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Guests in The Sustainable Hour on 3 April 2019 are:
Colin Mockett, who highlights the Australian situation of the last few days of budget and the 2019 election. The Victorian Government has a score card that shows they are falling behind in their emissions targets.
Miho, April, Fabrizzio, Linn, and Jessica, overseas students studying English in the IELTS Course at Deakin University in Geelong. Today they do Colin’s job and tell us how their country views sustainability and the environment. More info below.
Alicia Crawford Bell tells us about the Bob Brown convoy from Tasmania to the proposed Adani coal mine lease in Queensland. She is the Stop Adani Convoy Rally Organiser in Melbourne. The convoy will come to Melbourne on Thursday 18 April 2019. The journey continues with stops on the way to the Mackay camp. Returning via Canberra, this convoy will emphasis that the 2019 federal election is a climate change election. 400 people have signed up so far, and they are still looking for more to join.
Sustainable People: Our roving reporter Lene Foghsgaard considers poetry to reflect on climate change. The Melbourne-born artist and cartoonist Michael Leunig has written a poem called ‘Mother Earth’. The poem is read aloud during the segment, and three people are asked to react and give their reflections. Could be a way to talk about our climate crises? Photo on podcast-‘cover’: Cassandra, 41, who is mum to two young children and is very concerned about the environment and the future for her girls.
We play an excerpt of an impassioned speech, which American congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gave during a committee hearing in response to Republicans’ push-back on her climate change policy, the Green New Deal, and a short clip of Greta Thunberg‘s speech to the EU leaders.
Jackie tells about her first little sneaky civil disobedience Extinction Rebellion-inspired act at the supermarket, making a stance without being a loud protestor: taking the plastic wrapping off the vegetables she bought and leaving it in the bin at the supermarket. “If every person that came to the supermarket that day did the same thing, then those bins would be full, and the supermarket would look at those bins and think, “Oh, these people don’t want the plastic! Why are we using it then? Now we are left with getting rid of that plastic.”
And we play two songs: the new single ‘Sun & Moon ☉+◑’ from Singaporian singer iNCH, and one of our favourite classics in support of the #StopAdani campaign, New Zealander Ruth Mundy‘s ‘Love in the Time of Coral Reefs’. See their videos below.
“Climate change and environmental issues is a global problem. Everyone has the responsibility to do something.”
~ Jessica, Chinese student at Deakin University in Geelong
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DUELI Geelong – IELTS class D3 2019
Linn
My full name is Ladawan Tippayasena, Linn for short. I am from Thailand, I am a student studying the IELTS Course at Deakin University. In Thailand, I worked in the hospitality industry at a hotel for over 3 years. I have been living in Geelong over 4 months and I am interested in “Food Waste ” In Thailand preserving Food is common and people do not wasting any food compare of food in Australia. Thai people have a strong awareness of the importance of reducing food waste. We usually dry or preserve food, smoke and crystallize food items. I think in Australia people can change their food habits instead of throwing food away.
April
I come from Shang Hai, China. I have been to Australia for 5 months. Now, I am studying IELTS course in Deakin University and after this class I will continue my nursing course. I was a registered nurse in China, so I prefer to do some volunteer work.
In 2016, I went to Guizhou province, which located in the western part of China, to do some volunteer work due to the place was hit by floods. I helped local people to inject the influenza vaccine and gave them psychologist support such as sang songs with children and told them fable story. It was an experience that I will never forget.
When I was in primary school, I admired environmentalist, for example Miyazaki Hayao who is an animation director and makes many green animated films. So I made a decision in the future I need to do my part to protect the environment. However, in recent years, in China, the younger generations prefer driving cars to take the public transportation and it leads to the air pollution which is a serious issues in China. Hence, it is necessary for me to encourage youth to by bus and tell them the dangers of car exhaust.
Miho Noda
I’m from Japan. Here I’m studying in IELTS course for international students at Deakin.
I work as a teacher in junior high school in Japan, in which the students are aged from 13 to 15. Students learn mainly grammar in English classes in Japan, however to enhance communicating abilities for students, teachers are required to strengthen their communication skills, that means to brush up their speaking abilities. So, that’s one of the reasons that brought me here. I’m also interested in how the people in Australia live their everyday lives, the general way of thinking and its history and culture.
In relation to climate change, I’m interested in natural disasters. Because, in my country, there have been many disasters these years and a lot of people suffered damages and lives are lost. For example, typhoons proceeded with enormous scale and course and heavy rainfall disasters out of season.
Fabrizzio
I’m from Lima, Peru. I’ve been in Australia for 2 months and currently studying in Deakin University the IELTS course. In Peru after I finished secondary school, I completed my studies for becoming a pilot. My main interest are doing sports and learn different languages. About my interest in climate change, I’m really worried about endangered animals and how global warming is destroying their environment speeding up their extinction. Now in Peru there is a protest against mining, but it is dangerous to protest because of political reasons.
Jessica
I’m from China. I’m studying in DUELI for IELTS preparation. Before I came to Australia, I have worked as an Architect for 12 years. I went here aimed to improve my skills in Architecture and English from a further study at Deakin University.
I am interested in environmental sustainability and climate change, because I think they both are global issues and influent every person. If individuals can realize more serious situations we have faced on, the environment we living will be protected better.
