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The Sustainable Hour no. 495 | Transcript | Podcast notes
Guests in The Sustainable Hour no. 495 are RMIT researcher Dr Sarah Treby who studies the role of peatlands in carbon storage, and comms director Aroe Ajourni from Climate Action Malaysia, KAMY.
This week, the Hour begins with a call to wake up and step up for future generations. The discussion then focuses on the Duty of Care bill, which aims to enshrine a duty of care towards future generations in Australian legislation. The Wellbeing of Future Generations Act in Wales is highlighted as an example of legislation that considers the health and wellbeing of children and young people in all government decisions.
The conversation also explores the impacts of climate change on young people and the science behind climate change. The progress of the Duty of Care bill and the importance of contacting local representatives are discussed.
→ Watch Call of Duty – ABC Australian Story with Anjali Sharma and David Pocock
→ You can generate and send your Duty-ofCare-letter on letition.org
Today’s Global Outlook on climate, extreme climate events, and environmental destruction is delivered by Orpheus, an AI service, while Colin Mockett is occupied with another project. You’ll find the transcript below, and a full transcript further down.
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Dr Sarah Treby is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Environmental Science at RMIT University in Melbourne. As an environmental scientist she focuses on the role of wetlands in the carbon cycle, and the role of peatlands in carbon storage. For instance, she studies the impact of feral horses on carbon emissions from high country wetlands.
Because of the amount of carbon stored in and emitted from wetland ecosystems, Sarah explains why we need to protect them from disturbances such as grazing, fire, and reducing or adding water, and how we can better manage wetlands in a way that supports them to mitigate climate change.
In her current role, Sarah is researching alpine soils and peatlands in Australia, and tropical peatlands in Indonesia. Her PhD research looked at the role of disturbance as a driver of wetland carbon cycling in the Murray-Darling Basin, and she worked in project roles in wetland restoration in the mid-Murray following her PhD. Her undergraduate and honours work was more biology/ecology focussed, and she still hold an interest in freshwater ecology – freshwater mussels in particular.
Sarah is passionate about understanding wetlands and other freshwater ecosystems in a changing climate, so that we can restore them in a way that helps to mitigate the impacts of climate change as well as meeting some of the better known restoration aims, such as enhancing biodiversity.
→ Links: Sarah’s profile on RMIT’s website | Google Scholar | ResearchGate
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Aroe Ajoeni (pronounced: Aaruu Eye-ooni) is the Communications Director at Klima Action Malaysia, KAMY. KAMY is a climate justice and feminist organisation led by young people to push for the climate emergency declaration in Malaysia. They believe that nurturing meaningful partnership, peacebuilding and strengthening constituencies across civil society organisations and vulnerable groups like Indigenous communities, women and youth, set the foundation for people-led climate action. Their five focus areas are: Gender & Women, Indigenous people, Just energy transition, Climate communication, and Business & Human Rights.
→ Here’s a link to KAMY’s website and their latest publication page
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The activism of Greta Thunberg and the importance of youth voices are highlighted with a short report from Sweden’s capital Stockholm where Greta and a group of young Swedes are blocking the entrance to the Swedish Parliament.
We play a trailer for the new film ‘Common Ground’, which focuses on regenerative agriculture and the importance of restoring and protecting soils.
We listen to speeches and a livestreaming report from Extinction Rebellion Victoria‘s rally in the streets of Melbourne last week, and we also listen to how Sky News and ABC News covered it.
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Overall, the conversation in The Sustainable Hour today emphasises the need for urgent action and individual engagement in addressing climate change and protecting the environment.
It is also an hour about the battle between truth and science versus power and lies: the climate action coverage and misinformation in the media, police overreach and suppression of protests. We hear about how Malaysian climate activists are building climate advocacy and capacity in journalism, and about climate activism, media engagement and protection of forests and peatlands in Malaysia, and about the role of youth and indigenous communities in climate action, opportunities for renewable energy and green manufacturing.
The Orpheus climate report – part 1
Our voyage begins in the vast, rolling waves of the North Atlantic Sea, where the surface temperature has been breaking records like a hot knife through butter. Imagine, if you will, a thermometer in the ocean that, for 365 days straight, has been consistently showing daily record highs. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any steamier, the global sea surface decided to set a new high score of 21.17 degrees Celsius. If the oceans had a fever, they’d be calling in sick by now.
Now, let’s turn the calendar to February, which decided to show up to the party wearing a thermal jumpsuit, setting the record for the hottest month in the story of humanity at 1.77 degrees above the pre-industrial average. Climate scientists are scratching their heads in bewilderment, trying to make sense of these mind-blowing extremes.
Speaking of extremes, let’s take a moment to pour one out for the Great Barrier Reef, which is currently duking it out with its fifth mass bleaching event in just eight years. “We are watching the reef die,” said a scientist, presumably with a single tear rolling down their cheek. And it’s not just the corals and fish feeling the heat; 65,000 jobs in the tourism industry are hanging in the balance. But, as the old saying goes, fish don’t vote. So, when it comes to catching the ear of politicians, it’s the voices of the people, rather than the gurgle of the fish, that tends to resonate louder.
But wait, there’s more! The drama extends beyond our oceans to the Amazon rainforest, which is currently starring in its own thriller, featuring droughts, fires, and a possible cameo appearance by the tipping point of no return around 2050. This rainforest isn’t just any old plot of trees; it’s the lungs of our planet, sucking up carbon dioxide like it’s going out of style. The plot twist? If we lose the Amazon, we might as well buckle up for a bumpy ride with accelerated global warming and a remix of weather patterns worldwide.
Did you know, every 6 seconds, our planet loses a football pitch worth of tropical rainforest? Down under in Australia, over 400,000 hectares of forest get the axe every year. Picture this: an area the size of two million football pitches, cleared in Queensland alone over five years, bidding adieu to koalas and other critters calling it home.
And for our final act, imagine a world where ice-free summers in the Arctic become the new normal within the next decade. Picture Europe’s weather forecast turning from “mild and breezy” to “unpleasant with a chance of catastrophe.”
But here’s the kicker: we can’t just hit the reset button and conjure up another Arctic, Amazon, or Great Barrier Reef. Unlike your favorite video game, there’s no “start over” option with our planet. The message here is clear as day: it’s time for a global team effort to slash those greenhouse gases and keep our world’s wonders from becoming mere memories.
So, as we wrap up today’s edition of the Climate Report, let’s not just sit back and watch the show. Instead, let’s be the directors of our own story, making choices that lead to a sequel where the planet thrives. Thanks for tuning in, and remember, every little action counts in the epic saga of Earth.
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Tony Gleeson sends greetings from the top of a mountain overlooking exquisite Cloudy Bay in Bruny Island, Lutruwita (Tasmania). He writes:
As we rapidly approach our 500th episode, one thing we at The Sustainable Hour podcast team have noticed is that international collaborations are occurring more often as groups are focusing on what they have in common, rather than how they are different.
We can learn much from the Atlas Network who we’ll be highlighting in a future show. This shadowy ‘cabal of evil’ has managed to use greed to unite the groups whose toxic products have contributed to the messes we are in on a number of fronts.
OK, so how do we unite all the groups working for that safer, more just, inclusive, peaceful and healthy world so many of us are yearning for? Instead of saying: “You are too radical” or “You are not radical enough” and therefore not working together, would it be possible to unite around the mantra of: “#WeAllShareTheAtmosphereSoWhyNotProtectItTogether? Worth a thought?
