Uncommon signs of leadership and common sense

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As it looks from our studio window at 94.7 The Pulse, this Sustainable Hour marks the beginning of a new era in Victoria where a fourth of all Australians from now on stand united with one common goal: a sustainable future.

An era where our leaders and lawmakers stand up to their responsibility and duty of care as true leaders and put the legislation and regulation in place so that in three decades from now, and probably much sooner, our society will be carbon-free, resilient, and everyone one of us will be doing our bit to tackle the challenges of climate change.

That journey starts today in The Sustainable Hour, where we listen to six such eminent leaders and a thought-leading author explain what it means – and while you listen online, if you haven’t already done it, sign up to the Victorian government’s new Take2 pledge.

Listen to The Sustainable Hour no. 139 on 94.7 The Pulse:

» To open or download this programme in mp3-format, right-click here (Mac: CTRL + click)


» Subscribe to ‘The Sustainable Hour’ podcast — via iTunes or via your own podcast/RSS software


Spreading the word: Take2

Interviews and speeches in this week’s Sustainable Hour – in order of appearance:

Daniel Andrews, Premier, Victorian State Government
Wade Noonan, Victorian Minister for Resources
Lily D’Ambrosio, Victorian Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change
David Spratt, author, co-author of ‘Climate Code Red’
Blair Palese, CEO, 350.org Australia
Stan Krpan, CEO, Sustainability Victoria
Adam Fennessy, Secretary, Vic Gov Environment, Land, Water and Planning Department


Take2pledge



2013: 8-year-old Alex at his life’s first rally, calling for a ban on fracking – and for some common sense. Three years later, we got the ban – yeah! – and the Premier explained that the government now is “making policy decisions that are grounded in common sense.”



Common sense in Victoria

We welcome the genuine leadership and common sense now shown by the Victorian Labor government as it has implemented a permanent ban on unconventional gas drilling – fracking – in the state, set a goal to become carbon-free in 2050, set a renewable energy target of 40 per cent of the electricity generation in 2025, and launched a brilliant ‘Take2’ initiative with the aim to bring people, businesses and organisations together around taking action on climate change and carbon pollution at all levels.

This is Geelong calling… And today we simply can’t get our arms down. In the three years we have been running The Sustainable Hour on 94.7 The Pulse, I don’t think we have ever before had so much good news to tell you about.

First of all: we have had visitors. On Friday, the Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and Resource Minister Wade Noonan came to our region – to Ravens Creek farm and café – to meet and congratulate the anti-fracking activists with their successful campaign for a permanent ban on fracking. The premier hailed Victoria’s new fracking ban “a win for people power”.

In itself the anti-fracking campaigners method and victory is worth noticing and possibly learning from in the climate action campaigning camp, because it illustrates that we, the ordinary people, actually are able to create real policy change at state level even when we are up against powerful economic interests.


Need for climate science education
But while the permanent fracking ban in Victoria is a wonderful “people win”, you know what? Within days of that announcement the Premier of South Australia invited the affected fossil fuel companies to apply to drill in South Australia instead. So now the anti-fracking battle starts there all over again.

Which is why we still need to look towards Canberra and what is going on at federal level in the troubled parliament there which is haunted by climate denial trolls and fossil fuel lobbyist. We need a holistic and overall approach to and understanding of the climate emergency. Which is the same as to say: We need education – and more education – about the climate science and why we urgently have to stop our shameless burning of fossil fuels polluting the air: Climate change is already killing hundred of thousands of people every year. More than 2°C degrees of warming will be catastrophic for millions of people and countless species. We must do everything we can to avoid it.

It is a mystery to me why public broadcasters – founded on the belief that they serve the nation, the people who are funding them – have not taken up this challenge of producing tv-programmes and series, as well as radio, which fills this educational gap.

When it comes to climate change, and how to tackle this slow-rising danger of unprecedented scale, we are all on a learning curve – our politicians and leaders included. In The Sustainable Hour today we talk with six leaders and a thought-leader who have understood this and who are working on creating a broader basis for climate action.


