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The Sustainable Hour no. 512 | Transcript | Podcast notes

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Our guests in The Sustainable Hour no. 512 are Monica Winston from Transition Streets Geelong and Annie Delaney and Mary-Faeth Chenery from WINC – Older Women In Co-Housing

Overview:

00:00 Anthony Gleeson: Acknowledgment of Country
02:11 Mik Aidt: Energy efficiency and insulation in Australian homes
03:40 Colin Mockett: China’s progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions
10:34 Monica Winston – Transition Streets Geelong: Community initiatives for sustainability
33:41 Annie and Mary-Faeth – WINC: Creating affordable and sustainable housing for older women
57:03 Introduction to The Business Revolution podcast

. . .

The 512th episode of The Sustainable Hour discusses various topics related to sustainability, including energy efficiency and community initiatives. 

Colin Mockett’s Global Outlook covers China’s progress in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and investing in renewable energy. More details in the transcript

Monica Winston from Transition Streets Geelong shares their plans for upcoming events focused on community building and networking. www.transitionstreetsgeelong.org

Two members of WINC, a group for older women in co-housing, discuss their project and the challenges of creating affordable and sustainable housing for a group of women. www.winccohousing.org.au

The Business Revolution podcast is introduced, highlighting the need for revolutionary action in the corporate world towards sustainability. www.businessrevolution.earth

“Most of us can’t get housing loans because we don’t work or we’re at the end of our working life. So – we can’t get loans to get mortgages. We’ve had to do it ourselves, basically find the land, which was challenging to find appropriate land that was within the city limit, close to a railway line and also funded ourselves. So that’s a really big challenge for any group thinking about doing this, which we obviously would encourage and want to share information with groups who are thinking starting up but it is one of the big hurdles because there’s not public land available for people to buy into and or government subsidies to buy land so but we have a really amazing piece of land five acres and on the edge of town in Castlemaine where we will be building our houses and doing a lot of revegetation of the the area in the coming years to make it beautiful.​”
~ Annie Delaney, WINC Cohousing co-founder

ABOUT MONICA WINSTON
Monica Winston is a dynamic and passionate advocate for sustainability, self-improvement, and community building. She has a rich background spanning over 16 years in environmental activism and sustainable living

Monica is committed to personal growth and takes constructive feedback seriously, always striving to better herself. She believes in seeking support and understanding from friends and colleagues rather than directing frustration towards them, especially when grappling with climate-related concerns.

Currently, Monica is managing a grant to run six events on a tight budget, aimed at saving life on the planet. Her impressive track record includes:

– Founding and running Transition Streets Geelong for seven years, and co-founding Geelong Sustainability, where she played a pivotal role in its growth.

– Overseeing numerous projects such as urban eco-villages, permaculture training, and various community initiatives.

– Securing multiple council grants and supporting colleagues in obtaining significant state government funding for workshops and festivals.

– Running Sustainable House Day for four years, organising regenerative farm tours, and building extensive networks in Geelong.

– Actively participating in community consultations, rallies, and petitions, while providing local environmentally friendly colleagues with casual paid work.

In her personal life, Monica maintains a street library, two compost bins for community use, and has given a street library to tenants. She has installed solar air modules, insulated tenant houses, replaced gas cooktops with induction, installed water tanks, and initiated an edible farm with tenant collaboration.

She has initiated and supervised the building of two sustainable bungalows primarily from waste materials, including innovative features like a working compost toilet, and she has conducted structural work, insulation, and creating an edible garden to retrofit her 1960s home, and also purchased a second-hand electric vehicle.

Monica’s story is a testament to her unwavering commitment to environmental sustainability and community resilience.

. . .

ABOUT ANNIE DELANEY & MARY-FAETH CHENERY
Annie Delaney is a retired academic, she is a long term activist on workers’ rights in the garment industry and the environment and is currently working on a cli-fi novel. She joined WINC to be part of a women led co housing project. She found the land in Castlemaine that WINC is now planning to build the 31 house community with shared common house and other facilities. She is part of the WINC management committee and active in a number of working groups. 

