Do more, do it more quickly, do it together. 

Join with over 75 local government authorities in Australia, which have already declared the climate emergency 

- we are totally unprepared to meet the health impacts of climate change in our shire. 

In the future you will be held responsible for not taking action.

Rob Law - And councillors soon found themselves sitting through 12 hours of 5 minute speeches from local environmentalists, doctors, psychologists, school kids, church groups, farmers, disability workers…all making their emotional plea.

 Friends of Campbell’s Creek land care group.

Castlemaine secondary colleges

- it’s impossible to even walk and forest street for many months of the year.

If we can heal our relationship with the land, by being connected to it, we change everything

Start a citizens assembly.

We need to increase cultural burns.

Hard decisions must be made that prioritise a resilient, localised food system above all else.

Rob Law - It was a day where climate change felt like it was finding its place in our local imagination, as each person described the ways it was affecting their own life and way of living here in this town.

Climate change Forum speeches

- with summer coming on, there was a palpable sense in the community of rising anxiety.

When there’s an emergency, we do simulation role-play practicing. And I sit in meetings at the hospital, it’s at the top of the hill, looking over the vegetation of the town, thinking of heat, rising, and wondering if watching a fire racing up towards the building could be anything other than terrifying.

Rob Law - It was no longer about scientific facts or far off places, but it was about the dying box ironbark forests up on the hill, or the water disappearing in our creeks, or the vulnerable people in our town, or even just the simple psychological benefits of leaders acknowledging our situation.

Dr Veronica Moule - Are you, are you asking me whether I think people will be stressed because we declare an emergency? I think everyone’s stressed anyway.

(clock ticking)

Rob Law - Soon after this marathon session, the community found itself back in the council chambers a couple of weeks later as Councillor Machin presented a motion to declare a climate emergency. At a time I was listening in to the debate on my phone pacing back and forth on my front verandah.

Council meeting - I’d have to be able to look my 16 year old son in the eye and tell him why I didn’t vote for him and there is no way I can do that. We need more information and more professional advice. I think we are jumping too early. We don’t know what’s going to happen.

Rob Law - From that moment a month before when the petition first failed, the bushfires had continued to get worse and there was this sense for so many of us that everything hung on this moment.

Heather Cummins - I remember sitting next to one of the central Victorian climate action CVCA members. And, you know, they’ve been around doing this for yonks - and I didn’t know this person well, but she seemed like someone who is normally very contained and with tears in her eyes. Um, and then she followed up by saying there’s just been so few wins.

Rob Law - It was finally time for the vote. The declaration passed 6 votes to 1.

Council Meeting - Those in favour - applause. For our children, school strikers who have asked that we declare a climate emergency - kids, this is for you.

Kyla Brettle - Rob what did you do after the declaration of a climate emergency?

Rob Law - I got quite teary and went around to my wife who looked at me and knew that it must have meant it passed. Yeah, that moment was pretty powerful and then I kind of relaxed after that to be honest, I think the declaration was that time where we all collectively acknowledged and then we’ll work out what comes next later.