Senator Christine Milne, the deputy leader and climate change spokesperson for the Australian Greens, gave a really inspiring speech as the televised National Press Club address on the ABC today. I'm not sure whether any of the video will turn up on Youtube or elsewhere. If you get the chance, set the recorder for ABC1 from 3.25am to 4.25am tonight (that's Thursday morning June 18) to catch the repeat.

Senator Milne's prepared text is as follows. Source and accompanying press release at her website, part of the greensmps.org.au empire:

The signs were ominous. Firstly, the news that Penny Wong was not going to take Australia's emissions targets to COP 14 in Poznan last week, but would announce them on December 15, after the UN meeting was over.

Secondly, on Friday, the very day that COP 14 was wrapping up in Poland, Kevin Rudd announced, as part of a $4.7 billion "nation building package", an investment of $1.2 billion in the Australian Rail Track Corporation to "more than double the amount of coal being transported to export markets".

I'm normally reticent about United Nations agencies picking up Nobel Peace Prizes. Having said that, I thought the award this year jointly to the IPCC and to Al Gore was spot on - or, more to the point, given for the right reasons.

As Live Earth fades away into oblivion, here are the two remaining Greenpeace ten-second PSA's featuring the claymation climate change epiphanies of Archimedes and Sir Isaac Newton (following on from the Einstein video that I featured yesterday):