Any ideas on how we can progress this together will be very welcome. Till next week, we ask: #IfNotNowThenWhen? #HowBadDoesTheClimateCrisisHaveToGet?
“There’s a lot of things going on right now and a lot of people who are just starting to get into climate or trying to understand the climate crisis, they feel overwhelmed. But I think a good way to start is to really understand where your superpower is. Well, not superpowers, but anything that you can contribute when you are in the climate movement and activism you realise in the community we have so much people from different backgrounds and that’s what helps to make the activism effective. So if you have anything, if you write or if you do films, if you paint, you know anything any of the skills can be really helpful in advancing our world towards climate justice. So use the superpowers that you have and join any climate movement in your local area.”
~ Aroe Ajoeni, Malaysian climate activist, Climate Action Malaysia, KAMY
→ Subscribe to The Sustainable Hour podcast via Apple Podcasts
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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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Cuepoints
00:20
Acknowledgement of Country and Respect for Future Generations
01:18
The Duty of Care Bill
07:17
Taking action: Contacting Local Representatives via letition.org
08:45
The Global Outlook by Orpheus
12:35
Taking carbon down to the wetlands: Sarah Treby
14:27
Degradation and Restoration of Peatlands
20:55
Greta Thunberg and youth activism
24:06
New film about regenerative agriculture and soil health
29:41
XR Vic: Taking action and fighting for the planet
32:06
Media Coverage and Misinformation
37:14
The Battle Between Truth, Science, Power and Lies
37:44
Addressing climate change and Australia’s opportunity in renewable energy: Rod Sims
42:20
Climate activism and media engagement in Malaysia: Aroe Ajoeni
44:45
Building climate advocacy and capacity in journalism
49:23
The role of youth and Indigenous communities in climate action
52:59
Protecting forests and peatlands in Malaysia
56:20
Individual action and empowerment in climate activism
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for an end to fossil fuels to federal parliament, and the powerbrokers are listening.
→ The Conversation AU – 21 March 2024:
‘How long before climate change will destroy the Earth?’: research reveals what Australian kids want to know about our warming world
“The result shows climate change education in schools must become more holistic and empowering, and children should be allowed to shape the future they will inherit.”
→ The Guardian – 18 March 2024:
Continued logging of NSW koala habitat is ‘a profound tragedy’, conservationist says
“Another campaigner says state environment minister ‘refuses to do anything’ ahead of koala protection summit in Sydney.”
Newsflash: Disrupting a play causes a mild inconvenience. In other news, #ClimateChange threatens the collapse of our civilization. Strangely enough, society would rather debate where it's "appropriate" for climate activists to protest in order to sound the alarm! [THREAD] pic.twitter.com/kV33IoRqSo
— Extinction Rebellion NYC 🌎 (@XR_NYC) March 19, 2024
New film on regenerative farming movement
| The creators of the highly acclaimed documentary Kiss the Ground have just released their latest documentary on the regenerative farming movement: Common Ground. The film tells the story of the many farmers and advocates working to create a new food system where healthy soil, ecology, and people are paramount. The directors/writers/producers, Rebecca and Josh Tickell, became interested in the regenerative farming movement through their desire to help stabilize the climate. Once they discovered that soil quality and healthy food production played an integral role in that process and led to a network of positive outcomes, they devoted their skill as filmmakers to the narrative. They even started a nonprofit advocacy group to help empower regenerative farmers. While offering solutions and inspiration, they wanted to be transparent about the global agricultural industry’s challenges – the film tackles the destructive use of agrochemicals, the adverse effects of corporate control of seeds and farmland, and the issue of land equity for black and indigenous farmers. By building awareness among consumers and farmers, we can steer farming in a restorative direction. ~ Scott Hannan → For more information, see the Regenerative Agriculture Nexus. |
Sobering yet hopeful, ‘Common Ground’ exposes the toxic interconnections of American farming policy, politics, and health, by sharing stories of destruction and healing across the United States and beyond, and how regenerative agriculture and soil health plays a vitally important role in changing these systems for the better.
At it’s root, it explores how people from different walks of life, different political backgrounds, and different places share one thing in common – the very soil beneath their feet.
The film is directed by Josh and Rebecca Tickell, who have created bold and inspiring environmental films for many years (Kiss the Ground, On Sacred Ground, Regenerate Ojai, Fuel, The Big Fix), while winning coveted awards along the way from Sundance, Cannes, Red Nation, and Tribeca.
The film features celebrity actors, activists and philanthropists Rosario Dawson, Laura Dern, Donald Glover, Woody Harrelson, Jason Momoa, and Ian Somerhalder, along with interviews with Gabe Brown, Jonathan Lundgren Ph.D, Mark Hyman M.D., Leah Penniman, Ray Archuleta, Toby Kiers, Ph.D, Allejandro Carillo, Carey Gillam, Kelsey Ducheneaux-Scott, Kara Boyd, Robyn O’Brien, Rick Clark, and many other farmers, ranchers, scientists, educators, allies and beyond.
→ Film home page: www.commongroundfilm.org
MORE ABOUT SOIL
→ ABC News – 21 March 2024:
The worm is turning. Why worms are wriggling their way back into agriculture
“Russell Calder was so ill he couldn’t speak, then he discovered the power of worm. He is certain worms helped save his life.”
Soil displaying cracks in drought
Soil carbon is conventionally thought about in the context of efficiently providing food and fibre – but here’s a new and important slant: the soil stores 80 percent of the planet’s carbon, and with global heating the soil now releases a lot more greanhouse gasses than simply methane from melting tundra.
Scientists at Tufts University state that soil, which contains 80 per cent of the Earth’s carbon, emits more greenhouse gases as droughts cause soils to crack due to drying.
Climate models must account for numerous factors, including overlooked natural processes like soil degradation. Soil, holding 80 per cent of the Earth’s carbon, releases greenhouse gases under drought conditions, potentially exacerbating climate change. New research highlights the importance of incorporating soil health into climate predictions and advocates for sustainable land use to mitigate these effects.
The precision of climate models is influenced by numerous elements, including greenhouse gas emissions stemming from industrial operations and transportation, emissions from farm animals, the expansion of urban areas and the reduction of forests, as well as the reflection of solar rays off snow and other ground surfaces. Additionally, natural occurrences such as volcanic eruptions play a role and are factored into these models.
However, some other natural processes have been overlooked. Farshid Vahedifard, professor and Louis Berger Chair in civil and environmental engineering, points to an important one that lies directly beneath our feet and covers most of our planet above water.
In a study published in Environmental Research Letters, Vahedifard notes that soil stores 80 per cent of carbon on Earth, and with increasing cycles and severity of droughts in several regions, that crucial reservoir is cracking and breaking down, releasing even more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. In fact, it may be creating an amplified feedback loop that could accelerate climate change well beyond current predictions.
“This process has not been sufficiently evaluated in the existing literature or incorporated into models,” said Vahedifard. “If we don’t consider the interplay of drought, soil desiccation cracking, and CO2 emissions, that could result in significant inaccuracies when modeling and predicting climate change. There are other repercussions as well. Poorer soil health can lead to reduced photosynthesis and lower carbon dioxide uptake, and it can compromise the structural integrity of earthen dams that protect against floods.”