Climate action leadership in Victoria
At a time when senators in Canberra are questioning whether climate change is a Chinese conspiracy or a hoax, it is unusual, and encouraging, empowering, to hear a political leader talk about our long-term future, as Daniel Andrews did in his interview with The Sustainable Hour:

“If you look at Victoria when it is at its best, its when we are leading our nation and best we can, leading the world. So when it comes to real action on climate change we are leading our nation, very clearly. When it comes to banning unconventional gas and protecting our image, our clean, green brand that is so valuable to us, again, we are leading our nation. And of course, in relation to renewable energy with those very assertive targets to get to 40 per cent renewable energy production by 2025, that’s really important. And, you know, in so many different ways we are making policy decisions that are grounded in common sense but are leadership positions, and that is when Victoria is at its best.”

The Sustainable Hour: “Why hasn’t that common sense been more apparent up til now?”

“Well, I don’t want to comment on the people who have held this job before me, but we know what we stand for, and we listen to communities, and we are very keen to make sure that we make decisions today that we will look back on in 20 years, 30 years, maybe even longer, and say, Look, I think we got this right, and how much better are we because of the leadership that was shown, not just by us [the government], this has come from a really strong and broad community campaign that has been run for a long time. It is a very proud day today.”

Audio: Listen to this short interview with Premier Daniel Andrews:


» To open or download this one minute audio file, right-click here (On a Mac: CTRL + click)

» See more

Australian politics anno 2016: slashing support to renewables. What?!

At the moment we have a federal parliament where every industry and special interest has the best lobbyists money can buy – but nobody represents the future generations – or the victims of climate change around the world.

Daniel Andrews’ party-colleagues at national level just decided to make an agreement with the Turnbull Government to remove $500 million of funding to renewable energy – while both major parties continue to support a budget which subsidises the fossil fuel industry at the tune of more than eight billion dollars every year.

 CANBERRA: 

Renewables cut – again

In Canberra on 13 September 2016, Labor joined with Liberals to cut $500 million from renewable energy funding.

“Not fair as Labor claims, but shameful, shortsighted and stupid,” was David Spratt’s comment.

The Greens called Labor’s decision to back the government an “attack on renewable energy and vulnerable Australians.”

“It makes a mockery of the Turnbull government’s innovation agenda and a mockery of the Labor Party’s support for clean energy,” said the Greens leader, Richard di Natale.

#saveARENA

Time for a relevant blog-readers’ ad-break:

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IMF: Time for politicians to act

Fossil fuels subsidised by $10m a minute, says IMF. ‘Shocking’ revelation finds $5.3trillion subsidy estimate for 2015 is greater than the total health spending of all the world’s governments.




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Stop digging for coal and drilling for oil and gas

Politicians need to act. And wouldn’t life on this planet be a whole lot easier if only they would listen to the warnings from the climate scientists and act accordingly? The thing is: All new fossil fuel projects could be banned with a stroke of the pen, if only the political will was there.

In Queensland, politicians continue to encourage and support the construction of the world’s largest coal mine. They allow gas fracking companies to pump chemicals into the ground to drill for gas. And in the great Australian Bight, they’ve now allowed BP to drill for oil.

The only reason this can be happening in 2016, seven years after the big United Nations’ Climate Summit in Copenhagen, is human greed and selfishness.

Owners of the fossil fuel industry are protecting their economic interests and putting our entire civilisation at risk while a dysfunctional media sector hasn’t yet understood or deliberately ignores what really has been going on during these last three decades – either because they just didn’t think readers, listeners and viewers would want to know about this, or simply because they worked in media companies which are owned by fossil fuel barons.

Oil spills are risky, and so is burning nine billion barrels of oil and fuelling dangerous global warming. We encourage you to join The Wilderness Society’s and Greenpeace’s campaigns to stop BP drill for oil on our coast.

» The Wilderness Society: BP has no right to risk the Bight

“Locals on the coast of South Australia, where BP hopes to begin exploratory drilling, are nervous about the risks posed to the ocean and the threat to their livelihood.”

