The Blog

By Olivia Nankivell

Millennials like me know all too well that the three scariest things are 1% battery, no wifi signal, and of course the looming climate crisis. That’s why we’re all making sure our phones are fully charged for the School Strike 4 Climate (and praying we don’t overload the CBD cell towers).

Greenpeace Australia Pacific’s new report, Coal-faced: exposing AGL as Australia’s biggest climate polluter, is set to shatter AGL’s green ‘public’ image and uncover the dirty truth. The report, set to be released on May 5th, reveals the pivotal role that AGL plays in fuelling climate change in Australia. 

Last week, AGL, Australia’s biggest polluter revealed the outcome of its highly anticipated strategic review.

A little over a year ago the worst bushfires in our history razed large swathes of eastern Australia, blackening our skies, making people sick and reducing homes and millions of hectares of forests to ash.

The news that Energy Australia would close the Yallourn coal-burning power station in 2028, four years ahead of schedule, drew a chorus of golf claps from the environmental movement when announced last week. But it would have caused an uproar had the truth of the apparent dirty deal between the power company and the Victorian Government not been kept secret.

Mining and burning coal is the biggest driver of dangerous climate change in Australia, and across the world.

So how can we send the message that we want to move forwards to the renewable future and leave coal oil and gas in the past — and be heard? We need to raise our voices and our friends in the Pacific, Fenton Lutunatabua and Joseph Moeono-Kolio join us in Episode 4 to help us speed things up. We’ll learn how to amplify our impact with legendary social researcher on climate communication Dr. Rebecca Huntley, and get a politician’s inspiring point of view from Deputy Lord Mayor of City of Sydney, Jess Scully.

How can we stop funding the climate crisis? We hit up Munira Chowdhury, a Market Forces analyst, to learn how we can easily divest from dirty power and invest in the clean energy future 💪⚡ It’s so easy that Ash switched her super while we were working on the episode. Boom. Done. We’ll also learn how to double, triple, and quadruple our positive impact on the planet. Katrina Bullock, Greenpeace’s General Counsel and Finance News journalist, and Heidi Lenffer, musician and founder of FEAT, will share how we can collectively confront our financial institutions and use our networks of influence for the (heaps) better of our stunning planet.

In this episode, we chat with Simon Holmes à Court, a Director of the Smart Energy Council, and Lindsay Soutar, Greenpeace’s Campaigner for renewable energy and lead of the REenergise campaign. We’re also visiting a carbon neutral kinder and a solar powered brewery. You might be thinking, how exactly can we ditch the biggest coal, oil, and gas giants to fully embrace a renewable transition? We can all do our bit in our homes, schools, and offices, but we’ll also unveil the biggest energy users who need to pull their weight too: big corporations who use a whopping 71% of global emissions!