About the author: Mark Pershin & Kari McGregor

About Mark Pershin &

Mark Pershin originally came from the dark side, completing a Bachelor of Business majoring in marketing at Monash Uni and has since completed a Graduate Diploma of Environment at Melbourne Uni. His interest in addressing climate change started with some volunteering at Beyond Zero Emissions and culminated in coordinating divestment campaigns and city groups for 350.org in Melbourne and Amsterdam. Mark’s professional skills and experience lie in digital media and analytics. Mark founded Less Meat Less Heat in March, 2015. Mark is based in Fitzroy, loves all aspects of music, does not wear skinny jeans and follows a climatarian diet.
A free-spirited downshifter, Kari McGregor is a freelance journalist and editor of SHIFT magazine, a volunteer collective of passionate sustainability activists and advocates. Harbouring nomadic tendencies, she has sampled life in the UK, Spain and Thailand before settling in Australia and making tropical Far North Queensland her home. A former teacher, Kari now whiles away her days studying full-time, working as little as possible for dollars, and contributing whatever energy she has left over to the economic degrowth movement. She blogs at www.deepershadeofgreen.net, freelancing a critical spin on our planetary predicament.

Website: http://www.lessmeatlessheat.org

Combat Climate Change? There’s an App for That.

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Fed up of folks Instagramming their dinners?

A new app from Melbourne-based climate action group Less Meat Less Heat will have you craning your neck to see what’s on other people’s plates.

Used to having control at the swipe of a touchscreen, millenials are turning to their devices for everything from financial management to weight loss to language learning. Now there’s an app for monitoring the carbon footprint of our food choices.

The aptly named Climatarian Challenge app is scheduled for launch on 1st July, and will be free to download, thanks to a bold crowdfunding campaign to cover the cost of production.

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The COP-out we cannot afford

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One week on from COP21, Mark Pershin and Kari McGregor weigh in on the false promises of a flaccid agreement that leaves behind the innocent and most vulnerable.

Paris was a world-first: all of the major emitters huddled around the negotiating table, ready to write the script for a new era of climate action. No absences. No excuses.

It took 21 years of bureaucratic wrangling to transcend tactical boycotts and get everyone to the starting blocks. If nothing else, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) twenty-first conference of parties (COP21) can take credit for a full house.

Talks have often been fraught with tension: negotiations at COP6 at The Hague in 2000 broke down and talks were rescheduled for 2001 in Bonn; COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009 collapsed in disarray without agreement.

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