Mary-Faeth Chenery is currently president of WINC – Older Women in Cohousing Inc, a group of around 40 women from 50 years old to almost 80 who are working to create a sustainable, accessible and affordable community of 31 small homes plus common facilities to be built in Castlemaine. Together with Anneke Deutsch, her next door neighbour and co-founder, they are guiding the group through a participative design and community building process to make WINC happen.

WINC is striving for a sustainable, energy-sensitive, landcaring community on a hillside near the centre of Castlemaine. The community’s 31 homes will be small – ranging from 50m2 one-bedroom units to 80m2 two-bedroom units and built to passive house standard.

WINC focus on a community that includes women of all income levels, so five homes will be for women eligible for social housing; five homes for women who have too many assets for social housing and too few to purchase outright (their purchase will happen via shared equity from our ‘Middle Women Housing Fund’ – philanthropic donations); and 21 homes for women who can afford to purchase them fully or are eligible for a mortgage to help fund them.

The community will have lots of landcare work, as the land has a small creek running through it, but also major weed infestation there. To regenerate the landscape and creek to a healthy native plant and animal-nurturing condition is a key aim, as is developing permaculture inspired gardens.  

WINC also hopes to add to sustainability through encouraging other cohousing communities to develop, and freely shares all its documents and processes with others.

WINC has a Facebook page on www.facebook.com/winccohousing

. . .

CLIPS and SONGS:  Details of these can be found in the transcript for today’s show.

. . .

And so ends episode 512 of The Sustainable Hour. How good was it to hear three women telling their stories? Stories of women who know that a better world is possible and are determined to work through barriers placed in their way to be a part of achieving just that in their own way.

Try to imagine the difficulties they have faced in achieving their dreams. Yet with determination they have continually challenged these barriers and refused to be defeated by them. In the process they have created models for others to follow. The skills they achieved in this work continues to inspire both themselves and others and makes it easier for people who come after them. In the same way they are standing on the shoulders of women who have come before them. 

We feel so fortunate to chat to these “ordinary” people who are achieving extra-ordinary things in following their dreams each and every week. Continually being inspired by them, their compassion, their determination, their humanity and their refusal to go away. Never have these qualities been so badly needed.

We will be back with more of the same next week. Until then BE INSPIRED and keep looking for your niche in the solutions. When you find it, please come on our show and inspire others with your story.

“If working apart we are a force powerful enough to destabilise our planet, surely working together we are powerful enough to save it.​”
~ Sir David Attenborough, addressing world leaders at the UN COP26 climate summit in 2021

→ Subscribe to The Sustainable Hour podcast via Apple Podcasts

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→ The Guardian – 17 June 2024:
Why are Australian houses so cold, and how can we build 1.2m new ones without trashing the environment?
“Here’s how Australia can build new homes that not only keep us warm but cut emissions and avoid climate catastrophe.”

“The most important thing about having my home energy efficient for me is just reducing my carbon emissions.”
~ Laine Taylor

→ ABC – 4 July 2024:
Retrofitting the classic Aussie home
“Australian homes are notoriously cold in winter. Take a tour with an energy assessor to learn how a few tweaks can keep you warm, save money and reduce emissions.”

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Greenpeace put this one out on Linkedin.com – about who should be footing the bill for all the damage they’ve caused and which is hitting humanity all over the planet.

The Commons Library: Looking for ideas, skills, and pathways to action in these challenging times?

We sure are living in interesting times. The shocks keep coming and the horrors persist. What will it take to shift humanity off the current destructive path? Here’s some hunches: 

• It’s going to take many people – so we need to keep getting better at organising and mobilising. 
• It’s going to take vision – so we need to access inspiration.
• It’s going to take planning – so we need to use imagination and consider the scenarios. 
• It’s going to take wisdom – so we need to learn the lessons of history and listen to the guidance of those who have passed. 
• It’s going to take persistence, clarity and heart – so we need to take care of ourselves and each other. 

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Transcript of The Sustainable Hour no. 512

Dr Melissa Lem:
There’s no better adventure out there than working together to save the planet.

Jingle:
The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong. The Sustainable Hour.

