Wanted to let you know about this awesome initiative.You can see more on their website www.runforasafeclimate.org.
Run for a Safe Climate in November 2009 is a unique and powerful project aimed at protecting life, property and the great natural icons of our country from a slide towards catastrophic global warming. The run is being performed by active and serving members of Australia’s emergency services – firefighters, paramedics, police and emergency services workers – many of whom were directly exposed to recent climate-driven disasters in Australia such as the 2009 Victorian bush fires.
Our running group feels very strongly that global warming presents an unprecedented threat to our food bowls, cities, water, health, security and great natural icons, and has become motivated to run 6000 kilometres across Australia to raise money for an essential scenario and risk-management exercise for Australia — the Safe Climate Australia Transition Plan.
A team of 35 trained runners from the various emergency services will run in a relay over 6000 kilometres to link Australia’s unique, world-renowned natural icons, most of which will be devastated if atmospheric greenhouse gas levels are not brought back to a safe climate threshold. We will also visit some of the great climate solutions that are the key to a low-carbon and clean-energy future – solar thermal and wind plants, ocean hydro systems and research facilities.
By following us on our run you will hear from the leading scientists tracking the natural systems and working on the solutions. We hope it will be a mixture of inspiration and education.
Recent scientific observations tell us that global warming is accelerating faster and more seriously than was previously thought, and that even now there is too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. By supporting Safe Climate Australia we hope to financially support the development of a practical, credible, costed and modelled transition plan that demonstrates how Australia can rapidly reduce carbon emissions, take advantage of Australia’s almost unlimited clean-energy potential and show how we can start to reduce the dangerous carbon levels in the atmosphere. We hope to show how Australians can step up to the challenge of leading in addressing this great danger we all face.
In a crisis everyone pulls together and starts to pull their weight. Emergency workers will be on the front line in dealing with global warming. Firefighters will be faced with more frequent and severe fire events, ambulance officers with heat stress and fatalities amongst our most vulnerable sectors of society, soldiers with the security implications of vast numbers of potential environmental refugees from the Asia-Pacific area, police with social unrest and park rangers will be working to protect our great natural ecosystems from temperature levels never experienced in the recent evolutionary history of these systems.
