Allied Health Action on Climate Change

VAHPA strongly encourages all Allied Health Professionals to join the next student-led Global #ClimateStrike on September 20 to demand that our politicians take serious action on climate change. 

Protesting for action on climate change is core business for VAHPA—climate change is a dire threat to the health of all human beings, especially those who have benefitted the least from the gains that many of us take for granted: gains that are undoubtedly and inextricably linked to the harms we are just starting to see the magnitude of.

Date: Friday, 20 September 2019
Time: 2-4pm
Location: Treasury Gardens, Spring Street, Melbourne 

Let us know if you can attend by filling out the form below:

[wpforms id=”12769″]

HealthStrike4Climate is working to build a network of health workers of all stripes to come together in an effort to compel our government to take serious and significant action on climate change now. VAHPA encourages all AHPs to take an active role in organising for 20 September and beyond. 

Climate Change is the great test of our generation and we must do all we can to overcome this disaster even in the face of the powerful adversaries: the greedy, the mega wealthy, the ignorant and the short-sighted.

See: https://www.healthstrike4climate.com.au/

See: https://www.facebook.com/HealthStrike4Climate/

Contact: k8lardner@gmail.com

Already, Australia is on the frontline of the climate crisis. Last summer, there were a series of mass fish-kills in the Murray Darling Basin due to a combination of excess upstream diversion of water for irrigation and, “exceptional climatic conditions, unparalleled in the observed climate record”, according to a governmental report.

Without serious action being taken to confront the climate crisis, these events will become increasingly frequent. In addition, bushfires will become more severe, drought will become more prolonged and tropical cyclones will become more intense.

Internationally, things are changing far faster than anticipated. Huge and unprecedented wildfires have become common place within the Arctic Circle. These fires are now emitting vast quantities of CO2. So great are these emissions that they eclipse in one-month, the quantity emitted by industrialised nations like Belgium in an entire year. Indeed, Iceland recently held a memorial for the demise of its first glacier and the Amazon Rainforest in South America is also literally burning.

Despite the overwhelming evidence of the climate crisis our government appears committed to opening the floodgates to new coal, oil and gas projects that will put us all at risk. One example is the disastrous Adani mine in Queensland. The profits for the corporations are more important to them than the environment or people’s lives and health.

By taking time off work and standing in solidarity with the school strikers, we’ll show our politicians that people everywhere don’t just want climate justice but are prepared to fight for it. We are not going away until our planet and out futures are saved.

We will stand proudly in solidarity with those who are already dying and suffering at the hands of the climate crisis. And we will stand up for those who will suffer terribly if we fail to act now: our pacific neighbours, first nations people, young people, rural communities and so many others. 

On March 15 2019, around 1.4 million students and their supporters went on strike around the world. 

Join us on 20 September to do it all again but bigger and more powerfully! Take the day off, bring your friends, your family, bring your camera, saturate social media, find someone doing an interview and have your say. It is time to get angry and time to get active.

Everyone is invited, everyone is needed. That means… YOU!!