Anthony Gleeson:
Welcome to The Sustainable Hour. We’d like to acknowledge that we’re broadcasting from the land of the Wadawurrung people. We pay tribute to their elders, past, present, and those that earn that great honour in the future. We acknowledge that they’ve been the traditional custodians of the land for millennia before it was stolen by the first white colonisers. Always was and always will be First Nations land. We’d also like to acknowledge that we cannot hope to have any form of justice without justice for First Nations Australians. And in their ancient wisdom, which they honed from nurturing both their land and their communities for millennia, lies many answers for us as we navigate the climate emergency.

Mik Aidt:
The Sustainable Hour, a warm place, but also it seems a cold place, in one sense – we’re recording this where we have cameras and we can see each other clearly, and everyone is wearing thick sweaters and some even jackets, even though we’re sitting inside. And I can tell you, where I come from, in Denmark, houses are pretty warm even though it’s very very cold in the winter, because we actually insulate the houses with double glazed windows and many other things – and that’s required by law because we don’t want people to suffer when it’s really really cold outside.

Here in Australia there’s a bit of another attitude, but it seems like, I don’t know, if it’s getting colder and colder? I suddenly hear that people are talking about that, ‘It didn’t used to be this cold – something is happening!’ – and there was an article in The Age that explained that actually, 80 per cent of all Australian homes are at a two star rating. Two stars out of 10. And that’s an expression for how badly insulated they are.

And that’s bad not only for our comfort and our health, but also for the climate. Because what it means is that we are… in Danish we say, ‘we’re firing for the birds’. The heat that we produce in our houses, whether it’s from gas or electricity, goes straight out to the birds – and the result of that is that we lose a lot of money, but we also burn a lot of energy that we didn’t need to.

So that’s the story – one of the stories that we need to focus on when it’s winter here in Australia. And certainly that is happening. We’ll be talking about it today in The Sustainable Hour, but we also begin – always! – with the global perspective on everything… And speaking of global perspective, I just want to mention that the Lancet did some research on this with the cold and they compared Australia with Sweden and it turned out that 6.5 per cent of deaths here in Australia are related to the coldness. Whereas in Sweden, 3.9 per cent of deaths are related to coldness. And that seems like absurd that there should be twice as many people dying from cold in a country like Australia compared to Sweden.

Anyway, over to Colin Mockett OAM: what do you have for us today in the global outlook?

Colin Mockett’s Global Outlook:
Thank you, Mik. Yes, I’d like to carry on with the Swedish thing. I’d love to have people’s ideas on why they think more people are dying or whether you can trust the statistics. But no, our roundup this week is all about China and it’s jam-packed with good news.

The first is that an international team of experts has released a new report that shows that China appears to have passed its greenhouse gas emissions peak. From here, the trend is always going to be downwards. And such is the size of the Chinese economy. They’re predicting that it’s likely to lead world emissions on a downward trend. The report follows months of the world’s climate scientists and analysts pouring over data, and what they found was what they consider to be of profound historical significance. When they looked at the figures for the past four months, they found that China’s economy was growing along with the wider world at around about the same rate. Yet China’s greenhouse gas emissions appear to have peaked. Sometime last year or perhaps earlier this China’s emissions reached a high point and began trending down. Now if China has peaked, there’s good reason to believe that global emissions have peaked too. It would mean that sometime over the past four months, the stubborn connection between economic growth and greenhouse gas pollution has severed. And the world’s surge in emissions has ended. It’s a run that began 250 years ago with Britain’s Industrial Revolution.

Laurie Milliverter, senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute and lead analyst of the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, was among the first with the analysis. He wrote that despite a post-COVID surge in its emissions, China’s massive deployment of wind and solar energy

Its growth in electric vehicle production and sales and the end of a drought that had cut hydroelectricity generation had caused the nation’s emissions to sharply reduce. And that was out of step with the nation’s economic growth. Now following that report, the International Energy Agency released a paper of their own saying that largely as a result of that Chinese greed surge.

Global investment in renewable technology in 2023 outstripped that of the fossil fuel industry at the time. And late last month, Australia’s Smart Energy Council took a delegation to China to visit the Shanghai New Energy Conference, along with several renewable energy factories. Tim Buckley, who’s founder of Climate Energy Finance, who was on the delegation, reported visiting TW Soler’s panel production line. He said that it was a long wall, half a kilometre long, of manufacturing lines and not a worker in sight. All of it was done by robots. Others reported visiting an EV manufacturer with two lines of production, each turning out a complete EV every 36 seconds.

