The Australian Climate Consensus Forum, March 2020

February 10, 2020

Delegates from 100 key organisations around Australia have been invited to meet at the Australian Climate Consensus Forum in Canberra on 12th March 2020.

The event was organised, in the wake of the devastating bushfires, to bring together leaders from a range of fields to build a consensus document on climate policy, outlining key actions that “governments must undertake immediately to ensure the health, well-being, and prosperity of our children.”

Bishop Philip Huggins, President of the National Council of Churches in Australia, was recently featured in a news article commenting about the conference which he hopes ”will contribute to a less polarised debate on climate change.”

“I see it as my responsibility to try and help the churches to contribute to this more intelligent and informed conversation that takes us beyond this ‘us’ and ‘them’ negative critiquing of people,” Huggins told BuzzFeed News. “To try and get to a place where we can have an intelligent conversation and make good choices.”

Huggins said this year is “crucial” for Australia to show leadership on climate action and “good neighbourliness” given “what is happening to nations in the Pacific”.

“It is the year where countries have to bring their nationally determined contribution to ensure the Paris agreement is substantial,” he said. “My focus is to try and help Australia make a really good contribution, not a minimal kind of contribution.”

In December Huggins attended the United Nations Climate Change conference in Madrid where he played a video of Australian kids singing while images of the environmental impacts of climate change were projected onto their faces.

Read the full article at https://www.buzzfeed.com/ginarushton/farmers-firefighters-doctors-lawyers-bishops-climate-change

For more information about the forum, please visit their website https://climateconsensus2020.org/