» The Guardian – 13 September 2016:
The risk is too high. Why locals don’t want BP in the Great Australian Bight


» ABC News – 7 August 2016:
Great Australian Bight oil drilling protesters gather at Victor Harbor


» BP: Exploring in the Great Australian Bight


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1988 headline: ‘Time for politicians to act’

“Time for politicians to act”, wrote New Scientist in their October 1988 issue – a time when climate change was called ‘climatic change’.

In other words: it has been ‘Time for politicians to act’ through three decades now – and we, the voters, allow them to continue procrastinating and finding excuses for continuing to support the fossil fuel industry and cut support to renewables energy projects and new innovation in the field.

It’s been crunch time for quite a while. Will we wake up in time?

“The time to ‘wait and see’ whether global warming poses a serious threat to life on Earth is over, says a report released this week by the Joint Energy Programme of the Royal Institute of International Affairs in Britain. The report calls for an international effort to control pollution from carbon dioxide.”
Quote from New Scientist, 1988


The 1988-report, ‘The Greenhouse Effect: Issues for policy makers’ stressed that “although the developed countries consume four-fifths of the fossil fuels burnt each year, less-developed contries will be most vulnerable to the ill effects of global warming, such as rising sea levels.”

» Source: www.books.google.com.au

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Silence on climate in American politics

Marc Hudson, a PhD Candidate from the Sustainable Consumption Institute at University of Manchester wrote in The Conversation on 20 October 2016: “Awareness of the threat of climate change goes back more than half a century, well before its sudden arrival on public policy agendas in 1988.”

Lyndon Johnson, who was president of the United States from 1963 to 1969, made the first presidential statement about climate change. The words were written for him by pioneering climate scientist Roger Revelle.

More than 50 years ago, the American president Lyndon B. Johnson’s Science Advisory Committee wrote – on page 127 in a report entitled ‘Restoring the Quality of Our Environment’:

“By the year 2000 the increase in atmospheric CO2 will be close to 25%. This may be sufficient to produce measurable and perhaps marked changes in climate, and will almost certainly cause significant changes in the temperature and other properties of the stratosphere. (…) The climatic changes that may be produced by the increased CO2 content could be deleterious from the point of view of human beings.”

The members of the science advisory committee suggested that the problem could be solved with geo-engineering – they called it “tools for modifying atmospheric circulation in ways which might counteract the effects of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide. A one percent change in the Earth’s reflectivity was estimated to cost about 500 million dollars a year.

» ‘Restoring the Quality of Our Environment – Report of The Environmental Pollution Panel’, President’s Science Advisory Committee, 1965.


The “White House effect”
A combination of growing scientific alarm about the growth of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and a long hot summer in 1988 made climate change an election issue. On the campaign trail, then-Vice President George H. W. Bush announced in his presidential compaign:

“Those who think we’re powerless to do anything about the “greenhouse effect” are forgetting about the “White House effect”. As President, I intend to do something about it… In my first year in office, I will convene a global conference on the environment at the White House… We will talk about global warming… And we will act.”

» The Conversation – 20 October 2016:
Why the silence on climate in the US presidential debates?


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Australian approach: pseudo climate policy

Climate change is a global problem, but here is a fact: Under no calculation does an emissions cut of 28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 – the maximum proposed by the Coalition government – measure up to Australia playing its part.

If the Australian lawmakers ever would get serious about cutting emissions, they would find emissions can be brought down much more rapidly and at lower cost than claimed by those who have their vested interests in the fossil fuel industry.

This country should at least adopt the targets which the Climate Change Authority recommended last year and which the Victorian state government has now adopted: net zero emissions by mid-century.

The current approach in the Australian parliament is a pseudo climate policy. It is more about planting trees than cutting the dirty, dangerous and destructive industrial carbon emissions.

Australia signed up to the Paris Agreement in December 2016 that committed to holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. The United States and China have ratified the agreement. Australia signed the Agreement in April and is committed to ratifying by the close of 2016. The International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook report indicated that if the world’s governments meet this commitment, then the global demand for coal and gas follows a very different path from that contemplated in the government’s ‘2015 Energy White Paper’ and in the planning of many Australian resource and energy companies.

