Just transition tour: 'cut emissions, create jobs'

NEWCASTLE — Climate change campaigners have ridiculed the Australian Coal Association's "cut emissions, not jobs" ad campaign, announcing their own campaign "to cut emissions, create jobs".

In November, a bus tour of NSW coalmining communities will promote a transition to renewable energy in the state that would create tens of thousands of new jobs.

Inspired by the historic Freedom Rides against racism, the Just Transition Tour will take a bus through the Hunter Valley, Gunnedah and Western coalfields. Events and meetings will be held with local groups and workers from coalmines and coal-fired power stations.

Retired coalminer Graham Brown will guide the tour. "If we're going to avoid the worst of climate change we do need to phase out coal, and we need to do it fast", he told GLW. "It's obvious that workers will be right in the middle of this but that's exactly why they need to be involved in the process of developing green alternatives."

The six-day bus tour from November 20 to 26, will take the green jobs message to politicians in the last week of parliament, on the eve of the Copenhagen climate talks. It will also picket the NSW state government headquarters in Sydney.

[For more details visit www.transitiontour.wordpress.com.]

From GLW issue 814