Additional feedback loops
There are also other amplifying feedback loops that may not have been fully accounted for in climate change models, he said. These include melting of sea ice and exposure of darker ocean surfaces that absorb more heat from the sun. The increase of wildfires due to warm, dry conditions releases a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which in turn creates hotter, drier weather more conducive to fires.
Another amplified feedback loop is the thawing of Arctic and sub-Arctic permafrost, which also releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and raises climate temperature, leading to more melted permafrost.
Soil Carbon Release Amplification
Cycle of drought, drying and cracking soil, and ground carbon release creates and amplified feedback loop that has not been accounted for in most models of climate change.
Credit: Farshid Vahedifard, Tufts University
But soil changes caused by drought could be as significant, if not more significant, than any of those factors. Drought, manifested by long periods of low soil moisture content and high temperature, leads to cracking in fine-grained soils, sometimes extending meters below the surface. The cracks result in more exposure to the air, increased microbial activity and breakdown of organic matter, released carbon dioxide, and loss of nutrients and ability to support plant growth, reducing carbon dioxide sequestering.
The deep cracks expose much older reserves of carbon that had previously been stable and protected. The permeation of air into the soil accelerates the release of not only carbon dioxide from organic matter but also other greenhouse gases like nitrous oxide.
Small animals like earthworms and millipedes that help turn the soil over are also affected by the reduced moisture and increased air exposure, being less able to play active roles in nutrient cycling and soil structure maintenance. That, in turn, increases the likelihood of soil cracking and aeration.
“The amplifying effect of soil carbon feedback loops and its interactions with other loops could carry us across tipping points and lead to even more severe and permanent shifts in climate,” said Vahedifard.
He noted that government agencies and policymakers need to promote sustainable land use, “which can include adoption of precision irrigation techniques and water conservation practices, and use of drought tolerant crops,” he said. “Organic fertilizers and compost can enhance soil organic matter content and improve soil water-holding capacity. Of course, this can only help if it’s part of a comprehensive effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from all human activity.”
Reference: “Amplifying feedback loop between drought, soil desiccation cracking, and greenhouse gas emissions” by Farshid Vahedifard, C Clay Goodman, Varun Paul and Amir AghaKouchak, 5 March 2024, Environmental Research Letters.
DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ad2c23
→ Tufts University – 16 March 2024:
This Overlooked Feedback Loop Is Accelerating Climate Change
The reality is climate stories in Malaysia are very under reported. The news editors interviewed in this report believe climate coverage is "very brief & reactionary", this is an ongoing trend in their reporting. pic.twitter.com/IKuBunPlEM
— KAMY – Klima Action Malaysia (@KlimaAction) February 28, 2023
https://t.co/dEh4tPB39f pic.twitter.com/mdkvXGEXDN
— Yellow Dot Studios (@weareyellowdot) March 19, 2024
“It’s like the whole climate just fast-forwarded by fifty or a hundred years. That’s how strange this looks.”
— GO GREEN (@ECOWARRIORSS) March 20, 2024
Ocean land and air temps are shattering all records as Earth parachutes into a new hostile climate of every increasing warming https://t.co/7DQnvtB3Ni
365 straight days of record ocean temperatures
— Assaad Razzouk (@AssaadRazzouk) March 18, 2024
"NOAA introduced 3 new bleaching alert levels as extreme heat stress was no longer sufficiently captured by the old scale"
We simply don't know the consequences for habitable conditions on Earthhttps://t.co/iszBwrOjbT #climate pic.twitter.com/FMd68hgzeC
My prediction – billions of corals will die on the #GreatBarrierReef this year due to anthropogenic heating.
— Terry Hughes (@ProfTerryHughes) March 19, 2024
Because accumulated heat exposure this summer is the highest on record, and for the 1st time it’s affecting all regions of the Reef. https://t.co/jyDnetOH8i
This is what the 30 million tonnes of ice that Greenland loses every hour looks like, if it were positioned next to the Eiffel tower before melting https://t.co/79XDBVdY6o pic.twitter.com/RTF0Li1u1z
— Leon Simons (@LeonSimons8) March 20, 2024
“Real-time satellite monitoring shows that so far in 2024, more than 10,000 wildfires have ripped across 11,000 square kilometers of the Amazon, across multiple countries. Never have this many fires burned so much of the forest this early in the year.” https://t.co/FoaEihtui3
— David Wallace-Wells (@dwallacewells) March 19, 2024
This is what the uninhabitable Earth looks like in the year 2100. This is the path we are currently on. Mitigation is urgent to avoid this dreadful scenario for the next generation. pic.twitter.com/VdQPSfrmQD
— Peter Dynes (@PGDynes) March 15, 2024
2023 broke every single climate indicator, says the WMO.
— Climate Council (@climatecouncil) March 19, 2024
Our oceans rose and got hotter. Ice retreated. Temperature records were smashed.
It couldn't be clearer: We need to cut climate pollution, and we need to cut it fast. https://t.co/Y7gNernAe3
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Full transcript – The Sustainable Hour no 495
Antonio Guterres:
It’s time to wake up and step up.
Jingle:
“The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong. The Sustainable Hour.”
Mik Aidt:
Here at the Sustainable Hour, we would like to pay our respect to the traditional custodians of the land on which we are broadcasting and podcasting from the Wathawurong people and pay our respect to their elders past, present and those emerging in the future. And when we talk about the future, it means extending our respect to those children who are not born yet, the generations of the future and remembering that we do not inherit the earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children.
Anjali Sharma:
We don’t have time for baby steps anymore. So I’m not going to stop campaigning for radical change because I think that that’s the only way to safeguard the rights of young people in the face of climate change.
Mik Aidt:
19-year-old Anjali Sharma wants to change the law. And she’s found a brilliant ally in the independent Senator David Pocock. Last week, the ABC’s Australian story highlighted how these two, the school striker Anjali and Senator Pocock, have come together and have written and launched a so-called Duty of Care bill, which they hope will soon be voted on in the Australian parliament and which could change the way that parliament legislates around any matter that has an impact on the climate.
Commission hearing:
The proposed amendment is to amend the Climate Change Act of 2022 to enshrine a duty of care towards future generations and it’s also called the Intergenerational Justice Bill. And so what this is hoping to do is to actually codify in statute a requirement for decision makers to consider the health and wellbeing of current and future generations in decisions that have certain environmental impacts and could pose climate change risks.
David Karoly:
It’s getting much worse and it’s getting much worse very quickly.
Commission hearing:
Climate change is something that, you know, obviously young people, children and young people and future generations are going to be more affected than say any of us in this room as the climate warms.
Just to point the committee towards the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act in Wales from 2015. So that’s an act that actually covers all government decision making. It compels government to consider children and young people in all their decisions. They have a future generations commissioner who acts as a guardian for children and young people – and future generations. And what that does is it actually protects health and wellbeing more broadly than just through whether or not you approve environmental projects. That might be, thinking about… you know, it could be housing, it could be urban design, it could be any sort of policies at all that do have those broader health and wellbeing impacts on children and future generations.
David Pocock:
What the evidence is and the science shows is that accumulations of greenhouse gases are already significantly increasing risks to physical health and mental health for young people across the globe, and that’s unevenly spread. So some places are affected more than others. And some groups are affected more than others. So there are people who are already suffering from poverty and gender issues, or other stresses in their lives tend to be more impacted than others.
