Climate candidate sends out SOS

MICHAEL KIELY
CANDIDATE PARKES
CLIMATE CHANGE COALITION

Michael Kiely, the Climate Change Coalition candidate for the seat of Parkes in next Saturday’s election, is sending up a flare for help. He has only this week to campaign and needs to recruit polling place helpers.

“I’ve been too busy fighting Climate Change to run a conventional campaign,” says Michael Kiely, organiser of the Carbon Farming Expo & Conference last Friday and Saturday in Mudgee. It attracted close to 400 delegates from every state of Australia and New Zealand. Scientists and ‘carbon farmers’ told the audience that soil can play a dramatic part in the battle to stop rising world temperatures.

“There are 5.5 billion hectares of soil controlled by farmers around the globe. If they were able to sequester an average of one tonne of carbon per hectare, they could soak up the entire annual emissions of the world,” says Mr Kiely.

The Kiely Family have been campaigning for more than 2 years to have farmers rewarded for growing soil carbon. Michael is standing for the Climate Change Coalition to put the issue at the top of the agenda.

“I couldn’t have run the world’s first carbon farming conference to bring the top scientists and farmers together while pushing a political barrow. It would have risked disrupting the conference,” says Mr Kiely.

“As it was, we invited my chief opponent Mark Coulton of the Nationals to address the conference to prove we weren’t a political front. And I did not announce my candidature until the end of the conference. This puts me and the Climate Change Coalition party at a disadvantage. But the conference was a great success.””

The Conference heard of three programs for trading soil carbon credits and two programs for selling “carboncredited” wool and other produce.

The delegates voted unanimously for the Government to provide $10 million for more research in soil carbon and for every farmer to have their soil carbon tests done for free to encourage them to join the ‘carbon farming’ movement and start absorbing more CO2.

The Climate Change Coalition was founded by Patrice Newell who is a candidate for the Senate in NSW.

For more information, call 02 6374 0329

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