Protectors of the land

Welcome listeners and readers. The Sustainable Hour team of Mik, Jackie, Colin & Tony welcome you to show no 317.

The first of our three guests on 3 June 2020 is Anika Molesworth who helps run her parents’ station near Broken Hill. Anika is a natural leader. She was one of the founding members of Farmers for Climate Action. As someone who lives on the front lines of climate change on very marginal farming, she speaks with great authority on what needs to happen to help us face up to the climate emergency we face. 

Following Anika, we have Adrian Drew. Our regular listeners may remember the glowing report Mik gave after he visited Adrian’s land last year. Today Adrian proudly tells us about how his land is looking at the moment – his hard work there is paying off. He also talks about another project he’s involved in together with The Australian Landscape Science Institute – a project to form a national body of regenerative farmers. We’ll follow this one with a great deal of interest.

Our third guest for today is Christian Slattery who is the Australian Conservation Foundation‘s senior Stop Adani campaigner. Christian gives the latest on what is happening at this very controversial mining site. Although work has started up there, he confidently outlines that it can still be stopped if every person who is concerned about it use the readily available campaign tools to contact businesses who are deciding whether to support this carbon bomb or not. These tools have been successful in making 67 companies realise that it wasn’t in their long term interests to get involved in such an unpopular project.

Last week in his Global Outlook, Colin Mockett talked about the recent decision by the European Commission to implement their Green New Deal as a major part of their post cover economic stimulus. This week Colin goes into more specific detail about the actual amount they are going to allocate and what it will go towards. It makes the Australian ‘Roadmap to Economic Recovery’ look very, very ordinary. Once again, he heaps praise on their chairperson Ursula von der Leyen as he outlines one of the three pillars on which they’ll be concentrating. The total they have allocated is 1.85 trillion euros – that’s approximately $4 trillion Australian dollars, as they strive to become the first climate-neutral continent.

We hope that you get as much out of listening to us today as we did in producing it.

Until next week, #BeTheDifference


“I am also very optimistic that we can transition to a renewable energy low carbon society because we’ve got the knowledge, we’ve got the skills, we’ve got the technology to do that – it’s a matter of the will power, the determination to change the way we currently live.”
~ Anika Molesworth, Farmers for Climate Action


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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 land. They nurtured it and thrived in often harsh conditions for millenia before they were invaded. Their land was then stolen from them – it wasn’t ceeded. It is becoming more and more obvious that, if we are to survive the climate emergency we are facing, we have much to learn from their land management practices.

Our battle for climate justice won’t be won until our First Nations brothers and sisters have their true justice. 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…

“We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children.”

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?

Anika Molesworth’s presentation in Shepparton via Zoom

→ ABC News – 26 May 2020:
Bushfire royal commission hears that Black Summer smoke killed nearly 450 people
“Smoke from the Black Summer bushfires killed nearly 450 people and affected 80 per cent of the population, health experts have told a royal commission hearing. The commission, which is looking into Australia’s preparedness for and responses to natural disasters, is hearing from health experts about the short and long-term impacts of bushfires.”

Training invitation: Build your Stop Adani leadership skills

Josh from Tipping Point wrote:

“We are at a crucial juncture in the fight against fossil fuels in this country.

While we have been in lockdown, the fossil fuel industry has been clamouring for ever more favours from our governments and Adani has continued work on Australia’s biggest ever coal mine.

As life regains some normality, now is the time to re-energise our local groups and re-engage our communities in the fight for climate justice.

That’s why we’re running the StopAdani Leadership Skill Up – four workshops by some of Australia’s most experienced organisers and campaigners that will help us build a bigger and more powerful movement that can put a stop to the fossil fuel madness.

As one of the most active people in the StopAdani campaign over the past two to three years, we’re inviting you to join the StopAdani Leadership SkillUp

The ‘leadership’ we’ll be learning about in this program isn’t your typical image of a powerful figurehead giving speeches and directing others. 

The focus will be on how we build a leaderful social movement where hundreds, even thousands, of people have the skills and knowledge to build strong local groups and run creative and effective campaigns against Adani and the wider coal industry. 

Starting Wednesday 10 June 2020, the four workshops will:

  • connect you with fellow StopAdani campaigners across the country
  • explore the local and global opportunities to stop the mine and shake-up the wider fossil fuel industry.
  • give you concrete examples and tools to help you grow the size of your local group (or start one) and to get more people taking on roles and responsibilities.

Whether you are already active in a local group or would like to start one in your community, this program is for you.

Each of the workshops will be taking place on Zoom.”

Click here for all the workshop details and to register to take part


Adrian Drew
Interview with Adrian Drew from TALS



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“Targeted low-carbon programs could (…) usher in a more environmentally sustainable ‘next normal’.”
~ McKinsey & Company, global consultancy firm

Analysts from Bank of America Merrill Lynch released a paper which discusses major themes that will dominate coming decades. They say the coronavirus pandemic will permanently disrupt the world’s economies and accelerate some macro trends that would have taken years to play out.

“Historic global crises like wars, revolutions, and pandemics often feel like they put history on fast-forward. Processes that normally take decades or longer to play out unfold in a couple of weeks.

Coronavirus is the political, economic, and psychological event of our lifetimes that will drive disruption and transformation for years to come. It will bring a radical transformation of the kind that occurs only once in a generation. The consequences could be far-reaching, ranging from social unrest to further instability in oil, new economic doctrines, and re-evaluation of the social contract in sovereign states.”