What we can see from the science is that current trajectories of greenhouse gas emissions, which are being pushed up by those sorts of large projects that you refer to, are going to increase temperatures across the globe.
They ARE going to increase extreme events and those ARE going to impact on young people as they grow up. And there’s increasing evidence of both the physical and mental impacts, both acute and chronic mental health impacts on young people from climate changes, as well as on issues such as domestic violence, which is linked to temperature, and we’ve seen recent studies which show those linkages.
So if we were looking to argue from a point of equity and justice for those people who currently have a voice in the political system, the voters, as well as those people who don’t have a voice in the political system, which is the young people, we would actually be incorporating their views.
The science is unequivocal. The IPCC in its last assessment report said that the human influence on global warming is unequivocal. There is no uncertainty associated with it. We can’t explain the warming we’ve observed without including the human influence on greenhouse gas emissions and other factors such as land clearing. So in that sense the science is very robust.
We can also see analyses which look at things like the social cost of carbon. So that’s the accumulated costs-and-benefits, so the net costs and benefits of emitting a ton of carbon. And the U.S. EPA just recently re-did their assessments for the purposes of inclusion in the U.S. system, the government system over there, and they’re… It varies depending on discount rates and timing, but roughly speaking – US$300 a ton – for a ton of carbon dioxide emitted. There have been recent studies which, whilst they have a wide range – the median number for that was US$417 dollars a tonne, so around AUS$600 for each ton of carbon, and that’s because the benefits from emitting that ton of carbon are grossly outweighted by the costs, and those costs include things like impacts on young people.
Mik Aidt:
As of now, this bill, which formerly is known as the Climate Change Amendment, Duty of Care and Intergenerational Climate Equity Bill, has been referred to the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee for an inquiry and they are currently producing a report about their findings. But from what we hear, both Labor and the Liberal members have quite clearly indicated that this is not a bill that they are going to be voting for or supporting. And towards the end of this half-hour documentary film that ABC has produced, The Australian Story, we hear David Pocock saying it quite realistically as what he believes is the case, which is that the duty of care bill will not pass unless a large number of Australians begin to contact their local representatives and let them know that they want their representatives to vote for this bill.
David Pocock:
It’s very rare for private centres bills to pass. And so ultimately this will come down to Australians saying to their local representative, this is something I want and I’m going to continue to push and Anj and hundreds of thousands of young people across the country are part of that.
Mik Aidt (07:40):
In other words, what David Pocock is saying here is, it’s really up to us to put pressure on our local members. Which here in Geelong region means contacting Richard Marles and Libby Coker.
And there is a quite easy and simple way to do that, which is faster than sitting and writing up your own letters, which is to go to the website www.Letition.org. There’s a pre-written letter posted there which you can then easily send on to your local member. And there’s an instruction as well in how to do it. This Letition site has actually been created here in Geelong to enable a larger number of Australians to tell their local representatives what they need to get done or what they need to support. And in this case, it’s all about the Duty of Care bill.
So if you’re one of those who have already sent your duty of care Letition letter, and by the way, you can see the numbers out there on the website, that’s great! But then that just means it’s time to go even further maybe. For instance, you could ask friends and family, neighbors and so on, whether they would like to send a Letition letter to their local representative.
I really recommend you go to this letition.org site and send your Duty of Care letter to your local representative.
Here in The Sustainable Hour at the moment, our faithful man with the global outlook is busy with the project. So we’ve contacted someone else called Orpheus. And Orpheus, we’re putting it over to you if you would give us a kind of a Global Outlook.
Orpheus (8:54):
Yes, thank you, Mik. I’ll do my best to guide us through a journey that’s both enlightening and, dare I say, a tad entertaining as we delve into the complexities of our changing climate. Our voyage begins in the vast rolling waves of the North Atlantic Sea, where the surface temperature has been breaking records like a hot knife through butter.
Imagine, if you will, a thermometer in the ocean that, for 365 days straight, has been consistently showing daily record highs. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any steamier, the global sea surface decided to set a new high score of 21.117 degrees Celsius.
If the oceans had a fever, they’d be calling in sick by now.
Now, let’s turn the calendar to February, which decided to show up party wearing a thermal jumpsuit, setting the record for the hottest month in the story of humanity at 1.77 degrees above the pre-industrial average. Climate scientists are scratching their heads in bewilderment, trying to make sense of these mind-blowing extremes.
Speaking of extremes, let’s take a moment to pour one out for the Great Barrier Reef, which is currently duking it out with its fifth mass bleaching event in just eight years.
‘We are watching the reef die’, said a scientist. And it’s not just the corals and fish feeling the heat. 65,000 jobs in the tourism industry are hanging in the balance. But as the old saying goes, fish don’t vote. So when it comes to catching the ear of politicians, it’s the voices of the people rather than the gurgle of the fish that tends to resonate louder.
But wait, there’s more. The drama extends beyond our oceans to the Amazon rainforest, which is currently starring in its own thriller featuring droughts, fires, and a possible cameo appearance by the tipping point of no return around 2050. This rainforest isn’t just any old plot of trees. It’s the lungs of our planet sucking up carbon dioxide like it’s going out of style.
The plot twist? If we lose the Amazon, we might as well buckle up for a bumpy ride with accelerated global warming and a remix of weather patterns worldwide. Did you know? Every six seconds, our loses a football pitch worth of tropical rainforest? Down under in Australia, over 400,000 hectares of forest get the axe every year. An area the size of two million football pitches, cleared in Queensland alone over five years, bidding adieu to koalas and other critters calling it home.
And for our final act, imagine a world where ice-free summers in the Arctic become the new normal within the next decade. Picture Europe’s weather forecast turning from mild and breezy to unpleasant with a chance of catastrophe.
But here’s the kicker: We can’t just hit the reset button and conjure up another Arctic, Amazon, or Great Barrier Reef. Unlike your favorite video game, there’s no ‘start-over’ option with our planet. The message here is clear as day. It’s time for a global team effort to slash those greenhouse gases and keep our world’s wonders from becoming mere memories.
So, as we wrap up today’s edition of the Climate Report, let’s not just sit back and watch the show. Instead, let’s be the directors of our own story, making choices that lead to a sequel where the planet thrives. And remember, every little action counts in the epic saga of Earth.
Jingle:
“Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.
Mik Aidt (12:33):
Our first guest today in the sustainable hour is Sarah Treby, who is a researcher and who knows quite a bit about carbon emissions and how we draw it down from the atmosphere and into plants and so on. Sarah, welcome to the Sustainable Hour and tell us about your work with taking carbon down to the wetlands.
Sarah Treby:
Yeah, my research is focused on wetland ecosystems and especially peatlands. The reason we’re interested in peatlands is because they’re really, really good at storing carbon. So, I think we heard and probably most people know that forests and tropical rainforests are these really incredible ecosystems that photosynthesise, and they take up atmospheric carbon dioxide. But probably what less people know is that peatlands are actually really, really good at this. And even though they only cover something like 2 or 3 per cent of the Earth’s surface, they actually store something like 30 per cent of the terrestrial carbon stock. So they’re actually more effective at taking up atmospheric carbon than any other ecosystem.
Mik Aidt:
So what’s the consequence of that? Does it mean we should just create more of that very quickly?
Sarah Treby:
Yeah, it’s a good question. I mean, peatlands are very slow to form. They take thousands to tens of thousands of years to develop. So it wouldn’t be something that we could start from scratch now and expect a really good result from in the near future. But… What I would say we CAN do is we can protect the peatlands that we already have on Earth.