That’s a new electric vehicle every 36 seconds on China’s current production lines. The Australian delegation included the former Queensland Premier, Anastasia Palaszczuk, who went to a battery manufacturer that she said had 21,000 people working in its research and development division alone. And that was up from 16,000 last year.

They reported that every week in 2023, China installed as much wind and solar infrastructure as Australia did in its best year, which was last year. So every week, China outstrips a year of the progress of Australia. In May, the Chinese car manufacturer BYD announced a new plug-in hybrid car that it boasted could travel 2,000 kilometres on a single charge and tank. And then the American firm of Bloomberg New Energy Finance reported that Chinese investment in battery manufacturing has reduced costs worldwide. Over the past year, the price of lithium-ion phosphate battery cells dropped by 51 per cent, largely due to China.

Now this is not to suggest that China is an environmental white knight, says another report. This was quoted in the AIDS at the weekend. Alongside its huge renewable deployment last year, China was also building a temporary transition unit of coal-powered generation every fortnight. China is acting out of self-interest, the report said.

It wants the coal to power its EVs so it can wean itself off of foreign oil. It wants to dominate future industries and advance manufacturing. The fact that all this has an environmental benefit is icing on the cake for China and the world. Now under the Paris Agreement, China promised to have its emissions peak in 2030. It appears to have hit that target seven years ahead of schedule. To the Asian Institute’s lead analyst, Miral Vera, we are at a critical point. Should China maintain its current trajectory, it would enable emissions reductions of at least 35 per cent by 2023 to 2035, he said. This would make its goal of reaching net zero by 2060 credible and achievable.

And that would give the world a much better chance of stabilising the climate somewhere near the Paris targets by 2040. And that highly positive news ends my roundup for the week.

Jingle
Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.

Anthony Gleeson:
Our first guest today is Monica Winston. Monica, amongst other things, is a key player in Transition Streets Geelong. So Monica, welcome back to the Sustainable Hour. And what’s up front for you at the moment? What exciting things are happening on the Transition Streets front?

Monica Winston:
Thank you, Tony. We got a council grant of $10,000 from the City of Greater Geelong’s Environment and Sustainability Unit and that’s supporting us to run six events in the second half of this year. And they’re targeting different kinds of topics and the goal is to both supply residents of the city with information but also an opportunity to meet each other.

We’re always about networking and we’re always helping people to find like-minded others, because we know that they are very creative and they end up doing all sorts of amazing stuff together. And look, people need support, don’t we, to navigate all the things that we need to confront?

Mik Aidt:
Monica, maybe before you begin explaining what the events are about, let’s hear a little bit about how is it going for Transition Streets Geelong and what is that organisation all about?

Monica Winston:
Transition Streets Geelong started in 2017. It’s part of the global Transition movement where people voluntarily reduce their ecological footprint in the areas specifically of water, energy, food, transport and waste and consumption.

But the big difference between people doing it on their own is that we help people get together and do it in community, ideally in very hyperlocal groups, ideally walking distance.

So in 2020, there was 25 groups in different suburbs in Geelong. And of course, you know, the last few years has sort of changed that a lot. But there’s still a huge network of people and we have a Facebook page and more than two and a half thousand people on there. That sort of thing.

Colin Mockett:
That’s lovely, Monica. And we of course know you as a member of our all-female Sustainable Hour that we put on annually for International Women’s Day.

You have irons in many fires, Monica, and I’m following you on most of them. Can you give us a rough idea, a quick points only idea of the six different events that you’ll be holding later this year?

Yes, the first one is on the 31st of August at Springdale neighborhood house in Drysdale. And it’s going to be featuring Adrian Drew, who’s coming on in a couple of weeks, I believe. And it’s about the amazing power of the landscape, whether it’s urban or rural, to restore the small water cycle, using earthworks and plants and using the blueprint of the Australian landscape to create abundant life and a safe climate. And at the same time it produces amazing fertility, attracts biodiversity back to the region. I’ve been to his property, I ran a few farm tours with him. It’s just incredible what he’s achieved in about 11 years. So he’s part of this very big network of people using landscape to achieve multiple outcomes. That’s that one. Sorry, you asked me for dot points and I’ve just given you a big paragraph.

