#67: Becoming more than a newsletter
On what else we do & where we want to go
Mōrena, and happy Tuesday!
It’s been a big week at Climate Club! Here’s some of the things we’ve been up to in the past week:
Dhanya spoke on a panel for the University of Auckland’s SUSTAIN200 class, helping undergraduates see ways to shape the systems around us.
Emily gave an absolutely fire oral submission to the Environment Select Committee on banning industry allocations in the ETS, with the 3,400 signature-long petition you all signed.
Dhanya, Emily, Jenny, and some of our epic workshop facilitators ran six workshops on Civic Engagement 101 and Climate Action 101 at the Climate Action Conference over the weekend, teaching young people about the causes & consequences of climate change, and how they can make their voices heard before they get to voting age.
Snaps from the Climate Action Conference over the weekend!
Our weekly newsletters will always be free, because our core purpose is to make climate action easy and accessible for all. But we want to do more. Our goal is to get one million kiwis taking their first step in climate action - because we all need to be part of the climate movement. We’re so excited to communicate more about why systemic change is critical to the mission to a wider audience. So we’re turning on optional paid subscriptions.
We are currently mostly running on volunteer hours outside of full-time work. In the past one and a bit years that we’ve been going, we’ve become so much more embedded in the NZ climate & social justice movement, learning from and collaborating with older and wiser organisations that have been doing this mahi for decades on submission guides, events, and in-person activism.
So we’re going to try turning on Substack’s paid subscriptions feature, to see if it might be a way for Climate Club to achieve long-term sustainability and to reach more people. Depending on how things go, we’ll look into whether folks might be interested in paid content - drop us an email or a comment if you have any ideas of what sort of content you would pay for. And if you’re happy with these newsletters and just want to shout us a figurative coffee each month, we would be so grateful. If you click this green button and re-enter your email, you’ll see the new options!
A huge thanks to every single one of you reading this today 💖 We’ve been awed by the support we’ve received from readers and the climate community, and it energises us to keep doing this mahi every day.
What can we do today?
The most-clicked link from last week’s issue was the petition to cut climate pollution from big dairy.
🐝 If you have 5 minutes: Ceci n’est pas une pipe
Happy days! The campaign to decarbonise the state sector got all coal removed from hospitals in this year’s budget. This is a great start - now let’s take it further by decarbonising all our publicly owned buildings.
Action: Ask the government to move off fossil fuels for heatingLocal activists in East Africa have been fighting for years to halt a pipeline which would run through the basin of Africa’s largest lake. More than 40 million people depend on this lake for their food and livelihood, and this pipeline puts it all at risk. 10 Ugandan and Tanzanian organisations launched a complaint with the US Government against Marsh, the insurance provider funding this pipeline.
Action: Stand with communities in East Africa and call for Marsh to drop the pipeline
🐇 If you have 15 minutes: Save a tonne in section one
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade wants feedback on how we approach international climate change negotiations, specifically big global conferences like COPs. We know for a fact that other groups (Groundswell!) have been submitting on this a lot - in favour of less climate action. This looks long, but you don’t have to fill in all the sections! Answering even just one question will help - Section 1 is the most important.
Action: Have your say here using our handy submission guide.
💃🏽 If you have 30 minutes or more: Super sleuth to save our sectors
Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington, 11th May: Enjoying the half-price fares at the moment? The Free Fares team is speaking at Parliament about their petition to make half-price fares permanent.
Action: Join the team outside Parliament at 2:45pm this Thursday to show your supportTe Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington: Climate Clinic VUW is hosting Nicky Hager, a renowned investigative journalist who will take us through the inner workings of the Official Information Act, and how we can best use it to our advantage in achieving climate justice.
Action: Learn one of the most powerful tools for investigating public justice at this OIA workshopTāmaki/Auckland, 13th May: The National Dairy Awards are coming to Cordis Hotel in Tāmaki Makaurau (Auckland). Unfortunately, expanding our highest-emitting industry only takes us further from a sustainable future.
Action: Join groups from across the motu in protesting greenwashing this Saturday
Save the date!
May 26th: The Global Climate Strike is back! Save the date, tell your friends, tell your whanau, tell your coworkers.
In case you missed it
E-bikes are key to reducing car dependency (not to mention fun!) Providing financial incentives is a reasonably cheap way to support sustainable transport options for the majority of households. They’re just one away from 5000!
Action: Be the 5000th signature for a rebate on buying an e-bike
Wins!
The end of coal-powered boilers in schools and hospitals is a people-powered win - a campaign made up of more than 18,000 people in Aotearoa. Ngā mihi to all of you who signed petitions, sent postcards, wrote submissions and more to get to this result!
That’s all for today, folks 👋🏽 Thanks for taking action. Enjoy this epic song to the tune of the 90s “Make It Click” ads that a group of submitters performed as an oral submission for the ETS (at 39:15)!
See you next week,
Dhanya & the Climate Club team
Great work team!
Love your mahi!