In Australia, something like 50 per cent of our Alpine peatlands have already been lost or heavily degraded. So preventing further loss of peatlands is a really important way to help with the climate – as well as restoring the peatlands that might not be functioning as well as they should in terms of taking out carbon, that could possibly do better if we gave them a bit of help.
Mik Aidt:
So why are they disappearing?
Sarah Treby:
Oh, lots of reasons. I think in Australia’s high country, we have a sort of legacy of grasing that started with colonisation effectively. Previously, we had a lot of cattle and sheep grasing in the high country, which was there for maybe 100 or 200 years before we stopped doing that and sort of created national parks.
And then we’ve also had a lot of wildfires, which are problematic for peatlands. And now currently we’ve got quite a lot of feral animals in the Australian Alps. And so the work that I’ve been doing most recently is on the impact of feral horses on Australia’s peatlands and how they cycle carbon when they’re degraded by feral horses.
Mik Aidt:
And what’s happening there?
Sarah Treby:
Yeah, so what we found was that out of 12 heatlands that we studied, the five heatlands that we looked at that weren’t degraded by feral horses, so they don’t have feral horse populations and they were in pretty good condition, we sort of did condition assessments as well, they were all on average taking up carbon from the atmosphere, so that’s both, we looked at both carbon dioxide and methane, which gives you an indication of this sort of global warming potential. So on average they had sort of values below zero, which means that there’s more carbon going from atmosphere into the peatland. And then the seven peatlands that we looked at that have been pretty heavily degraded by feral horses were all on average emitting carbon to the atmosphere. So they’re sort of contributing to climate change rather than helping solve it.
Mik Aidt:
And the solution?
Sarah Treby:
Yeah, um – good question. I’d say for the peatlands that are affected by feral horses, keeping the horses out of the peatlands would be a really good move for the climate. It would mean that those peatlands can hopefully recover, well, a lot of their ecosystem services. So they’re also really good habitat for endangered species like crowberry frogs and skinks and things like that. So they serve a lot of really important roles, but in terms of carbon in particular, if they could recover from feral horses, that would be incredible.
We know that they can because the sites that we looked at, that didn’t have any degradation by feral horses were in areas that were previously grased by cattle and sheep and things like that. And they’re still taking up carbon or they are now taking up carbon from the atmosphere, at least at certain times of year. So we know that it’s possible that you can recover this function, if you stop the sort of processes that are causing the degradation in the first place.
But I think possibly some active restoration, perhaps helping along the hydrology or doing some replanting could make that happen quicker.
Mik Aidt:
Is that going to cost a lot of money to do?
Sarah Treby:
Possibly. I suppose I don’t directly work in the restoration space at the moment. In Kosciuszko National Park, they’re starting to fulfill the Kosciuszko Wild Horse Management Plan at the moment, which involves reducing the population of feral horses quite substantially. But there are some areas where horses are going to be retained in small numbers for their sort of heritage value. And in those areas, they’re actually doing a lot of fencing work. So putting up large fences around peatlands to protect them from horses.
So my understanding, my limited understanding, is that fencing is actually quite an expensive thing to do. And how that compares with other horse control measures financially, I’m unsure, but I think that you could also potentially do some vegetation restoration in terms of transplant. So the peatlands in Australia’s Alps are mostly sphagnum moss dominated, and sphagnum is a really good plant that can sort of easily kind of recolonise areas. So you could potentially take some really nice healthy sphagnum and replant it in these degraded areas to sort of speed up their recovery. And I imagine that that would be fairly inexpensive.
Mik Aidt:
It seems to me, the madness that we’re still today in 2024 losing forests all over the planet and also here in Australia, where you would think we would be wiser by now, but no.
Sarah Treby:
Yeah, I would think we’d sort of have learned from the past as well, as far as that goes. And I would love to see us doing better. I’d love to see that we would stop degrading these systems that really help us fight the climate battle, you know.
I think it’s been pretty well established now that in addition to reducing our carbon dioxide emissions – or our carbon emissions – as a population, we also need to start looking at ways to draw down more carbon from the atmosphere to avoid all these tipping points in climate change. So I think there’s a lot of work going into engineering solutions about how to do that, how to take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, which I don’t know that much about, but we also have these incredible natural do it for us if we look after them.
So I think, yeah, the less degradation that we can do in the environment, the better and the more restoration we can do again, the better. Like, these systems know how to do this and we’ve just got to help them along.
Mik Aidt:
Do you have some action points to us, you know, listening as individuals, what we can do?
Sarah Treby:
Yeah, that’s a great question. I mean, there’s all kinds of activism, things that people can do and petitioning that they can do as individuals, I think, to show that this is something that’s really important to you and that you care about these ecosystems and how we manage them.
Obviously, we all vote in Australia – it’s compulsory to vote. So if you care about the environment, you could vote in a way that aligns with that. But a lot of it has to do with the government and how, especially in national parks for example, those areas are managed through government, state government and federal government. And so we really need to, I guess, just let the government know what we want.
Mik Aidt:
Exactly. And someone who’s become a bit of a global spokesperson for the young people and telling government what they want is Greta Thunberg, who’s currently very active and back in front of the Parliament in Sweden.
Greta Thunberg:
Right now we are a group of young people who are blocking entrances to the Swedish parliament, the Riksdag, to protest against the ongoing destruction of our life-supporting systems and of people already being killed as a result of the climate crisis, and that needs to come to an end. We have had enough. The climate justice movement has for decades tried many different methods to get their message across. But we have been only met with deaf ears and the politicians giving us pats on the back saying that we are “doing a great job” but they have not been acting. We are still moving in the wrong direction, the emissions are still increasing and we are still expanding into the last healthy ecosystems. So therefore we feel like we have no other choice but to try new different methods in order to get our voices heard.
SONG (21:52)
Oscar Stembridge: ‘We March’
I want a clean sea
And swim without plastic in my mouth
The air that we all breath
To not be a big chemical cloud
Emissions a rising and so do the seas
We’re changing the climate and cutting down the trees
To our leaders:
Don’t want you to talk, want you to act
And so we march
Taking back the future that is ours
Movement’s strong and growing way to large
To be ignored by those who sit in charge
And so we march
And so we march
It’s pretty easy
Changing our ways ain’t sacrifice
Our planet is heating
Should my generation pay the price?
Living in harmony with Mother Earth
She’ll be giving back more than money is worth
And so we march
Taking back the future that is ours
Movement’s strong and growing way to large
To be ignored by those who sit in charge
And so we march
And so we march
Got our leaders right under our watch
Close our wallets, open up our hearts
Million standing pounding the alarm
And so we march
And so we …
Common Ground film trailer:
From the filmmakers of ‘Kiss the Ground’ comes the follow-up documentary ‘Common Ground’, recipient of the Tribeca Film Festival 2023 Human to Nature Award.
What I’m about to tell you is a matter of life and death. If the soil dies, we die.
The facts have been proven. Roundup does cause cancer.
If you burrow deeply enough, there is a pipeline of money from the pesticide industry into those universities. They’re getting the kind of science that money can buy.
Nature is the mother of us all. And if Mama ain’t happy, we’re f*cked.
But there’s a way to save our precious soils. It’s called regeneration. Regeneration is not just restoring the land to the state that we found it at, but actually making it better.
