Culture

Melbourne Turns Out 60,000 People To March For Climate Change Action, Continues To Be The Best

Melbourne <3

by Sinead Stubbins  28 November 2015

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Last night in Melbourne, tens of thousands of protestors gathered in the CBD to kick off a series of climate change rallies across Australia this weekend. The march, which aims to call for an end to burning fossil fuels and a new global focus on clean energy, takes place before the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris on November 30.

According to The Age, the rally attracted at least 60,000 people, making it the largest climate change event in Victoria’s history and ensuring that a lot of angry men in suits had to sit in their Porsches in peak hour traffic for a really long time. Geoff Cousins, chair of the Australian Conservation Foundation and one of the organisers of the rally, told the ABC that the majority of Australians want action on climate change and that it needs to be treated as a much more tangible threat.

“People now realise this is not some theoretical concept,” he said. “This is affecting their lives on a daily basis and they want something done about it.”

The event was led by the People’s Climate March, and was attended by Bill Shorten and Greens Senator Richard Di Natale, as well as many unionists, youth groups, medical organisations and Indigenous rights organisations. It even had Paul Kelly singing ‘From Little Things Big Things Grow’, because Melbourne gets all the fun.

Similar climate change protests are scheduled to happen across Australia this weekend – this morning in Queens Park in Brisbane, this afternoon at Stokes Hill Wharf in Darwin, and tomorrow at the Domain in Sydney, Ester Lipman Gardens in Adelaide, Wellington Square in Perth, Parliament Lawns in Hobart and Parliament Lawns in Canberra – and are currently taking place in major cities around the world.

If they attract the numbers that the Melbourne rally did, it will be interesting to see what impact they have on the climate change talks in Paris.

You said it, climate dog.

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For info about climate marches in your city or town, head to People’s Climate March Australia.

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Feature image via ACF/Twitter.