At tonight's meeting Anna Keenan came to speak to us. Anna is a Community Outreach Officer with the Australian Conservation Foundation and an impressive and passionate speaker.
In November 2006 Anna Keenan was the youngest (aged 21) of 85 Australians to be personally trained by Al Gore as part of 'The Climate Project – Australia' to present an Australian version of his now-famous slideshow 'An Inconvenient Truth'.
She is currently the Chair of Queensland's Youth Environment Council and International Coordinator with the Australian Youth Climate Coalition. Anna actually attended the UN negotiations in Bali for the next phase of the international climate protocols and watched as Kevin Rudd ratified the Kyoto Protocol. Out of her message, one of hte most memorable stories for me was an anecdote about Bali when the US was blocking proceedings. The representative for PNG, Kevin Conrad, spoke:
"And there's an old saying 'if you're not ready than get out of the way'. And I would ask the United States, we ask for your leadership, we seek your leadership, but if for some reason you're not ready to lead, leave it to the rest of us: please get out of the way." [Shorter YouTube video][Longer YouTube video]
Personally I think there's a message in that for all of us. :)
The take home message that I, well, took home, was that while big, bad things will happen with climate change, we're not yet at the point of no return. We're all in this together and we can all make a change together.
Hopefully we can have Anna come back later during the Rotaract year, possibly to talk about what we can do on an individual and local level if that interests club members. She also explained that Rotaract SWB can become a member of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition so we can also look further into that if members wish.
On a related environmental note, the Community Service committee is trying to organise a guest speaker from the Oxley Creek Catchment Association some time later this year.
Finally, it was nice to see some new faces (and returning new faces) at the meeting, we hope you enjoyed yourself and that we'll see you again soon. :)
06 August 2008
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