"It is socially unacceptable for human industry to emit large amounts of CO2".

Its been a month now since the Australian Climate Summit, here in Parramatta. Many of the presentations, slides, videos, and other materials are on the internet. So this article aims to present the links to as many of these sources as I can find, plus some added comments, and non-summit links that seem relevant. This page may expand as more becomes available.

Overall what struck personally at the ACS 2012, was the starkness and clarity of the presentations, and a breadth of topics and workshops.  Presenters and workshop takers were amongst the most well known and authorative in Australia, and they gave their best.  The plenary sessions and workshops were well attended, and the 200+ participents were positively eager, a wide mix of activists from local and regional areas, and interstate travellers.

The organising slogan of ACS 2012 was "Beyond the Carbon Price". 

Friday :  Starting the summit at the NSW Parliamentary House Theaterette.

The video segments, split into speaker and question segments are embedded here on the ACS website, so only direct youtube links are shown below.

Phil Bradley: Introduction

"The costs of inaction far exceed the cost of action"

John Kaye: Welcome

"Those who ignore the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them. Those who fail to listen to the warnings of climate scientists will not have an opportunity to repeat them."

John Hewson: Business and Climate Change

"Cannot back end that emissions reduction process. . . can't wait till 2049 and wake up and hope to cut emissions by 90% the following day."

"Asset Owner Disclosure Project - Comprehensive survey of top thousand funds, pension, superannuation, of their preparedness and investment for climate change"

Ged Kearney: President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions Jobs, workers and climate change

"Increasingly, workers and their families will be affected. Decent work is a big problem for the world."

"Respond to environment, and harness jobs creation potential of low carbon economy"

Jenny McAllister:  National President of the Australian Labor Party The political battle in the public sphere

"Environment protection should not come at the expense of the vulnerable."

"Battle needs the community movement, and to build a relationship between environment and labor movement"

Simon Butler: Green Left Weekly Failures of politics

"No serious political debate based on the science. No debate on plans to double coal exports. No debate on coal and shale gas. A fake debate between climate deniers and climate pretenders."

"Logic of endless economic growth is the logic of cancer. Economic suicide. Follow the fossil fuel money. Concentration of wealth leads to concentration of power, which sets up the next cycle."

"Simon Crean: Australia can look forward to becoming the Saudi Arabia of gas. I don't think Australia should look to Saudi Arabia for anything."

"Guy Pearce: New coal mines will cause seven times more pollution than the carbon tax is designed to save."

"Fossil fuels and carbon price, the elephant frightened of the mouse. Carbon price has billions of dollars of compensation to coal power stations."

"Carbon price does not reflect real ecological values. Direct measures are needed."

Christine Milne: Australian Greens Leader Economics is a dysfunctional tool

"When we talk about acknowledging traditional people, and talk about aspirations for reconciliation, if we don't act on climate change, then we might as well just talk hot air".

"Its a bleak situation we are now in.  Scientists are now fudging around the question as to whether we can constrain global warming to less than two degrees. Most scientists will tell that, off the record, they think we are already beyond it. The question is how far is the overshoot, and will it be possible to come back. That is what they say behind the scenes, but they don't say it up front, because they are afraid, afraid of alarming people, and afraid of being attacked by the vested interests that essentially own the media, and in this country thats the Murdoch Press, overwhelmingly in terms of the daily papers."

"This is an emergency. We have have no more time. We have to get on with it, we have to reduce emissions.  We have to save, we have stop further losses from deforestation, and from activities in the mining industry and fossil fuel sector."