If we are serious about supporting the 1.5°C aspirational limit from the Paris Agreement, we first need to have the fact recognised that globally we have no carbon budget left, and for Australia and Victoria, as high historical emitters, our emissions reductions need to be as fast as possible and at least 10 per cent per year for the next decade. To do so would require recognition of the need to face the climate emergency and move to emergency mode transformation.

If we want to get closer to what is currently happening in the US and the European Union, we have to cut of at least 60 per cent by 2030:

Emissions intensity for selected countries, historical and target, and percentage change from 1990 levels
Emissions intensity for selected countries, historical and target, and percentage change from 1990 levels

A 64 per cent reduction compared to 1990-level would not even bring Australia down to the level where the EU and the US will be in 2020.

» Source: www.climatechangeauthority.gov.au


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Presentations about the climate emergency

Author and climate expert David Spratt explained about why and emergency-scale action is necessary when he gave a 15-minute presentation at the Victorian Climate Action Network forum on Sunday 11 September 2016:

» See more presentations and blogposts at: www.climateemergencydeclaration.org

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Bipartisan leadership on climate action

As we know, reaching net zero carbon emissions is such a massive task that it will have be a non-partisan, collective effort. So the good news is not only that Australia now has yet another state government taking leadership position and taking steps to orchestrate this effort, we also saw recently a great example that the nation’s two largest parties are able to collaborate on these issues, at least at local level.
“The partisan divide on climate change is crumbling!”, wrote 350 Canberra with excitement after Canberra Liberals announced that they will match Labor and commit to
• 100% renewable energy by 2020
• 40% emissions reduction by 2020
• Zero emissions by 2050

Canberra Liberals are supporting the current world leading position of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT).

“Next stop: Zero emissions by 2030,” wrote 350.org Canberra.

In Victoria, a significant next step was the launch last week of the Victorian government’s Take2 campaign, where so far 160 businesses and organisations, many of which are large and mainstream, and more than 20 councils and 1,000 individuals have signed on to start the path towards a zero carbon Victoria in 2050.

With climate change action as well as with picking up bath towels in hotel rooms, human psychology works this way: we will primarily do it if we are made aware that others are doing it. This is why for Victoria’s 5.8 million people an initiative like ‘Take2’, gathering consensus and spreading a feeling of society-wide joint effort, has much more significance than it may seem to have. It is not just a lot of ‘greenwashing’, as it could quickly be critisised for.

But as all these events and new policies are rolling out, where is the media? Where are the front cover stories? Where is the following up? Why don’t we have ABC and SBS right up at the front of this, reporting and explaining about it? Dedicating sections and programmes to it.

Don’t the country’s two public broadcasters have a ‘duty of care’ to make sure that this kind of information is distributed to the Australians?

Where are the newspapers? The radio stations? – apart from The Sustainable Hour in Geelong. Why have so few media houses signed on to the government’s Take2 pledge? Where are our local radio stations and newpapers?

With each Australian being responsible for an average of 26 tonnes of emissions per person, we’ve got to get to work now.

Financier Jeremy Grantham said: “This is not only the crisis of your lives — it is also the crisis of our species’ existence. I implore you to be brave.”

We need new thinking processes, and we need to get them into mainstream politics. That also means: we need to see new faces on the stage who want to engage in the game – new political players, who have grown up with different values and an alternative mindset. It is not unlikely we will see this happen in the near future. And we can all help to make it happen.

Spreading the word: Take2



Letters to the editor

The local Geelong paper The Indy published the following letters to the editor:

Alan Barron’s response






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“I can’t tell people to choose different air to breathe, or to choose different weather.”
Dr Tim Senior – arguing for a policy response to the health impacts of climate change


» Crokey – 1 August 2016:
Climate and Health: the discussion we have to have

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Plain common sense: Replacing fossil fuels with clean energy

Clean energy is a good investment and has many benefits. First of all because it is affordable and… clean. That’s good for our economy and for our health.

The momentum behind the energy revolution is straightforward: cost. Renewable energy technologies are plummeting in price.