“You are never too small to make a difference.”
~ Greta Thunberg, Swedish student who started a global school strike movement
GRETA THUNBERG
“We are school striking because we have done our homework. And some of us are here today. People always tell us that they are so hopeful. They are hopeful that the young people are going to save the world, but we are not. There is simply not enough time to wait for us to grow up and become the ones in charge. Because by the year 2020 we need to have bended the emissions curve steep downward.
That is next year. We know that most politicians don’t want to talk to us. Good, we don’t want to talk to them either. We want them to talk to the scientists instead. Listen to them, because we are just repeating what they are saying and have been saying for decades. We want you to follow the Paris agreement and the IPCC reports. We don’t have any other manifests or demands, you unite behind the science that is our demand. When many politicians talk about the school strike for the climate, they talk about almost anything except for the climate crisis.Many people are trying to make the school strikes a question of whether we are promoting truancy or whether we should go back to school or not. They make up all sorts of conspiracies and call us puppets who cannot think for ourselves. They are desperately trying to remove the focus from the climate crisis and change the subject. They don’t want to talk about it because they know they cannot win this fight. Because they know they haven’t done their homework, but we have. Once you have done your homework you realize that we need new politics, we need new economics where everything is based on a rapidly declining and extremely limited remaining carbon budget.
But that is not enough. We need a whole new way of thinking. The political system that you have created is all about competition. You cheat when you can, because all that matters is to win, to get power. That must come to an end, we must stop competing with each other, we need to cooperate and work together and to share the resources of the planet in a fair way. We need to start living within the planetary boundaries, focus on equity and take a few steps back for the sake of all living species. We need to protect the biosphere, the air, the oceans, the soil, the forests.
This may sound very naive, but if you have done your homework then you know that we don’t have any other choice. We need to focus every inch of our being on climate change, because if we fail to do so than all our achievements and progress have been for nothing and all that will remain of our political leaders’ legacy will be the greatest failure of human history. And they will be remembered as the greatest villains of all time, because they have chosen not to listen and not to act. But this does not have to be. There is still time. According to the IPCC report we are about 11 years away from being in a position where we set off an irreversible chain reaction beyond human control.”
Greta Thunberg, 16-year-old climate activist from Sweden
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ
“We’re going to pay for this whether we pass a Green New Deal or not. As towns and cities go underwater, as wildfires ravage our communities, we are going to pay.” (…) “I’m very sad to say that the government knew that climate change was real starting as far back as 1989. I’m going to turn 30 this year, and for the entire 30 years of my lifetime, we did not make substantial investments to prepare our entire country for what we knew was coming.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Ocasio-Cortez’s comments came after Republican congressman Sean Duffy of Wisconsin tried to force a homelessness bill to meet “green standards.” He called the Green New Deal “elitist,” saying it would raise the cost of housing and hurt low-income and homeless people. “The Green New Deal is one that if you are a rich liberal from maybe New York or California,” he said, “it sounds great because you can afford to retrofit your home or build a new home that has zero emissions, that is energy-efficient, affordable, and safe.”
“You want to tell people that their concern and their desire for clean air and clean water is elitist? Tell that to the kids in the South Bronx, which is suffering from the highest rates of childhood asthma in the country. Tell that to the families in Flint, whose kids have their blood ascending in lead levels. Their brains are damaged for the rest of their lives. Call them elitist. You’re telling them that those kids are trying to get on a plane to Davos? People are dying. They are dying. This is about American lives, and it should not be partisan. Science should not be partisan.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
iNCH
In Inch Chua’s own words, her new song ‘Sun and Moon’ has a deeper meaning than just the duality of two seemingly different natures:
“Sun & Moon ☉+◑ explores the Mandarin/Japanese word, 間/閒 (ma), which means ‘gap,’ ‘space,’ ‘pause’ or ‘the space between,’ ‘an emptiness full of possibilities, like a promise yet to be fulfilled,’ which pretty much describes the tension we live in today with climate change. There has got to be a middle ground between being paralysed with hopelessness and being passive observing with blind optimism,” she says.
“Early last year, I went on an expedition to Antarctica with a climate change organisation called 2041. Since my return, I have been hard at work on creating my next work based on my experience. This new single ‘Sun & Moon ☉+◑’ is the first of many things to come.”
“OK, kids, so you want to do something about climate change…”
12th April 201 – By Gareth Kane
Gareth Kane and his youngest son, Charlie, on climate march
“… how about starting with switching off the lights when you leave a room?”
Silence.
“You mean…” ventured the middle one.
“Yes, if you’re serious about climate change, the very least you can do is save some energy.”
“Oh.”
I know it’s a complete Dad thing to moan on about “the house being lit up like a Christmas tree”, but I’ve been trying to instil in my three that being aware of climate change is one thing, but nothing will change unless we change. I’m fed up with everybody blaming the Government or a cabal of oil barons or neoliberalism (whatever that is), all of us can change what we do, what we buy, how and where we travel, and how we vote.
Don’t feel that one person changing is insignificant – you are helping create the socio-economic demand which drives real change. And your behaviour influences others’ behaviour too – we’re herd animals and tend to conform to social norms.
Create the new normal. Act.
> Blogpost on www.terrainfirma.co.uk
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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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