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The Sustainable Hour no. 468 | Podcast notes
How science can help create that “Wow!-We-are-all-coming-together!” moment.
Our guest in The Sustainable Hour no. 468 on 19 July 2023 is Fiona Sutton Wilson, CEO of the Australian arm of Earthwatch Institute, a global environmental NGO. Operating for more than 40 years in Australia, and creating 38 scientific expeditions so far, Earthwatch tackles the major environmental issues facing the planet – climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution – through citizen science.
Earthwatch Institute Australia is focused on empowering people with the knowledge and inspiration we all need to save the natural world. Citizen science is central to their approach, where people from all walks of life work alongside scientists to gather critical data to generate action to protect our wildlife and habitats, as well as motivating long term behaviour change.
Earthwatch delivers scientific expeditions open to the public, Earthwatch Tiny Forests, a national citizen science research program, ClimateWatch, observing the impact climate change is having on our plants and animals, Wetland Community Networks, Bush Blitz, and education programs across the lifespan, including Kids Teaching Kids.
→ You can connect with Earthwatch Australia on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram
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We start today with a brief clip from United Nations secretary-general António Guterres. In it he warns us that the time left for doing anything to keep the climate crisis under control is running out.
Mik Aidt then continues this theme by railing against our out-of-control addiction to fossil fuels which has a direct link to the extreme weather events being experienced in the northern hemisphere right now. Our governments keep approving these toxic projects while the planet keeps heating up, and people keep dying.
Mik fumes about recent examples of people dying as a result of fighting over water and warns us about climate trends that are increasing at a rate that are even surprising scientists who have been studying them for years. He asks what we are doing about it – and answers his own question by giving several statistics about the number of flights being taken that clearly show people generally aren’t willing to change or listen to the warnings from the United Nations and the climate scientists.
Mik reminds us: “The Sustainable Hour is here to tell you this: if you think the world is going mad, you are not alone. And we are here. Every week we explore what we can do about it. Where the solutions are.”
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We play an excerpt of the United Nations University’s youtube-presentation by the 61-year-old British climate scientist Kevin Anderson, professor of Energy and Climate Change, holding a joint chair in the School of Engineering at the University of Manchester in the UK.
It includes an excerpt from a speech by UN secretary-general António Guterres. Later in the hour, we play another speech-excerpt by António Guterres, where he talks with students at Sciences Po.
We listen to an excerpt of a keynote speech by professor Rupert Read addressing the 17th European Waste Water Management Conference, where he introduces the Climate Majority Project, which was launched in June in the United Kingdom “for anyone and everyone who is serious about taking action on this existential threat that now faces us, but doesn’t want to glue themselves to anything.”
The song we play is Ellie Goulding & Steven Price‘s ‘In This Together’ from the Netflix series ‘Our Planet’.
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Colin Mockett OAM‘s Global Outlook begins this week at the United Nations’ headquarters in New York where Christiana Figueres, the Costa Rican diplomat who brokered the original 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change, put out a statement saying that, essentially, she had had enough.
“I thought fossil fuel firms could change”, she said. “I was wrong.” She said that she had long wanted to believe that fossil fuel companies could be part of the solution to climate change. After all, with their indisputable technological expertise and immense political and economic power, they could almost single-handedly shift the world economy onto a new, clean energy foundation. And their public statements and tv advertisements pledged to do just that. “But,” she said, “what the industry is doing with its unprecedented profits over the past 12 months has changed my mind.”
Higher fossil fuel prices driven by the war in Ukraine, made 2022 a record-profit year for the industry. But did the firms use that bonanza to shift their core business away from carbon-based fuels? No. They gave the bulk of those profits to shareholders and their own executives, even as they announced plans to expand oil and gas production.
This was confirmed here in Australia, where the Albanese Government was condemned by environmental groups for its support to unlock the supply of gas from the Northern Territory’s Beetaloo Basin. Scientists and environmentalists have called the plan ‘the worst disaster for the environment that Australia could do’. It could release what they call ‘a carbon bomb’ of 1.4 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, which is more than Australia’s current total emissions. It would blow Labor’s lame target of reducing emissions by 43 per cent right out of the water. It’s the equivalent of opening 50 new coal-fired power stations.
Still the Federal Government was supporting the decision to the tune of $1.5 billion, which will build an export facility at Middle Arm Point in Darwin to export gas from the Basin and ship it to international markets. The project is a joint development between Origin Energy and Falcon Oil and Gas, both of whom posted recorded profits this year. You would hardly think they would need the Federal Government’s offering $1.5 billion of our, taxpayers’, money.
Now back to the United States where scientists brought together data on what is termed the frequency of natural disasters on their continent. These ranged from Catastrophic floods in the Hudson Valley. An unrelenting heat dome over Phoenix. Ocean temperatures hitting 90 degrees Fahrenheit off the coast of Miami. A surprising deluge in Vermont, a rare tornado in Delaware. Their figures showed that a decade ago, any one of these events would have been seen as unusual.
This week, they all happened simultaneously. In 1980, the average time between billion-dollar disasters in the US was 82 days. New figures show that from 2018-22, the average time between these extreme events was just 18 days.
