attending meetings and giving presentations, facilitating the involvement of other campaigners, sharing resources, and fulfilling website and social media roles are Mik Aidt (Geelong Media), Anthony Gleeson (Centre for Climate Safety), Margaret Hender (cedamia), Jane Morton (Darebin Climate Action Network), David Spratt (Climate Code Red), Philip Sutton (RSTI), and Luke Taylor (Breakthrough). Adrian Whitehead and Bryony Edwards, who started CACE – Council Action in the Climate Emergency, were two of the key players behind getting the first council to pass a Climate Emergency Declaration in Australia: the suburban council Darebin in Melbourne which passed a climate emergency declaration in December 2016 – as the first municipality in the world to do so. Since then, the idea has spread to become a decentralised, swarm-blooming global movement with many hundreds local governments, as well as universities, businesses, schools, and organisations involved and engaged.