Read more

https://twitter.com/EUCouncil/status/1268199807065239552?s=20
https://twitter.com/Europarl_EN/status/1268173101768028162?s=20



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Click on image to read story in The New Daily



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“Coal is definitely on the downturn and this pandemic is going to accelerate that. Demand should come back to some degree next year. But there is a very strong argument that it is not going to just bounce back.”
~ Ted Nace, director of Global Energy Monitor

The balance has shifted for good

Coal industry will never recover after the coronavirus pandemic, says expert. The crisis has proved renewable energy is now a safer investment, and accelerated the shift.

Excerpt from article in The Guardian by Jonathan Watts and Gillian Ambrose on 17 May 2020:

The global coal industry will “never recover” from the Covid-19 pandemic, industry observers predict, because the crisis has proved renewable energy is cheaper for consumers and a safer bet for investors.

A long-term shift away from dirty fossil fuels has accelerated during the lockdown, bringing forward power plant closures in several countries and providing new evidence that humanity’s coal use may finally have peaked after more than 200 years.

That makes the worst-case climate scenarios less likely, because they are based on a continued expansion of coal for the rest of the century.

As demand for electricity has fallen, many utilities have cut back on coal first, because it is more expensive than gas, wind and solar. In the EU imports of coal for thermal power plants plunged by almost two-thirds in recent months to reach lows not seen in 30 years. The consequences have been felt around the world as well.

This week, a new report by the US Energy Information Administration projected the US would produce more electricity this year from renewables than from coal for the first time. Industry analysts predict coal’s share of US electricity generation could fall to just 10% in five years, down from 50% a decade ago. Despite Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to “dig coal”, there are now more job losses and closures in the industry than at any time since Eisenhower’s presidency 60 years ago. Among the latest has been Great River Energy’s plan to shut down a 1.1-gigawatt thermal plant in North Dakota and replace it with wind and gas.

Continue reading

→ IRENA – 2 June 2020:
How Falling Costs Make Renewables a Cost-effective Investment
“Renewable energy costs continue to fall and renewable power generation is increasingly becoming the default source of least cost new power generation. The mature renewable power generation technologies such as hydropower, bioenergy and geothermal are ongoingly competitive.”



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→ We Mean Business Coalition – 19 May 2020:
Over 150 global corporations urge world leaders for net-zero recovery from COVID-19
“Carlsberg Group, EDF, Electrolux, Enel, Iberdrola, Saint-Gobain, Schneider Electric among 155 companies urging governments to align socio-economic recovery with climate science.”



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“You’ve had a pretty tough time lately. Your numbers are diminishing, dropping from 2,095 globally in March down to 1879, and you’ve lost a total of $700 billion of your $8 trillion in the past year.

More importantly, you are no longer seen as maverick winners but are demonised for your planet-trashing lifestyles and rampant entitlement (sorry if this is the first you’re hearing of this). While some of you have business interests that are ‘good’, like Elon with your EVs, you are also punching holes in the ozone layer with your many blast offs, and Richard, your work with stem cell grown meat is admirable but not a big enough distraction from the greenhouse gases your planes spew (contributing to about 1 billion tonnes of aviation emissions annually), not to mention how many decades your randy sexist branding set the airline industry and women back generally. 

There’s even growing pressure on you with your untold wealth to save the planet – like you should finance the roll out of a 100% zero emissions grid for some fossil fuel laden country. Technically your combined wealth could probably afford such a grid rollout across 27 Earths, but you’d have to liquidate all your assets and so violate tons of laws with respect to your collective shareholders.”

→ Continue reading on www.voteplanet.net

  • “Two thirds of Australians want a wartime mobilisation response to climate change. 
  • New analysis commissioned by the International Monetary Fund has shown that global fossil fuel subsidies continue to grow, despite the growing urgency of the need to decarbonise the global economy.
  • In 2017, global fossil fuel subsidies grew to $5.2 trillion, representing 6.5 per cent of combined global GDP.
  • China leads all countries in the level of subsidies provided to fossil fuels, which the IMF report estimated to total $1.4 trillion in 2015. The United States followed with $649 billion in subsidies, Russia with $551 billion and the EU with $289 billion.
  • The IMF estimates that annual energy subsidies in Australia total $29 billion, representing 2.3 per cent of Australian GDP. On a per capita basis, Australian fossil fuel subsidies amount to $1,198 per person.
  • Australia ranked below most countries for mortality rate from pollution related illnesses, with the IMF attributing 2.6 deaths per 1,000 in Australia to local air pollution associated with fossil fuels.
  • This is less than half the rate observed in China (5.3 deaths per 1,000) and significantly below Russia (10.0 deaths per 1,000) and the Ukraine (16.0 deaths per 1,000), where little by way of regulation exists to protect people from air pollution.
  • The IMF found that the removal of fossil fuel subsidies would have significant economic benefits, including improved budget bottom-lines for governments. The net benefits of eliminating fossil fuel subsidies would amount to 1.7 per cent of global GDP.”
    ~ VotePlanet.net




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Events we have talked about in The Sustainable Hour

Events in Victoria

The following is a collation of Victorian climate change events, activities, seminars, exhibitions, meetings and protests. Most are free, many ask for RSVP (which lets the organising group know how many to expect), some ask for donations to cover expenses, and a few require registration and fees. This calendar is provided as a free service by volunteers of the Victorian Climate Action Network. Information is as accurate as possible, but changes may occur.

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Podcasts and posts on this website about climate emergency
Latest news on BBC about climate change


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