Extreme postcodes: 2000 to 7923

Postcodes 2000 to 7923 cover just about everywhere in Australia, as far as I can ascertain. And Australia's extreme in that it's about the highest emitter per capita of greenhouse gases of any significant country on the planet. And of late it's been extreme in its attempts to subvert any meaningful action to change this.

A few years ago we were at the forefront, with a price on carbon in place, and substantial emissions reductions going on. Didn't last long though, and now that the rest of the world is moving finally in that direction, Australia's government, totally in the pockets of the fossil fuel industries, has reversed it all. It's almost too bad to be true.

Anyway, this week there's a special UN climate summit happening in New York. About 120 world leaders are attending. Our 'leader', one Tony Abbott, will in fact be in New York this week, but it seems he's 'too busy' to get to the summit. He's helping to cook up another war in the Middle East, after all.

In the build up to this special meeting, there have been hundreds of mass participation events all around the world. I did my bit and turned up at the Sydney event, at Bicentennial Park in Glebe. We listened to impassioned speeches, and we formed ourselves into letter shaped groups, spelling out a slogan which was photographed from above by a flying drone. I couldn't make out the wording from ground level, but I half hoped I was helping to spell out the rather rude message to our Prime Minister that I saw on some of the T shirts around the place. Turned out it actually said "Beyond Coal + Gas".

Aerial photo stolen from Sydney Morning Herald, Essential Media, 350.org, GetUp, AYCC, or the flying drone. (Thanks very much, whoever the rightful owner is.)