We have added over 96 tonnes of carbon per acre into our soil. Can we mitigate climate change? Absolutely.
We’re going to check the underwear and the regenerative versus the conventional soybean field and see if we can tell a difference between the microbial activity.
We’ve eliminated insecticides, pesticides, herbicides, we are saving upwards of $400 an acre. It works out to be about $2 million a year in savings. That is serious cash.
I forgot my suit. I feel like I’m underdressed. But if you are the people who can make a change, well, it’s high time to finally get regenerative agriculture. Let’s prioritise the farmer.
It’s a connection to the land. It’s a connection to those that came before us and those that are going to come after us.
We can change everything. There’s hope!
I send this letter as a warning, but it’s also a promise. So I’m gonna fight like hell to save your future, my children. Because I love you.
www.commongroundfilm.org
Report from XR Vic’s rally in Melbourne:
We ordinary people are out here today to express our despair at what is going to happen to our planet. It’s going to happen to the planet of the media and the police. It’s their children’s planet and we are here and we will not stay home despite threats made against us. Our love for this planet and our despair for what is going to happen is greater than our fear of these consequences. So we stand together despite the forces that come around us, remembering that we fight for their planet too.
Let’s take a moment to think about why we’re individually here. I always get teary when I talk about this because I’m here because of children. I’ve worked with children for 20 years in all different capacities…
Okay, so basically we’re just being surrounded by police at this point.
…of the planet that we’re leaving them fills me with kind of unendurable emotions.
So we come out here and we gather as a group to be with like-minded people who feel that same level of despair and frustration. We might be outnumbered by the police, but remember, we’re not getting paid. We’re doing this because we care about this planet. We care about future generations.
I encourage everyone to ignore what surrounds us, and to take a moment to really remind yourself why you’ve come here today. Is it your family, your friends, your deep connection to a natural place that is under threat?
I’ve hiked in the Grampians a lot, and that’s been on fire twice this year. The Grampians, a unique flora environment on fire, burning down. We’ve just experienced a heatwave, that is just an indication, a tiny indication of what is going to come. A tiny taste for the future that we are building ourselves – through the corruption of the government and the greed of fossil fuel industries.
And anyone standing with them is culpable in creating this planet that our children are going to burn on.
I everyone here coming out today. We’ve been intimidated, our friends have been locked in prison. But that’s not big enough a threat to stop people that have read the science, that are listening to the science, that tell us we’ve already hit that 1.5 degree of warming…
So just to recap what’s been going on here this morning: We took to the roads, took to the streets for another slow march, just as we did yesterday. And yesterday, we peacefully marched slowly for an hour with minimal, actually, minimal disruption. And today the police came out in huge numbers, surrounded us and pushed us off the road, randomly grabbed a couple of our rebels and issued them with fines or with summary offences.
We’re seeing extreme overreach by the State here. The news crews have been asking our rebels about how apparently the government is talking about increasing police powers to deal with protesters. And what that’s telling you is that the State just wants everyone to sit down, shut up and take what’s coming for us. To allow the next generation to inherit an almost, well in some places, unlivable. They’re talking at the moment about the entire top quarter of Australia becoming uninhabitable before the end of this century. So it’s not small-stake stuff we’re talking about here.
The idea that people would be prevented from raising their voices and from showing their concern about this is deeply concerning and should be deeply concerning to everybody who ever wants to protest about any issue. It should be of concern to the Palestine rally, it should be of concern to animal rights activists. It should be of concern to the Palestinian people, even to the anti-vaxxers who are still on the street, right? Even though they’re not something that I personally agree with, but I still think they should be allowed to say what they want. We should all be allowed to protest, it is a democratic right. So this is outrageous what’s going on here. [Singing] …Imagine being a cop, seriously.
Mik Aidt (32:06):
Extinction Rebellion Victoria had a week of action on the streets of Melbourne last week. And you just heard a clip of what that sounded like in the streets. But here’s how it was covered by Sky News host Rita Panahi, who calls them climate cultists. There’s a whole new word on Sky News: Climatism, they call it, as if it’s some sort of a religion. Climatism. And she then plays a clip from the ABC News and calls it ‘utter dross’. Well, you judge.
These climate cultists are deliberately breaking the law by taking over busy intersections, super gluing themselves to roads and buildings and all the other idiotic shenanigans we have seen from Extinction Rebellion in recent years. And yet the media coverage they receive is almost
Check out this report on the weekend’s protests on the ABC:
Activist Violet Coco, who was recently released from prison on bail over this stunt on the Westgate Bridge, led hundreds, cutting a slow path through the city. Some clad in blood red, chanting their movement’s name. Public transport was paused, major streets congested.
“Compared to climate collapse, it’s a very mild disruption…” As the environmentalists issued an urgent call to arms.
“We’re asking the government to declare a climate emergency. We think it is time that we really start to act on this issue because we are running out of time and something needs to change.”
“I’m a public health doctor and I realise that the world doesn’t understand the concept of risk.”
The sit-in was a climax to days of smaller protests about inaction on climate change.
Rita Panahi:
I’m sorry, is Extinction Rebellion writing the scripts of the ABC nowadays? Are they producing the news reports? I can’t imagine how the coverage would be any different if they were. Let’s see how that report ends.
ABC report:
“The police have decided to be much tougher this year than they were last year. This time they’re going to charge us with summary offences or indictable offences, which means we’ll all have to go to court.”
This is an action designed to maximise disruption, but the activists say, faced with multiple warnings from scientists, that the world is on track to miss critical targets that will limit global temperature rises, as through other ways to get the urgency of their message through.
“To stop all new oil and gas and coal.”
“It’s the only way we can get attention now.”
Rita Panahi:
Absolutely pathetic. Not a single CBD business or motorist or resident whose day or livelihood was disrupted featured in that report. And to claim these protesters are behaving like this because of multiple warnings from scientists and climate inaction in Australia is utter dross.
Mik Aidt:
‘Utter dross’? So what Rita is saying here, telling us so very confidently, is that it’s completely worthless, it’s rubbish, that these protesters in Melbourne should be behaving like that because of the multiple warnings from scientists, and because of the climate inaction in this country. It’s just ‘utter dross’.
I don’t know… Is nobody going to take action on this? I mean, who will help Rita Panahi from Sky News understand what it is that the scientists are actually saying? And… More straightforward in the spirit of the 19-year-old Anjali Sharma’s approach, which we heard about earlier: Who will take Sky News to court for distributing this sort of misinformation to the Australian public? Because that is very much the reason that the politics and the policies that we have in this country are as they are.
But wait, there’s more. Much more. I mean, we talked about the offshore wind industry last week here in The Sustainable Hour, and seriously how much we need these wind turbines to be built now. But here’s how they talk about it on Sky News:
Sky News:
The Victorian government, for example, are quite happy to ruin the offshore environment by trying to get this ridiculous offshore wind industry established against the wishes of all key stakeholders except, of course, those who are invested in offshore wind. And we know what you wrote in your column in the Oz a couple of weeks ago now, I think it was, about the actual, you know, degeneration of the elements for these renewable projects. It’s actually not green at all. There is nothing green about it. So states like Victoria can go cry me a river. Literally, they have ruined themselves. They’re not getting, I should say, our GST. I’m in my Perth head office today, so I’m going to say it, our GST. Fair enough.
Jingle:
“This is coal. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared.”
