Greg (Queanbeyan, Support Candidate)
Global warming is the great existential crisis of our time and I would like to see Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council (QPRC) do more to address it. I have been a keen bushwalker for decades and my interest in climate change is connected to my appreciation of the great outdoors: if we don’t reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, our natural wonders will disappear.
Bushwalking led me to The Greens and to environmental work and activism in general. I worked for the Tasmanian Wilderness Society on its successful campaign to save the Franklin River in the early 1980s and took part in its subsequent campaign to save Tasmania’s majestic forests including being arrested on a forest blockade in 1987.
After moving to Queanbeyan in 2007, I completed a PhD at the ANU on renewable energy support systems. I then worked for eight years on the ACT Government’s nation-leading 100%-by-2020 renewable energy program. With its community and council operations climate change action plans, QPRC has made a good start on tackling local greenhouse gas emissions but there is much more that could be done and I’d like to see the council make faster progress on this most crucial of issues.