There was standing room only at the Imperial Hotel, Murwillumbah last week when the Tweed Renewables Alliance official launched the Big Solar campaign.
The group had first launched on the Tweed with a rally at Fingal Lighthouse two weeks ago.
More than 100 people attended last week’s official meeting.
Local GP Dr Fiona McCormick gave an update on the latest climate science, and the urgency with which climate action needs to be taken while Dr Paul Taylor showed how Australia could be entirely powered by renewable energy within 10 years.
The audience got a chance at conducting the Big Solar Poll, which the Tweed Renewables Alliance is planning to conduct throughout the Tweed Shire until the end of April, taking the results to Federal MP for Richmond Justine Elliot in early May.
“As Al Gore highlighted at the Climate Reality training: investing in renewable energy is the solution to the climate crisis but what has been lacking is the political will to encourage and support this investment,” Dr McCormick said.
“We should remind our politicians that political will is also a renewable resource,” Dr Fiona McCormick said.
“As well as being concerned about local change and resilience we need to urgently support this strong Big Solar initiative, calling for replacing all retiring coal fired plant with base-load solar power.
“Everywhere we turn we use electricity, mostly made from coal. To preserve our future we need to build renewable electricity into the national grid now,” Dr Paul Taylor added.
Group spokesman Eddie Roberts said bringing in Big Solar was up to people power. “Only people power can offset the dominating influence that powerful vested interests have over our politicians,” he said.
“We call on our local community to take part in the Big Solar Poll, so that we can send a strong message to Justine Elliot that our community wants Big Solar, not gas,” said spokesperson Eddie Roberts.
The Big Solar campaign is a national grassroots initiative.
Around Australia local community groups are aiming to poll 10,000 Australians to gauge and build support for Big Solar, in order to ensure that the Clean Energy Finance Corporation funds 2000MW of renewable energy projects such as solar thermal power plants.
The event was organised by the Tweed Renewables Alliance, an alliance of three local community groups based in the Tweed Shire: The Caldera Environment Centre, Northern Rivers Guardians and Tweed Climate Action Now. Collectively they have approximately 500 members, representing a wide cross section of the community.