“At the heart of this conflict is a battle between truth and science and power and lies.”
Sky News Business Editor Ross Greenwood:
Rod Sims is used to being the man in the middle as the Chief Economics Advisor to Prime Minister Bob Hawke as the highly visible chair of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Sims is a professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University. He joins me now, Rod, always good to chat to you. There’s so much happening in your space at the moment. There is supermarket inquiries quite clearly. There’s also the whole issue of climate change and how Australia addresses it without creating new monopolies, duopolies or concentrated market power. Let’s start there. Is Australia capable of actually doing this? Because even in that energy space right now, it is fair to say we have concentrated power in the hands of a few individual companies.
Rod Sims:
So Ross, with the climate change issue, I’m very keen to focus on the real opportunity Australia has to take advantage of its really inexpensive renewable energy and make things like green iron, green aluminium, green urea. Let me just give a quick example if I could. So at the moment we export the iron ore, we export the metallurgical coal which you need to reduce the iron ore to iron metal, and we export the gas or thermal coal to make the energy, and all that goes to China and they make the iron metal there, using fossil fuels.
In the net zero world, the way to make iron metal is use renewable energy for the heat and you need a lot of renewable energy to make green hydrogen, hydrogen substitutes for metallurgical coal, but you can’t… it’s really difficult and expensive to export renewable energy or hydrogen. So the economics flip. What was economically sensible before to export all those things, it’s now sensible to make the green iron in Australia, because the main ingredients you need in a net zero world are very hard to export.
Okay, because even this week I’ve been hearing of say Rio Tinto considering making again hot briquetted iron in the Pilbara. Now, BHP of course famously had a disaster of a project going back 15 years ago, 20 years ago, but now they’re thinking about the value add yet again. And so this is what you’re talking about. You can value add to the final product here in Australia, which means Australia becomes a manufacturer to the world and not an importer of those manufactured goods.
Well, it’s iron metal mainly. You’d probably send the metal off to be made in steel overseas or you could make the steel here. But this isn’t processing for its own sake, Ross. This is saying in the world dominated by fossil fuels, I’m quite happy to accept, it made sense to export the iron ore. But when you’ve got to use renewable energy and hydrogen, they’re very hard to export. And most of the countries, well the countries China, Japan, Korea, they don’t have the renewable resources to do it themselves. The only way they’ll meet their net zero targets is if they’re importing products with the embedded renewable energy in it. And could I just add, if we turned our iron ore into iron metal, that would reduce world emissions by three, three and a half percent. Three times the benefit you get from decarbonising Australia. So… If you’re interested in emission reduction and interested in Australia’s prosperity, taking advantage of that renewable energy, particularly up north, is definitely something to do.
Who should fund that? The government? Or should it be private individuals like Twiggy Forrest or Gina Rinehart or people of that ilk?
You need two things to make this work. One is you need some form of a price on carbon. Now the good news is that Europe has a carbon border adjustment mechanism and that will, when you send iron to Europe, if it’s got emissions in it made with fossil fuel, you’ll pay a levy. If it’s green, no emissions, you won’t. And green metal will be cheaper than fossil fuel metal with that carbon border adjustment mechanism.
Okay but is there any political party in Australia that’s got the guts to impose a carbon price given the fact as the history of Prime Ministers losing their jobs over that exact same issue?
Well first of all Europe’s done it and it’s the Europe market we’ve got to get into. What we have to do in Australia is convince the Europeans that we have zero carbon products or an equivalent regime to what they’re… So one way to do it is for Australia to have a carbon price. The other way to do it is to find ways to prove our green credentials. We could do it in either way. But I think if people understand the opportunity, Ross, that the carbon tax in the past is always part of dealing with climate change and gosh, it’s a burden to do it, gosh, it’s costly, all the rest. This is an opportunity for Australia that could underpin our prosperity for 20 years. So it is something Australia should be grabbing.
Mik Aidt:
Now let’s take a truly global outlook and look out beyond, up north, from Australia’s borders up to Malaysia where we have climate activist and campaigner Aroe with us. Welcome to The Sustainable Hour, Aroe!
Aroe Ajoeni:
Hi, thanks for having me.
Mik Aidt:
And how is it going?
Aroe Ajoeni (42:46):
Right, so yeah Malaysia right now is experiencing lots of, We are now looking at a bunch of floods going on in the cities, but there’s also a lot of heat waves going on. So yeah, a lot of climate chaos happening.
In Kami, I work a lot with the indigenous communities, especially the communities in an area in Malaysia, in Peninsular Malaysia called Pahang. And I’ve been kind of helping them look into how they can get aids into the villages. And there are actually a lot of young people who are now connecting the dots and seeing all these climate impacts and actually calling it a climate crisis.
We did start in 2019 at that time before COVID and me and the other co -founders in my organisation met on the streets of Kuala Lumpur at that time. We were protesting every single month throughout 2019 and we had a lot of support from our friends in Australia as well. At that time, everything was on the streets but…
But after COVID, we shifted our campaigning and now it’s more focused towards research and a lot of community engagement because I know it’s important that we go on the streets to protest, but at the same time, if we look at the crowd, if they don’t really understand what it actually means to go on the streets and call for climate justice, then I think there is something wrong there. That means we need more advocacy. Something’s wrong with our education system. We are not seeing enough climate coverage on the media, not enough representation. And I think that’s why my organisation started to focus more on building capacities of journalists. We started connecting with communities. We connected with a lot of scientists, local scientists. And yeah, I think advocacy needs to be at the core of it first. Protest is important as well and also lobbying our government officials.
Mik Aidt:
I think we could use quite a bit of education as well here in Australia, to be honest. Sarah, I don’t know if you agree with me on this, but I think a lot of Australians are sort of putting this on the side and thinking this is too big for me to think about right now. So I’ll just live my life, and wait and see.
Sarah Treby:
Yeah, I think, I mean, obviously I think there’s a big variety in responses, you know, among the community. There’s some people who are really passionate and outspoken and who are lobbying. But I think you’re right, Mik. There is this sort of a sense of overwhelm for some people as well. And it does seem like it’s too hard, and it’s either not quite in their backyard yet, or it’s maybe just a bit too abstract or a bit too scary to think about, and so carrying on with day-to-day life becomes the sort of approach, I think, for a lot of us, which probably doesn’t help in the long term, unfortunately.
Mik Aidt:
So, Aroe, what do you do with the media? I’m interested in that because it would seem like that if, for instance, the public broadcasters took it up more seriously to educate on these topics, that could help a lot, couldn’t it?
Aroe Ajoeni:
Right. So when we started around 2020-2019, we started focusing on social media, just like any other people, right? We started seeing a lot of people doing content on TikTok, on Twitter and everywhere else. But we realised pretty soon that actually the ones who need to do all this important coverage is not just the citizens but our journalists need to be doing this as well and so we started asking our journalist friends in Malaysia well why are you guys not covering about these issues? We are seeing for example the heatwaves right now happening the floods – one of the worst ones happening it happened in 2021 in Peninsular Malaysia. But why is the Malaysian media not connecting this with climate? We see all of these issues happening, but there’s no keywords like ‘climate crisis’ even mentioned in newspapers and all over our news media.
