From the folks who brought you the July 5th Climate Emergency Rally & Human Sign, which saw over 4000 people rally in Melbourne to protest the government’s inaction in the face of climate emergency, we bring you:

The inaugural Melbourne

CLIMATE CRIMINALS TOUR

We will meet at 4pm on Friday September 19, on Southbank by the river outside ExxonMobil's Southbank office, and with comedian Rod Quantock leading the proceedings, we will move through the city to BHP Billiton, to Peter Batchelor’s Office, then finishing with speakers at Parliament House from 6pm. Join us at the start, or meet us at Parliament as you are able!

Chris Breen, event organiser says:
“We have called the climate criminals tour protest, to hold government and corporations to account for their insanity in failing to act to cut emissions, when the technology exists to do this and when they know that the climate crisis threatens us all; they are literally putting profit before life. Carbon trading won’t solve the problem, you can’t solve market failure with more market failure, we need massive government investment in renewable energy and public transport”

Some information about these climate criminals:

BHP Billiton this year posted a 14.7 per cent rise in full-year net profit to $US15.39 billion, its sixth consecutive record annual result. BHP Billiton has refused to set any targets for absolute reduction of its greenhouse emissions. BHP Billiton chairman Don Argus recently called for nuclear power in Australia & warned of “carbon leakage”, in other words the threat that if BHP Billion and similar companies have to pay to pollute, they will take their industries offshore where they can pollute more freely. Rather than using its wealth to help solve the climate crisis it has played such a large role in creating, BHP Billiton is currently leading the grab for resources, oil, gas, gold, & iron ore that lie beneath the melting arctic.

ExxonMobil leads the charge against efforts to reduce global warming pollution worldwide and despite record profits, it still refuses to invest in renewable energy.
ExxonMobil continues to fund think tanks and organizations who are running decade long campaigns denying the consensus of urgency from climate scientists & attacking policies to tackle climate change.

As stated by James Hansen, NASA Climatologist before the US Congress in June this year. “CEO’s of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of the long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, these CEO’s should be tried for high crimes against humanity & nature”.

The Victorian State Government are using tax-payers money to fund a new polluting coal power plant in the Latrobe Valley. If allowed to go ahead this new coal powered station will add 2.4 million tonnes of greenhouse polluting emissions into the atmosphere each year. It will also consume over 3 billion litres of water per year from the Latrobe Valley river system which is already under immense pressure. We need massive cuts to our greenhouse emissions in order to avoid runaway climate change. We’d like to know why the government is investing in more dirty coal power instead of clean energy.

Ben Courtice, event organiser, says:
"Corporations who continue with practices that fuel climate change with all that we know now should be considered equivalent to James Hardie with asbestos. We should ban their polluting products like coal and oil.
"These industries should have their resources taken over to be used for sustainable energy production. They owe us compensation for the time they have been denying and hiding the truth about the consequences of their money-making activities which are doing possibly irreversible damage to the planet. Whether they have technically broken any laws is not the point. If they are tried in the court of public and scientific opinion I am confident they will be found guilty in regard to global warming. I hope this protest can bring them into public scrutiny."

OUR MESSAGE

• More renewable energy
• No New Tollways, More Public Transport
• Green Jobs to build a sustainable future
• No Desalination Plant, No Deforestation