The next one is on the 7th of September. That’s going to be the horticulturist Craig Castree and he’s focusing on what you can do with soils as a core strategy for edible gardens. He’s well known in the region. The next one will be a very exciting plant-based whole food cooking session with multiple cooking stations and that’s going to be at the monastery in Breakwater on the 22nd of September which is a Sunday.

We’re going to have a permaculture speed dating session which is similar to an event we ran about three years ago and there’s going to be one all about how to create your own groups, your own small groups and hearing from people that have done.

And then lastly, somewhere in the first two weeks of November, there’s going to be a sustainable business event. That’s going to be pretty exciting. And Mik is involved in organising that one…

Mik Aidt:
And that’s because we started a podcast… if you remember, about half a year ago, we talked about it also here in The Sustainable Hour when I met Alan and Cherry – Alan who’s been guests in The Sustainable Hour. And we decided to do a podcast specifically directed towards the business sector, the business community. It’s called The Business Revolution, nothing less. And as it’s turned out, what we talk about a lot is three letters: E S G, because that’s become a bit of a buzzword. It’s another way of saying ‘climate action’ in the business world. Very often you find that people are shying away if you begin to use the word ‘climate’. But if you say ‘ESG’, it’s almost as if it’s a code that opens up – then you are able to talk about climate. But you do it in a more holistic and in a bigger sense, talking also about the social impacts, governance, and other aspects of what it means to run a business in a proper way.

Colin Mockett:
So what does ESG stands for?

Mik Aidt:
ESG stands for ‘Environment’, ‘Social’ and ‘Governance’. And it actually started out with a report that was published exactly 20 years ago in 2004 from Geneva. The United Nations published a report which was titled, ‘Who Cares Wins’ – and at that time it was mostly about investments. What they said was that if you actually care about the environment, the social aspects of running a business and good governance, you will win in the long term. So they were speaking up against at the time, decades of this ‘greed-is-good’ and it’s just about making fast money and making shortcuts and all that. So they were trying to come in with a different narrative, you could say. And this report slowly, slowly over 20 years has come to a point where now in the EU, it’s become part of legislation: All bigger companies need to report on their ESG achievements. How are they performing?

So we believe that that’s very much part of what needs to happen here in Australia. The business revolution that we talk about is a revolution in these aspects of environment, social and governance just as well. So it’s turned out that we are doing one show, one podcast episode after the other about ESG. And we’ve also now created a course where we’re doing teaching to employees about exactly that question as you asked Colin – ‘What is ESG?’ – so that people get an understanding about what the idea is and they can get into the work of supporting it in many different ways.

All that is what we’ve talked with Monica about – that we need to… here in Geelong… to get people more together around that, create an event where people who are interested can show up, can see, we can demonstrate the little course that we have created for employees. We can get like-minded people in the room. Also, there are initiatives like the B Corp, which is a network for organisations that want to do better and want to take good care of the climate and so on. And there are other initiatives. It’s a long story. It’s a great opportunity to network. What Monica represents is the community and to have a meeting where we could talk as a community as well as businesses, I think is very exciting.

Colin Mockett:
Monica, for that one, the ESG one that Mik is involved in, are you inviting the City of Greater Geelong input? Because I mean, it strikes me that ESG is all about the City of Greater Geelong.

Monica Winston:
That’s an interesting idea, Colin. We can talk about what you’ve got in mind there. Just following on from what Mik said though, people use businesses and we also want to help promote local businesses because as we know a lot of people in Geelong and small businesses are doing it tough. So this would be an opportunity also to showcase businesses, whether it’s people who are doing permaculture gardens – who knows? That sort of thing. So it’s about introducing people to businesses that they don’t maybe know exist, who are doing the right thing without any particular accreditation, who are addressing social, environmental and economic targets.

The other thing I didn’t say was part of this grant is that we are making things available to people on all incomes. So we will be charging for some of the events because that’s part of our grant model is to raise some revenue in that way. But some people can afford, but if anyone can’t afford things, they will be invited to let us know and we’ll have perhaps a bit of a sliding scale or some free places as well. can I just say and give a little plug for the podcast, the business revolution, if you want to hear more about it. And if you want to listen to interviews about ESG, as I mentioned, there is a website, it’s business revolution dot Earth.

