A diverse range of experts were represented at the Extinction Rebellion (XR) protest last Monday in Perth.
Before the march, Traditional Owners, climate scientists and members of the health sector gave two hours’ worth of talks in the Supreme Court Gardens.
Dr George Crisp, representing Doctors for the Environment Australia, was one of the experts who gave a talk.
Dr Crisp told ECU Vanguard News that “80% of our current carbon budget already needs to stop being burnt” in order to avoid a three-degree rise in global temperatures by 2030.
Fifty countries, including the UK, have already signed the “30by30” initiative to protect 30% of the global ocean and other terrestrial conservation areas by 2030.
Last year’s Prime Minister’s Science Award recipient Professor David Blair also gave a speech.
Prof Blair said: “The science of climate change has been understood for 125 years” and the current goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050 is not enough.
“We should be stopping any further exploitation of fossil fuels in order to reach neutrality by 2030… action on climate change is the most important issue facing us today,” he said.
The XR protest action follows the WA Forest Alliance delivering a petition with 29,000 signatures to Dumas House this month, where Fiona Stanley made a passionate speech supporting the discontinuation of jarrah logging in the South West.
Forest Alliance WA organizer Paddy Cullen also attended the XR march.
He said the South West jarrah forests have been declared a collapsing ecosystem, with the legacy industry “costing $1m per year while plantations can make anywhere from $200-250m a year” and stopping this situation is “a win for the environment and a win for the economy.”
Last week’s XR action coincided with a national action campaign designed to highlight the growing concern among citizens about the lack of action on climate change at a State and Federal level.