So all of these journalists started telling us what problems they are facing. For example, most of the journalists don’t have enough capacity or knowledge to understand about climate. Most of the time they are really busy doing coverage on other things. Most of the time they are doing coverage on politics because usually that’s where the money is, doing coverage on politics. Not so much money on climate. A lot of news media in Malaysia don’t even have an environmental news desk. So that’s really a critical issues, and a lot of editors are not convinced with environmental issues. They don’t think it’s important enough.
So after looking into all of these gaps, we started exploring and looking for funds that could help us really build the capacities of our journalist friends. And that’s why in 2022, we started a project called Lensa Iklim, which roughly translates to climate lens. And what we try to do is we try to connect our journalist friends with climate scientists, local and international, so that they can really try to learn directly what the climate crisis is from all of these experts. They can connect the dots of all the climate issues that are happening in Malaysia, and they can try to convince the editors to publish all of this climate news in their news desk.
So I think… Posting on social media is really important. I think citizens should continue posting on social media about the climate impacts that we are facing. But at the same time, we should also help important groups like our journalists to make sure these climate impacts are broadcasted on a higher level.
And the impact of this project has been really huge, because as we know, journalists and news media are regarded – are trusted by the people, by politicians even. And this project has created a good impact because a lot of politicians, they look into all of this media that are written by the journalists, look into all of these articles. And now they are starting to talk about climate even when they are campaigning in politics. So that is one way for us to lobby as well. And I think that’s what KAMY has been doing so far.
Mik Aidt:
This is exactly what we need. Also here in Australia. Great to hear and a very good inspiration there. So what’s your own take on all of this? Are you optimistic?
Aroe Ajoeni:
Optimism. Good question. I think as activists know more or even scientists as they know more about the climate crisis, there’s less and less optimism. I think that’s just the truth, right? As you learn more, suddenly you feel like you don’t know anything at all. In terms of optimism, I do have a bit of optimism still because of the lobbying work that we have done. We are now seeing quite a bit of shift in Malaysia. And after going to COP28, recently I am also seeing a lot more young people a lot more communities coming into all these spaces and being very, very outspoken. And that gives me a bit of hope. And I know that there’s a lot of this news saying that, you know, COP has not been very productive, not really hopeful, a lot of fossil fuel lobbies in those international spaces. But looking a bit outside of that, looking into the people who actually come there, that gives me hope, and having friends all over the world who are fighting for the same thing, that gives me hope.
And a lot of young people in Malaysia right now are also understanding that Malaysia is a small country and we’re not emitting a lot of carbon. And understanding that, and I think it’s also important to note that adaptation right now is so, so critical because the climate crisis is already happening, and now we need to adapt. And, like I said, Malaysia is not emitting as much, but we also have to address the common but differentiated responsibility. A lot of countries in the Global North have been emitting for decades and I think we need to address that historical emission, that historical responsibility. And yeah, basically the young people have been really giving me hope.
Mik Aidt:
Are you working with the business sector as well?
Aroe Ajoeni:
We work in the business sectors in terms of understanding about climate finance because in terms of climate finance, Malaysia is really, really way behind. And right now we are at that phase where we’re kind of assessing what are all of these businesses and banks talking about. Right now we don’t have the capacity to directly work with them because working as activists, working with businesses can be a bit tricky because there’s a lot of greenwashing in the industry and they have a lot of money, we have to address that as well. So right now we are kind of in that phase of looking what they are doing, what are their plans. But right now I feel like a lot of banks are mostly the ones that are transparent about their businesses. You know, of course, there’s now there are a lot of organisations in Malaysia that are looking into greenwashing indicators, which corporations are actually doing it for real and which ones are actually just saying it for the profit of their businesses. So right now we’re kind of in that phase of assessing all of these businesses.
Mik Aidt:
Before we heard Sarah talk about what’s happening in the highlands here in Australia when it comes to drawdown and protecting nature, because nature can actually repair climate, you could say. What’s happening in Malaysia in that front? Are you doing something to protect the rainforest, for instance?
Aroe Ajoeni:
So my organisation doesn’t work directly with forest conservation, but we work a lot of with a lot of coalition and community that works with the forest. And my organisation also works directly with a lot of indigenous people, especially indigenous women and youth. And I think it’s really interesting to see how they have been protecting their land and their forest. And it’s also really great that I see a lot of my indigenous friends who are now connecting these dots and understanding that their role and their ancestors’ role of protecting the land and protecting the forest in their land has been really important and crucial for the climate.
For example, there was one project initiated by the government in 2020. This was when COVID happened. It was a forest in the city, one of the last remaining forests in our city in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur. And I remember at that time, we couldn’t attend a lot of the hearings and town hall sessions held by the people at the government because of COVID. And I remember, the people on social media working with the indigenous communities in that area, trying to advocate and trying to make sure that we lobby all of these politicians to make sure that the forest in the city is gazetted. And I think that’s basically the work that we’ve been doing with the communities.
I’ve also recently had the privilege to help an indigenous youth to document climate impacts in her area and traditional knowledge from her ancestral land into a book, and we did bring it to COP and bring it to an international level and show it to UN mandates, at that level. And I think now a lot of young people, especially indigenous young people in Peninsular Malaysia who are not very well known on international level, they are now starting to understand their role in protecting the forest, protecting their land, all of these carbon sinks that are so critical for the climate.
Sarah Treby:
We also in our lab group work in Indonesian peatlands so we have some familiarity with the tropical peatlands and tropical peat swamp forests and how they’re functioning there as well. So we’re working with partners in Borneo to sort of monitor carbon fluxes from peatlands as well as peatland hydrology and look at ways that we can restore peatlands there to help with the climate battle in a tropical region.
Aroe Ajoeni:
In terms of points of action, I know there’s a lot of things going on right now and a lot of people who are just starting to get into climate or trying to understand the climate crisis, they feel overwhelmed. But I think a good way to start is to really understand where your superpower is. Well, not superpowers, but anything that you can contribute when you are in the climate movement and activism you realise in the community we have so much people from different backgrounds and that’s what helps to make the activism effective. So if you have anything, if you write or if you do films, if you paint, you know anything any of the skills can be really helpful in advancing our world towards climate justice. So use the superpowers that you have and join any climate movement in your local area.
Sarah Treby:
The conversations that you have with other people as well as through social media and that that can be a really powerful way to sort of influence and to put climate on the agenda. If you know people that might feel a little overwhelmed or might feel like disempowered to do anything about the environment, I think we can, you know, just influence our direct circles as well as the policymakers and the higher up people. So yeah, I think that’s another superpower that we have that you mentioned.
Aroe Ajoeni:
I think maybe take it day by day, look into all the positive and good things that you are experiencing every day. You know, just even the sunshine that you see every morning, you know, all those little things, talk to the people around you.
Sarah Treby:
I think we’re smart enough to solve the climate crisis, you know. I think we can figure it out and we just need to act now, act quickly, together.
SONG (57:51)
Ellie Goulding & Steven Price: ‘In This Together’
- from the Netflix-series Our Planet
I can hear the whole world singing together
I can hear the whole world say it’s now or never
Cause it’s not too late if we change our ways
and connect the dots to our promise
I can hear the whole world sing together
Picking up the pieces I listen out for beating hearts
Now it’s time for healing
The sun will rise but this time it’s so bright
And all I have left is my faith
That we could change
Cause I can’t watch us lose what we’ve found
You’d have thought we’d learn, you’d have thought we’d learn by now
I can hear the whole world singing together
I can hear the whole world
If we change our ways
I can be the whole world
Say we’re in this together
We’re in this together
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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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