Do you want the good news or the bad news first? I don’t know about you, but I’ve been hearing a lot of bad news recently, so let's start there. Here's a random sampling of some of the big bad stories of 2016 so far (well, actually, the last week).
Tropical Cyclone Winston was one of the most terrifying experiences I have ever been through. I live on the western side of Viti Levu, in Nadi. On Saturday night, by the time the sun went down, the wind had began howling and it was bucketing down. The electricity went off. Within a few hours, the concrete walls of our apartment were shaking. The light and fan fittings in our ceiling came loose and water started gushing through them. We couldn't go outside, because trees and signs and bits of people's roofs were flying around.
Blog post from Cayla Tikaram - Greenpeace Australia Pacific Intern
On Saturday night, the cyclone of all cyclones rocked our tiny island nation. As we clung together in cupboards, under tables and holding the people we loved close, I’m sure a collective prayer or two went up! Nothing prepares you for the wrath of Mother Nature at her harshest, and with 350mph winds pummeling through our land, Cyclone Winston showed no discrimination in its destruction. It’s too safe to say none of us want to ever feel that sort of force again.
Friday morning nearly 100 of us gathered near the Sydney Opera House to raise awareness about the current coral bleaching event and to call on the government to get serious about fighting climate change.
You may have caught Greenpeace Australia Pacific’s video launching the #CoalFree movement to protect the things we love from coal pollution. The video features four half-naked volunteers having their bodies painted - half of them as black smoke protruding from coal stacks and the other half as all the colours of Australia’s most precious natural environments. That’s me on the right, in the spectacular colours of the Great Barrier Reef.
I know this question has kept you up the last three nights and now, finally, we have the answer: $6.236.
That's $6.236 billion in the 2016 federal budget for the diesel fuel rebate. Read on for what that means…
Environment Minister Greg Hunt has tweeted the most despicable words of the election campaign so far. Across a picture of sparkling blue Great Barrier Reef waters, he has in recent days proclaimed: “Under Labor, the U.N. put the Great Barrier Reef on the in danger ‘watch-list’. Under the Coalition, it came off.”
At the Leaders debate at the National Press Club in Canberra on May 29 the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told the public that he had a practical plan for action on climate change and it was working. The Prime Minister didn’t mention the Reef once.
On Sunday night, a group of Greenpeace volunteers, including myself, took to the streets of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to take a stand against the coal industry and its place in causing mass coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef.