In America, renewable energy already employs more people – and more women – than coal, oil and gas combined. And research shows that a large-scale shift to renewable energy could increase U.S. employment by two million by 2050, even after accounting for job losses related to fossil fuels. That new economy won’t just be cleaner, it will also be more equitable.

Nexus Clean Energy News writes:

Renewable energy produced more bang for the buck last year as capacity surged as the cost of installations and financing dropped, according to a new study by the International Energy Agency. New renewable energy capacity grew by 40 percent in five years while investment slid 2 percent to $288 billion. Renewables comprised 70 percent of spending on generation in 2015, more than double the amount spent on fossil fuels like oil and coal. (Bloomberg)

Energy efficient homes are saving Californians so much money that by 2020 the state’s Energy Commission will require every new home to consume no more energy than it generates. The new “net zero energy” code will take advantage of advanced home-building materials and techniques that turn a house into “an airtight fortress” that drastically cuts heating and cooling bills. Last year developer KB Homes sold all 2,300 houses it built that have average monthly power bills of $119, compared with $252 for a standard-built home of similar size. Owners that add solar panels would have a bill of near zero.

The energy storage industry is booming worldwide. Germany is expecting a significant surge in demand to accommodate the huge amount of renewable energy coming on the grid, and a Bloomberg New Energy Finance study predicts the Asia Pacific region will host the majority of battery storage capacity by 2024. By then Japan, India and China will be the world’s top three energy storage leaders. (Bloomberg and Greentech Media)

The world’s first large-scale tidal energy plant is underway in Scotland. Tidal turbines are akin to wind turbines, except they are smaller and spin underwater with the tide. The project developers off the north coast of Scotland are installing four underwater turbines in the initial phase, but will eventually have 269 turbines, enough electricity to power 175,000 homes. (The Guardian)



» Climate Change News – 14 September 2016:
Renewables cheaper than half-idle fossil fuel plants – analysis
As coal and gas-fired power stations run less, they are becoming less competitive on cost, finds Carbon Tracker



 LISTENER SERVICE: 

Content of this hour

Links, excerpts and more information about what we talked about in this Sustainable Hour


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 SPEECH: 

Climate change minister Lily D’Ambrosio

This speech by Lily D’Ambrosio, Victorian Minister for Energy, Environment and Climate Change, was held on 12 September 2016 at ACMI in Melbourne at the premiere of ‘Demain / Tomorrow’.

The event was organised by the European Union Centre on Shared Complex Challenges.



» Yes2Renewables – 14 September 2016:
Andrews govt kicks off energy reforms to help communities smash Victoria’s Renewable Energy Targets



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“The climate change emergency we now face requires urgent action, leadership and planning if we are to avert the worst impacts. To do that we need to stop funding coal, oil and gas now and rapidly speed up our move to clean energy.”
~ Blair Palese, CEO, 350.org.au



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 INTERVIEW AUDIO CLIP: 

Stan Krpan

Stan Krpan is CEO for the Victorian Government’s Sustainability Victoria



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 INTERVIEW AUDIO CLIP: 

Adam Fennessy

Adam Fennessy is Secretary for the Victorian Government’s Environment, Land, Water and Planning Department



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Photos from the Premier’s and Resource Minister’s visit at Ravens Creek farm near Geelong



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 SONG: 

Fredrika Stahl: ‘Make a Change’

Fredrika Stahl is a Swedish singer and songwriter signed to Sony Music in France.



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 GEELONG | FILM SCREENING: 

‘Inhabit – a Permaculture Perspective’

Permaculture film screened in Geelong on Thursday 15 September at 5:30pm for 6:00pm screening

“Come and meet other friendly like-minded people and see a great film. There’ll be time to mingle after; then it’s likely that some will go over the road for dinner – all are welcome !”

“Inhabit is a feature length documentary introducing permaculture: a design method that offers an ecological lens for solving issues related to agriculture, economics, governance, and on.

The film presents a vast array of projects, concepts, and people, and it translates the diversity of permaculture into something that can be understood by an equally diverse audience. For those familiar, it will be a call to action and a glimpse into what’s possible – what kind of projects and solutions are already underway.