Colin Mockett:
Monica, if people are interested in coming to your events, where do they go?

Monica Winston:
We haven’t actually started this is the very first promotion that we’ve done. We’re going to recycle some posters that we had called the Sustainable Living Festival that we ran in 2020. It’s going to be on our Facebook page, Transition Streets with an S, Geelong. And we’ve got a profile page with the yellow dot. That’s not the one that’s very interactive. The other one with this bicycle with four people on it and a dog, that’s the one to go to.

And we do have an Instagram account as well. So there will be things on that. So they’re the best places to look out for.

Colin Mockett:
Excellent, Monica. Now look, I’ve been involved with you in the past on the Sustainable House Day. You wrote me in for a sustainable house. Since then, we use the second lockdown for COVID to completely decarbonise our lives. We got rid of all of our gas appliances and we got rid of our car and motor mill. We got rid of everything. We don’t burn carbon and haven’t taken a plane trip either. Come to that since that time. I’m very happy to come and become involved should you wish it. I would fit into about three of your six, I think, in the decarbonisation. It’s a new concept that I find surprises people. They think, I can’t get rid of my gas cooker. And you have to explain to them that you can. And it’s fine. And the world doesn’t end.

Monica Winston:
Yeah. That’s right, Colin. Yeah, it’s been lovely to interact with you over the years. That was when I was on the committee – I was a founding member of Geelong Sustainability and on the committee there for five and a half years, running the Sustainable House Day was part of that chapter. And I agree. The big thing that people don’t talk about as much is just living more simply. You know, we can’t just replace the ever increasing demand for energy with other sources of energy because we’re just going to wreck the world’s ecosystems in the process. But we can reduce our demand and have a great life. Well, we know we can even have a better life when we’re less obsessed with things, and money, and all that sort of thing.

Anthony Gleeson:
Monica, you’ve been active for a long time now. What excites you the most about what you’ve been involved in or the changes that you’ve seen in Geelong on the sustainability front?

Monica Winston:
The numbers of people who are engaged in taking action at any level, whether it’s growing a couple of herbs or putting a compost bin on the property or whether it’s joining the Friday night by bike crew who meet once a month.

Geelong Sustainability… I invited a couple of women onto that committee in 2013, I think it was, and they have just supercharged it. They and the team that they created have just taken it to whole other level, and that was very exciting as well. But just to see the number of people who want to do something, who also want to make themselves more resilient, you know, those conversations that are happening online and everywhere else, it’s heartwarming.

Anthony Gleeson:
Yep, terrific. I’d like to commend you on the comment you made before about we need to live more simply and in addition to that that some people make it that so that they can simply live.

. . .

SONG
Julian Lennon: ‘Change’

Don’t let them tell you
What you can and cannot do
Don’t ever let them
Take your dreams away from you

Now it’s a new world
And we’ve finally got new eyes
Now there’s a new flame
And it’s burning deep inside

So we’ll gather up our courage
For the road that lies ahead
If we don’t do this together
We’ll surely end up dead

And we’ll put the past behind us
Clean the air and clean the sea
Feed the world with human kindnеss
Only love will set us free

We gonna changе (change)
Change the world together
You and I and everyone forever
We gonna change (change)
Change the world together
You and I and everyone forever

What will it take now
For us to open up our hearts
Gotta take one step
Before we fall apart

Open your eyes now
Can’t see the forest for the trees
There’s only one planet
One planet, people please

If we take away our egos
Take away the love of greed
If we clean up all our oceans
Clean the sky and plant the seed
With a forest of devotion
We can hope there’s air to breathe
There’ll be hope for one another
Love for those in need

We gonna change (change)
Change the world together
You and I and everyone forever
We gonna change (change)
Change the world together
You and I and everyone forever

Audio collage: (29:11) DW newsreaders
For the first time ever, global warming has exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius for an entire year. There is this tendency towards higher temperature and this…

