Building Australia’s first solar thermal power plant

“They told us we wouldn’t get here, there were those who said we would only get here over their dead bodies. All the world today knows that we are here and we are standing before the forces of power in Alabama saying ‘We ain’t gonna let nobody turn us around!’” – Martin Luther King Jr, Selma to Montgomery, March 1965.

I will never know the names of the people who marched from Selma to Montgomery with Dr King and chances are you won’t either.  Nor are you likely to know the names of the people who walked with Gandhi on the Salt March, yet our history and imaginations are caught by the thought of hundreds of ordinary people going to (and walking for) extraordinary lengths to fight for justice.  No matter what came, nothing would move these people, and nobody could turn them around.

These walks have often been taken and led by people on the margins, whether on the wrong side of segregation or an invasion, people who were willing to do whatever it took to achieve freedom.

This year a small city in rural South Australia has captured the attention and imagination of the climate movement.  This place is called Port Augusta.  Home to two dirty coal fired power stations facing closure, you wouldn’t be wrong in saying that the town’s future is uncertain.  However, out of this uncertainty the Port Augusta community has found hope and started to organise and write its own future.
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Birthing – a global crisis

Birthing globally is in crisis, and regurgitated myths don’t help.  For example, under common misconceptions, birth is considered an event that is solely personal and decided on by each family; one that is relatively untouched by politics except for hospital and institutionalised policy.  I assure you, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

In the developing world, maternal and infant health is collapsing, despite some improvements arising from the ambitious and laudable United Nations Millennium Development Goal five.  Half a million women in the poor regions of the planet continue to die each year in childbirth or pregnancy, an inexcusable figure which highlights the yawning gap in maternal conditions that exists between – and within – countries.  One only needs to witness the poor health status and misapplied, often ill-planned health support for Australian Aboriginal and Torres-Strait Islanders to see that these inequalities lie right in front of us.
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