Now to Canada and The New Yorker’s Bill McKibben, who published a thoughtful piece about last week’s record temperatures. “We’ve crushed so many temperature records recently — the hottest day ever measured by average global temperature, the hottest week, the hottest June, the highest ocean temperatures, the lowest sea-ice levels — that it would be easy to overlook a couple of additional data points,” he said. “But they’re important, because they help illuminate not just the size of our predicament, but the political weaknesses that make it so hard to confront.”
Fort Good Hope, which is just a few miles below the Arctic Circle, hit 99.3 degrees Fahrenheit on Saturday afternoon, surpassing the old record by four degrees. The town of Norman Wells, a little to the south, topped a hundred. It was hotter there over the weekend than it has ever been in the Canadian capital of Ottawa, which is 20 degrees latitude to the south.
Yet none of this has been enough to really change the political dynamic, which remains dominated by the fossil-fuel industry. Justin Trudeau’s government had been making noises about a plan to dramatically cut emissions — perhaps by 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, in line with what climate scientists have set as the necessary targets. But the government quickly began to back down after a meeting in June with officials in the oil-rich province of Alberta, when the Minister of Natural Resources, Jonathan Wilkinson, explained that “we have committed to a cap on oil and gas emissions. But there are lots of different ways to do that. There are flexibilities and how you design it…”
The targets may shrink, the timetables may fade, and, incredibly, Canada may decide to count increased exports of fossil gas as a method of cutting carbon. That is, they are following the Australian example.
And on that sobering note ends Colin’s global roundup for the week.
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What a week! Never has there been so many extreme weather events at the same time in so many different places. These are real events happening to real human beings with real loved ones. Events that are killing many real human beings – not just statistics we hear in scientific reports.
What is interesting to note is that the vast majority of the horror filled events are occurring in the northern summer. However there’s nothing for us in the southern hemisphere to become complacent about. While we are being spared right now, what is going to happen during our summer? Scientists and meteorologists are urging us to get prepared for the worst.
Yes, we are saddened by all this. Yes we are angry. Because it didn’t have to be like this. But just like Fiona is talking about, we are also excited and encouraged by observing how this brings people together and makes them step up, getting organised and more effective.
We’ll be back again next week chatting to solution seekers and playing clips of hope from the previous week. We’ll continue to ask #WhatItsGonnaTake to get people in the numbers necessary to stand up to change the political will, which is holding us back right now. We’ll continue to encourage each and every one of our listeners to find their role in the #ClimateRevolution. #BeTheDifference!
“Expeditions is just one part of the programs we run to tackle these things. Another area that we do a lot of work in now is in science-community partnerships. Which is another way of talking about citizen science. In this perspective citizen science fundamentally is an ecological approach: it’s about ecology, biodiversity. So we monitor the health of different systems across the country. But what we also found is that people looked to their local communities more during Covid, and so we’ve been working with communities up and down the coast lines who are passionate about their coastlines and about the rivers and their wetlands and their health.”
~ Fiona Sutton Wilson, CEO of Earthwatch Institute Australia
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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 millennia before they were invaded. Their land was then stolen from them – it wasn’t ceded. 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 the climate emergency are being made by those who won’t be around by the time the worst effects hit home. How disrespectful and unfair is that?
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~ Kevin Anderson, British climate scientist
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The Climate Majority Project has been launched in the United Kingdom
Politicians are afraid that if they move too fast and too hard, it will backfire in the same way as the French Yellow Vests, which today come in many guises. The politicians need to feel and know that they have the people with them.
Instead of asking the parliament to declare a climate emergency and act accordingly, we could ask the government to call a referendum on the issue.
If the result of the referendum is that the population wants a declaration of climate emergency and what follows, then the politicians know that they have a mandate to act.
This then begs the question: what will it take to rally the climate movement to mobilise the population to demand a referendum on the climate issue?
Should we transform our society? Or should we continue to shrug our shoulders, look the other way and say: “this will have to be a problem for the next generations to deal with” – or rather: “to battle with”?
“The Climate Majority Project is for anyone and everyone who is serious about taking action on this existential threat that now faces us, but doesn’t want to glue themselves to anything… that’s basically the idea.”
~ Professor Rupert Read
→ LBC – 17 July 2023:
People know time’s up for a safe climate. What’s next?
“The next big thing is a lot of smaller things. The desperation that climate news arouses turns into hope when we each have the support of others who are facing the problem, have a part to play and trust that others will play their parts too. People have enormous power to create change in their workplaces, communities and organisations. We can directly lower emissions and show politicians that people want action. Projects that make this possible are already emerging, and we are here to help them grow, multiply, coordinate and connect with as many people as possible.”
Across the UK in communities, workplaces and wherever they have power, people from all walks of life are organising the kinds of serious climate action that will make governments take notice.
“The Climate Majority Project is a rallying place for citizen climate action. We help projects to grow, get funding, and connect with as many willing hands as possible.”
→ The Climate Majority Project home page
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→ Washington Post – 18 July 2023:
In Earth’s hottest spots, heat is testing the limits of human survival
“In recent days, China set an all-time high of nearly 126 degrees Fahrenheit, while Death Valley hit 128 degrees, two shy of the highest reliably measured temperature on Earth. And in the Middle East, the heat index reached 152 degrees, nearing — or surpassing — levels thought to be the most intense the human body can withstand.”
→ Phys – 17 July 2023:
Mercury hits new highs as heatwaves scorch the globe
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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.
Petitions
→ List of running petitions where we encourage you to add your name
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