For those unfamiliar, it will be an introduction to a new way of being and a new way of relating to the Earth. For everyone, it will be a reminder that humans are capable of being planetary healing forces.”

At Beav’s Bar, Free admission – drinks at bar prices



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 ADDITIONAL: 

Calendar news

Events coming up


16 September is International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer: This event commemorates the date of the signing of the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer in 1987.

19 September is World Parks Day: Take a walk in your local park and truly appreciate its magnificence.

24 September at 5pm at Mt Moriac Pub: Celebrating the Fracking Ban

27 September at 12:30-1:30: Can we prevent bushfires? Issues and challenges
University of Melbourne, Climate Conversations – more info below

7-8 October is National Divestment Day
Time to move your accounts over to a bank which doesn’t invest in destructive energy generation

16 October is Sustainable House Day in Geelong Region
The national Sustainable House Day was on 11 September with 150 homes across the country opening up their doors to visitors – but not in Geelong region where the day will be held on Sunday 16 October.



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Can we prevent bushfires? Issues and challenges

A Climate Conversations seminar

Did you know that 85% of all bushfires are ignited by a human source? MSSI’s Janet Stanley, Paul Read and Alan March will suggests a new model of bushfire prevention as well as a discussion about how we can minimize the impact of those fires that occur.

There is a trend for Australia’s 50,000 to 60,000 annual bushfires to increase in size, severity and intensity. The Climate Institute believes that with the current progress of climate change, Victoria could, on average, have a ‘Black Saturday’ level event every two or three years. Yet, as with many of our climate change responses, the response to bushfire is still operating in the old world paradigm. This is in terms of the scale of response, the ability to move from silos to an integrated response, the inclusiveness of the response, and the failure to utilize many possible preventative measures. This seminar suggests a new model of bushfire prevention as well as a discussion about how we can minimize the impact of those fires that occur.

Speakers: A/Prof Janet Stanley, A/Prof Alan March and Dr Paul Read.
Organised by: Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute

When: 12:30-1:30 Tuesday 27 September.
Where: Singapore Theatre, Basement, Melbourne School of Design, University of Melbourne.
RSVP: cdenby@unimelb.edu.au




 ADDITIONAL: 

In other news

From our notes of the week: news stories and coming events we think you should also know about


 CALL FOR SUPPORT: 

350.org: ‘Cut through AGL’s greenwash

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It’s three weeks to the annual general meeting of Australia’s biggest climate polluter – AGL – and 350.org Australia is asking for your help to cut through their greenwash. For too long AGL has been talking the talk on climate change, but failing to walk the walk to avoid runaway climate impacts.

350.org Australia writes:
“We’re turning up the heat over the next three weeks with creative community actions right around the country to show that AGL has to get out of fossil fuels and move to clean energy in years not decades. Can you chip in today to cut through the spin by getting four mobile billboards out in the streets ahead of AGL’s AGM?”




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 COMPETITION: 

Sing to inspire a positive future

2016 GLObalvision Song Contest open

All members of the community, young and old, are being called upon to inspire change and celebrate their environmental vision for the future through song, with the 2016 GLObalvision Song Contest.
Supported by globally renowned environmentalists David Suzuki and Blair Palese the Contest, now in its second year, aims to engage, inspire and motivate people through song to live more sustainably.

“So much of the progress we have made to protect our fragile environment has happened only because people stepped up and demanded change and action,” explained Ms Palese, Co-Founder and CEO 350 Australia.
“We need everyone involved and to be empowered to bring about change if we are to have an environment that supports us all!”

All songs are welcome: in any language, originals or covers; songs about love; songs about the mountains, valleys and deserts; the birds, bees and fish; the rivers, lakes, oceans; songs about community and family; songs that inspire others to join in and live ASAP (As Sustainably As Possible).

“By celebrating the steps we’re taking, however small, to live more lightly on the planet we can inspire and encourage others to join us and do the same.” explains GLObalvision Song Contest founder Shirley ‘Baglady’ Lewis, veteran environmental activist, broadcaster, journalist and soon-to-be granny.