Greenpeace video with Oli Frost, posted on Linkedin.com:
Yeah, I care about the climate crisis, but who’s going to pay for it? Well, finally, we have the answer and it is… The oil companies.
Or at least they SHOULD be paying for it.
The industry has known for decades that they were causing this crisis and instead of addressing it, they covered it up while making 2.8 billion dollars every single day for the last 50 years.
You do the math. Okay, I’ll do it.
52 trillion dollars in profits.
To put that in context, the damage from extreme weather events reportedly cost 41 billion dollars in the last six months alone.
And these events are made only more frequent and severe by the burning of fossil fuels. So what did the fossil fuel companies pay for these damages?
Zero plus zero, carrier zero.
Oh yeah, that’s right. They didn’t pay anything.
Instead, they made record profits while everyone struggled to pay their energy bills.
The only reason they can make these profits is that their running costs do not take into account their products’ true cost to every living species. Of course ordinary people do use fossil fuels, but we don’t really have a choice when we turn on the light if it comes from affordable renewables or from an expensive fossil fuel power plant. And wanting to turn on the light isn’t a crime… I think. Whereas covering up the effect that your product has on the entire planet probably is.

Fake Exxon advertisement created by Yellow Dot Studios and posted on Linkedin.com: (30:53)
There’s a world we all want to live in again. A world where the air is pure and crisp and clean, and fills your lungs with joy. A world where you can drink water from any river or creek. And your house will still be there tomorrow if it rains. Here at Exxon, we believe in that world and we are working hard to make sure that our customers believe that we believe in that world.

We understand the road has been bumpy and that we haven’t always done the best we could. Sure, our own scientists accurately predicted catastrophic climate change 60 years ago, but we didn’t want you to know about it. That’s why we spent billions on ads and media manipulation, covering it up. Then we rigged the government so leaders in both parties would do our bidding. And yes, we did everything in our power to block clean energy tech, so we could keep force-feeding you oil via expanding global infrastructure, monstrous vehicles, and disposable plastics and chemicals that don’t go away. Ever.

And yes, every now and then you squawk about how evil we are. But then we drop gas prices a nickel and you shut right back up. Do you have any idea how easy it is to get you off our backs with a little bullshit about your responsibilities to the planet? About your carbon footprint? Pretending plastic recycling actually makes a difference. You’re letting us get away with it, you dumb bitches.

All of our tricks work. The world is a burning, out-of-control charnel house.
The last generation to die of old age has already been born, and you still let oil executives freely show their face in public. We’re just one company, but you’re seven billion people. Get off your asses and do something, you fucking peasants! Exxon. Fuck me? Fuck you! Ha-ha-ha.

Anthony Gleeson:
Our next guests today are from a group called WINC, which is Older Women in Co-housing. So we have Annie Delaney and Mary-Faeth Chenery. Welcome ladies! Thanks for coming on. Tell us about the exciting initiative that you two are involved in right now.

Mary-Faeth Chenery:
Great. Thanks for having us. It’s really exciting to talk about it. Yeah. Well, WINC’s a group that’s a not-for-profit organisation, it’s a membership organisation for older women 50 and up. And we have probably about 40 some members now with a waiting list of others. And then we have a group of what we call friends, people who think what we’re doing is a good idea. And what we’re doing is creating a co-housing community for living together and supporting one another in Castlemaine after seven years of good hard

Um, and she thankfully found us a piece of land that we could buy and we got together, pulled some money and started going there. That was, I think the fourth piece of land we’d had a serious look at. And yeah, what we hope to do is to have 31 small homes. And this is an interesting link to the sustainability part that you mentioned to live more simply because our homes, they’ll range in size from 50 square meters, 65 square meters to 80 square meter two-bedroom. So they’re relatively small compared to the footprint of most houses in Australia. And as well as those small homes, we’ll have a common house where we can gather and have meals together. As it happens, there was a building, a home on the site that we bought and it has four bedrooms. We’ll turn that into our common part of the common house that guest rooms because our little tiny houses probably won’t have enough space for your guests. So each of us will get a chance to have guests there as well as, you know, spaces together, whether it’s library or meditation or yoga or crafts or a little gym to keep us healthy and so forth. So, yeah, that’s an overview of what we’re up

And there are a whole lot of us who care a whole lot about sustainability. So we wrote a design brief, which involves making sure that our houses are as close to passive house standard as we can get. There’ll be plenty of solar there. But the key principles, aside from sustainability for our group, are sustainability, community, and the opportunity to make sure we make the whole site accessible for everyone?

