PUBLIC LECTURE: What does a climate emergency look like?

In this address, David Spratt proposes that global warming is already dangerous, as significant tipping points have already been crossed.

He analyses the paradigm within which the major political parties in Australia construct climate policy, which will guarantee catastrophic failure.

He suggests that climate change now constitutes a global emergency and whole-of-society action is required at great speed and depth, beyond the failure-inducing compromises of politics and business as usual.

He proposes a national mobilisation on climate, not dissimilar in character to responses to other emergencies such as military threat (war) and catastrophic natural events, and to periods of transformative technological change such as the Apollo programme.

David Spratt is the co-author of "Climate Code Red: the case for emergency action" published by Scribe in July 2008. He is a founder of the activist research network CarbonEquity (www.carbonequity.info), and of the Melbourne Climate Action Centre. He was a keynote speaker at the first National Climate Action Summit held in Canberra 31 January- 3 February 2009. His work has appeared recently in "The Age", "Dissent", "Chain Reaction", "Crikey", "Rolling Stone", the "Adelaide Advertiser" and "New Matilda".