The winner of the 2016 GLObalvision Song Contest will have the opportunity to record their song professionally at Delta King Studios in Sydney whilst gaining recognition throughout the environmental and music community for their inspiration, leadership and unique contribution to living ASAP.

» Entry is open online at www.pledgeasap.com/global-vision-song-contest until midnight on the 30 September 2016.



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 COMPETITION: 

Capture the Sun 2030 – photography competition

Solar Citizens writes: “Thousands of entries are already streaming into the new photography competition ‘Capture the Sun 2030’. From Bondi to Cottesloe, from Shipsterns to Mindil Beach, this celebration of the sun aims to shine a light on the power of our closest star and build momentum for solar energy in Australia.

We’re inviting people all across Australia to snap the sun as it rises or sets and post their best shots on Instagram using the hashtag #capturethesun2030. With just one week to go, now is the time to get your entries in.”

The competition ends on Thursday 22 September 2016 and the winner will ride away on a Fonzarelli electric scooter powered by 100% renewable electricity from Diamond Energy.

» Read more on www.capturethesun2030.com



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Bio-intensive urban farming in Geelong

Goshen Watts‎ recently posted an update and this video of the start of his new permaculture bio-intensive market garden. He does some site analysis, and explains a few challenges and opportunities. The video is a bit rough, but shows the permaculture potential and challenges of this urban site. It was published on youtube.com on 13 September 2016.

» www.wattspermaculture.com.au/biointensive-urban-farm-setup



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The sustainable home

Ikea is making a positive carbon-slashing difference with its new Sustainability Studio and a report with tips and statistics

Most Australians want to live a more sustainable lifestyle but don’t know where to start, according to a new report. The Ikea Australia People and Planet Positive Report found 63% of Australians want to be more sustainable at home (…ahem, what are the other 37% thinking?). But half of them don’t know where to start and 39% find the whole idea completely overwhelming.

To help, the report highlights some simple measures that save money, as well as energy and water. Water saving taps can save the equivalent of 260 baths a year, and one LED lightbulb can outlast around 22 traditional lightbulbs. LED lights use 85% less energy than incandescent bulbs and last 20 times longer. 

Typically a kitchen tap may use between 15 litres and 18 litres per minute but water saving taps use just 3.5 litres a minute a 77% decrease in water use.

To launch the report, Ikea created a uniquely-designed space called the Ikea Sustainability Studio, located at Ambush Gallery in Central Park, Sydney. The studio was entirely designed to be fully sustainable and provided inspiration for simple changes that can be made in the home.

» Download the report

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» See also: What we all can do


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Take2 is Victoria’s collective pledge initiative to help keep the global temperature rise to under 2°C degrees. It enables businesses, local government, community and educational organisations and individuals to take action on climate change.

» Be a part of Take2 and make your pledge








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icon_small-arrow_RIGHT Podcasts and posts about climate change

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Acknowledgement

We at The Sustainable Hour would like to pay our respect to the traditional custodians of the land on which we are broadcasting, the Wathaurong People, and pay our respect to their elders, past, present and future.

The traditional owners lived in harmony with the environment and with the climate for hundreds of generations. It is not clear – yet – that as European settlers we have demonstrated that we can live in harmony for hundreds of generations, but it is clear that we can learn from the indigenous, traditional owners of this land.

When we talk about the future, it means extending our respect to those children not yet born, the generations of the future – remembering the old saying that…



The decisions currently being made around Australia to ignore climate change are being made by those who won’t be around by the time the worst effects hit home. How utterly disgusting, disrespectful and unfair is that?



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www.947thepulse.com – click on ‘Listen Live’

Podcast archive

Hours and hours of sustainable podcasts

Listen to all of The Sustainable Hour radio shows in full length and in selected excerpts:

» Archive on climatesafety.info

» Archive on cpod.org

» Archive on itunes.apple.com – iPhone friendly



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“Participation – that’s what’s gonna save the human race.”
Pete Seeger, American singer




One comment

  1. Thank you for your leadership, enthusiasm and optimism, which we must continue to embrace for our children and grandchildren, in order for this amazing world to survive. Why bother being a skeptic? Don’t we all want a cleaner world and a stable climate?

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