Rising Tide Australia

This is a dynamic and growing list of the actions you can take to stop climate chaos. It was inspired by Rising Tide UK's 50 things you can do list. If you have any suggested additions, leave a comment at the bottom of this page. If it's genuine, we'll probably add it.

Let it never be said that "there's nothing I can do to fight climate change!"

1. Write letters to politicians, the media, ring up radio stations , write messages on the pavement, demand real action agains t fossil fuels - the cause of climate change. Don't beleive anyone who says they can burn carbon without driving climate chaos.

2. Organise protests against fossil fuel companies, aluminium companies, air-lines, governments, andany other organisation blocking climate solutions.

3. Find out the sea-level rise or flood level predictions or your area and paint/chalk this level in blue around town. Accompany with posters explaining the line and forecasted impacts of extreme weather.

4. Take action to reduce your own energy consumption - set yourself a target. Tell everyone about it- your family, friends, neighbours and get their support (like giving up smoking!)

5. Join or start a campaign agains t a climate-changing development in your area, such as a coal mine, road, desalination plant, power plant, etc... Join the campaign against Newcas coal export expansion.

6. Fix up some bikes and set up a local free bike scheme.

7. Target traffic jams with leaflets about greenhouse pollution and climate change.

8. Buy 100% renewable energy, or better yet, make your own.

9. Declare a car share or green transport week, support with posters , leaflets , actions.

10. Set up an info s tall in a busy place.

11. Produce posters, distribute them, put them up all over town.

12. Talk with your friends and neighbours about what you could do collectively, such as car share, setting
personal targets , fighting the coal companies , organising school transport etc.

13. Grow at leas t some of your own food. Reclaim some space to do this with others - set up a community garden.

14. Declare a car-free zone in your town and put up car-free road signs

15. Blockade or occupy a power station. Block plans for any new power stations.

16. "Fine" bus ines s people and politicians for crimes against the planet.

17. Find out about local development plans, put in your own ideas , challenge anything that will drive climate change in any way.

18. Visit electricity/electrical goods retailers, note how much effort they put put energy efficiency. Set up an info stall outside (or ins ide!) for the day.

19. Produce a local-produce buying guide for your area. Local food has much less greenhouse impact.

20. Energy consumption reduction - raise the issue in your work-place or school.

21. Don't fly in planes!

22. Hassle everyone you know to change their lightbulbs, and turn off appliances that arn't in use.

23. Subvertise - distort the messages on adverts for climate criminals, such as coal and energy companies, oil companies , car and plane ads .

24. React to events - when there is a record drought unseasonable weather, or unexpected storm, get out on the streets protes ting and making the links for people. Prepare a local phone tree to pull people together at short notice to do this.

25. Guerilla Energy Saving! Turn off lights, turn down heating, change heating timers to come on less , swap old lightbulbs for energy efficient ones.

26. Stop eating meat, or go one better and stop eating dairy too. As well as requiring a bloody lot of land to be cleared (meaning greenhouse emissions and direct biodiversity loss), meat and dairy livestock is a major global cause of greenhouse emissions (essentially, from farting cows). It is right up there with fossil fuel consumption.

27. Put flyers about climate change under windsreen wipers, encouraging them to ride bikes instead. You can make fish-shaped flyers and talk about rising sea levels.

28. Prepare materials for teachers , and do talks and activities in schools. Start up a parents group
agains't climate change through your kid's school.

29. Throw a pie at Nikki Williams - chief spin doctor at the NSW Minerals Council. She's working tirelessly to fool politicians and people into believing that coal corporations are solving climate change, not causing it. Show her you're not fooled.

30. Start a renewable energy co-op.

31. Shut down petrol stations and offer advice on how to kick the habit - offer alternatives to oil
addiction, such as free bikes.

32. Put up displays at events, public places (the library, public noticeboards).

33. Make wasting energy a social embarrassment! Harass shops that leave lights on overnight. If you're really naughty, break in and turn them off.

34.Boycott aluminium products.

35. Agit-crop! Planting or seed sowing to spell out a message, in council flowerbeds, railway embankments, open spaces. Or mow a message into a public lawn!

36. Refuse to buy imported products. The further your food and other products travel - the more greenhouse emissions.

37. Demand that the Australian Government accept climate refugees - people are already fleeing some low-lying counties in the Pacific, due to ris ing sea levels.

38. Create images of what future climate chaos could look like in your area and paste them
up.

39. Make art that informs people about climate chaos and empowers them to take action against it.

40. Start a new climate action group. You'd be surprised who will listen to you when you've got a logo, a website, and can pull a few people to a protest.

41. Put up Climate Chaos Ahead signs on busy roads, or roads near power stations/coal mines/coal loaders etc.

42. Visit your local members. Tell them that you simply won't accept any more coal developments.

43. Hang banners from bridges over highways and busy roads during rush hours - thousands will see them (stay with the banner or the police will remove it and not give it back!)

44. Think and act radically. Climate change is a profound problem, and it is likely to require some profound social change if life on earth is goiong to survive as we know it. The current political and economic orthodoxy of "growth growth growth" cannot be sustained on a finite planet with finite resources.

45. Reclaim the streets for people, not cars!

46. Link up with other groups /campaigns with linked concerns - such as farmer groups, local refugee/asylum seekers support groups. Plan joint work the issues.

47. Campaign for not-for-profit public transport.

48. Set up letter-writing stalls, and collect letters to the government demanding an end to fossil fuels.

49. Paint bike lanes on the road!

50. Start a campaign against all air flights where people can take a train. Or just all air flights.

51. Get together with other people, work out what you want to achieve, plan your actions /campaign
and DO IT!

52. Take shorter showers. Skip a few.

53. Stop buying take-away food and drink. Take sandwiches wrapped in lunch wrap and carried in a recycled bag. All that packaging takes energy to produce.

54. Drink tap water. Bottled water is stolen from mountain springs, and trucked to you with deisel.

55. Make your Climate Chaos banners and signs from recycled materials.

56. Collect all your packaging for a week or two, get friends to do the same, take it to a central place and make a big heap. Take pictures.You'll be amazed at the amount. Invite the newspaper to the show. Then pick it all up and take it home to the bin. Then stop buying junk.

57. Make your Christmas cards out of recycled paper and cardboard. It's often highest quality!

58. Turn down the temperature of your hot water system. Have your electricity company put you on off-peak hot water. Turn it off when you go away. Better yet, put in a solar hot water system.

60. Wear warm clothes in the winter and discourage the overheating of public place e.g. banks, shops.

61. Talk to old people. Some of them lived through hard times and are natural conservers. Did your granny save pieces of soap and stick them together?

62. Fine yourself when you are wasteful e.g. when you're too lazy to do that shot walk or catch a bus. Or when you buy takeaways with lots of packaging.

63. Get together with friends and take metal objcts to the recyclers.

64. Disable a four-wheel-drive. (Letting the tyres down is one way - and doesn't leave you open to "malicious damage" charges, because it doesn't damage the vehicle).