John Seed Capacity Crowd at Richmond town Hall. : Melbourne Indymedia

John Seed recieved an astounding applause as he presented his despair and empowerment talk at the Richmond Town Hall

The event coincided with a lively day in Federal Parliament, following John Howard's Gaffe, where he outed himself as someone who hasn't personally dealt with his own personal position on a realisation that humankind are causing climate change while everyone else including his party has moved on.

The biggest response was to the USA's new democratic congress which returned $12billion out of $20billion US dollar subsidies to the Fossil Fuel industries back to consolidated revenue.

John pointed out that given the USA has 300 million people (15x Australia) Australia has an absurd rate of subsidy for Fossil Fuel industries coming in at 6.5 to 9Billion AUD per year ($5 - $6.5 Billion dollars USD)

The only way to go is renewable energy which is available now with transparent pricing, there was overwhelming suport for this position amongst the 300 attendees.

Beyond Zero Emissions will be running some follow up community climate meetings talking about how and why we must goto "Zero Emissions Minus", near zero emissions across all sectors and active sequestration of EXISTING atmospheric carbon.

For Details

Adrian Whitehead 0403 735 118
Matthew Wright 0421 616 733

Onya Adrian. You are tops. And other helpers not least the talent, Johnny apple Seed and Ruth Rosenhek, amazon against Lake Cowal cyanide mine obscenity here in NSW.

For those who want to be even more freaked, read this at Mother Jones, an awesome, awesome chunky article late 2006, with alot of covert science in there, the experts are too scared to shout from the rooftops given their conservtive ways:

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/11/13th_tipping_point.html

Last night (Thursday 8 Feb) 170 people packed a lecture theatre in Ballarat to see John Seed's presentation. Similar applause and gratitude from all attending.

John's presentation followed the inaugural meeting of <"BREaZE">http://breig.baltree.info/portal/ - Ballarat Renewable Energy and Zero Emissions. This local climate action group formed out of the 2006 Walk Against Warming and has inspired an amazing amount of energy and interest with a follow-up meeting organised for Thursday 22 Feb.

Following on from fossil fuel subsidies in the US vs. Australia, does this mean Ballarat is more progressive than Melbourne? If 300 attend in Melbourne, a city of 3,000,000 people and 170 attend in Ballarat, a city of 90,000 - perhaps we're not as conservative as people assume?

.... a rare glimmer of optimism. John Seed really does inspire!