Slap Tomorrow stages a trio of forums about health in a changing climate

Slap Tomorrow staged a trio of forums in Shepparton yesterday (March 27) at which the focus was on Community Health in Tomorrow’s Climate.

The trio of seminars was less than successful (if you measure success in terms of numbers attending), but overwhelmingly productive in terms of the information provided by the speakers, contacts made and lessons learned.

The convenor of the Climate and Health Alliance, Fiona Armstrong, and RMIT PhD scholar, Alianne Rance, talked to about 20 people at Shepparton’s Rural Health Academic Centre.

Fiona and Alianne were joined by the joint Victorian State coordinators of the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, Philippa Wright and Cameron Wheatley, for a rather special forum at Shepparton’s McGuire College.

Each of the visitors talked about how they became a climate change advocate and then the 30 or so students broke into three groups in which they listened to and discussed what they thought about climate change and how it would impact on their lives.

Dr Mark Diesendorf.

At seven that evening the four speakers, along with the moderator for the night, Victoria’s Environmental and Sustainability Commissioner, Professor Kate Auty, took about 40 people on a journey that helped them understand how climate change and community health would interact.

Slap Tomorrow, a group that has arisen from the monthly meetings of Shepparton’s Beneath the Wisteria, is now quite formal recently becoming incorporated and affiliated for insurance purposes with the Dhurringile Land Care Group.

Slap Tomorrow has a further forum arranged for Friday, September 26, that will look primarily at energy and for that event has organized Dr Mark Diesendorf from the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of New South Wales as the keynote speaker.

Dr Diesendorf, who recently published “Sustainable Energy for Climate Change”,  interests include the interdisciplinary fields of sustainable energy, sustainable urban transport, theory of sustainability, ecological economics, and practical processes by which government, business and other organisations can achieve ecologically sustainable and socially just development.