Yes, so I think we’re really trying to bring in, obviously the really important sustainable elements in terms of how we build and how we live so it’s more affordable for women because an important part of WINC is that we have a whole range of economic and social conditions of the women who are hopefully going to be living there. So for example, we’re building in social housing. So we’ll have five social housing women in the 31 houses we’re building. We’ll have, is it about 20, Mary-Faeth, that I think are buying outright?

And then we have another group of women who only have enough money for half their house. So we call them the ‘middle women’ because we also be raising money to support them to buy the other half of the house.

So I think the point I was going to make is that sustainability, not just in terms of the buildings, but it’s also about building a sustainable community where there’s a whole range of experiences economically and socially of women who are participating. And I think that was a really big attraction for me, participating in WINC, that I joined a few years ago. Mary-Faeth has been there from the beginning and really done the hard yards. But the number of us have come into in the last couple of years have really, you know, that’s the part that really I find really exciting that I can participate in this housing project, but also support other women to participate in it as well.

Colin Mockett:
How many houses have you got already or is it laid out or we’re in the town planning process?

So we have our town planning applications being considered by Mount Alexander Shire now, and we hope by September to have a positive outcome on that. So we haven’t built any of them yet. We do have a prospective developer builder, which is wonderful, and he’s local. So all being well, and the planning department and council and community agree, we’ll start building mid next

Mik Aidt:
I’m wondering: where does that leave the men? Do you have rules about not having men in the houses at all – or what’s your view on that?

Well, it’s a group of older women who want to live together as a women’s community. Most of us are lesbian, but not all. But all of us have wonderful men in our lives and we fully expect to have them visit us. I have a brother who I hope will come. Many of our women have sons and look forward to that. But it’s just a women’s community and we hope that’ll work out.

Certainly our guest rooms will be available on that front. We also recognise there may be children from time to time. Certainly many of them are grandmothers. So yeah, we look forward to that.

Colin Mockett:
Is there an existing community in Castlemaine? I wonder whether there was a community of single women in Castlemaine and that’s why you chose that place?

No, it isn’t why. We thought we were going to build in Dalesford actually, which is where I live at the moment and where Annika Deutsch, who’s my next door neighbour and she’s really the initiative of the idea here. But we ended up in Castlemaine because of the train line in part, because of the receptivity of the community our initiative and because we found a wonderful piece of land there that we could buy. must say buying it at auction was one of the scariest moments of my life.

Yeah, and it’s really a big challenge for communities because I was involved trying to set up a co-housing group in Melbourne and I think wherever you are, the challenge is finding land and buying land is probably one of the biggest hurdles for co-housing groups. And it’s probably, you know, in its early stages and starting to take off in Australia, but Denmark, obviously the start of it and a lot in the US and other countries. But yeah, most of us can’t get housing loans because we don’t work or we’re at the end of our working life. So – we can’t get loans to get mortgages. We’ve had to do it ourselves, basically find the land, which was challenging to find appropriate land that was within the city limit, close to a railway line and also funded ourselves. So that’s a really big challenge for any group thinking about doing this, which we obviously would encourage and want to share information with groups who are thinking starting up but it is one of the big hurdles because there’s not public land available for people to buy into and or government subsidies to buy land so but we have a really amazing piece of land five acres and on the edge of town in Castlemaine where we will be building building our houses and doing a lot of revegetation of the the area in the coming years to make it beautiful.

Anthony Gleeson:
Now we hear the housing crisis mentioned more and more often. And I’m really interested in the social housing aspect of your project. Can we talk a little bit more about that?

Yep. So we are partnering with a community housing provider to provide those five social housing houses for WINC members. So that’s also a big challenge in itself

I’m not sure if you’re aware, Mary-Faeth can add to this, but the process of, you know, costing it, applying for government funding through the housing provider to fund those five houses is a very, you know, a long process and difficult. But I think that’s, it’s an incredibly important part that like I’ve got enough money to buy, sell my house in Melbourne and buy into the project in Castlemaine, but many women don’t and we’re facing a housing crisis in Australia. The largest group at risk are older women, women over 50. They’ve become the new homeless group or the major homeless group. So creating housing that will support women who can’t afford to buy their house but will also have in the future secure, safe, sustainable house in a beautiful area is amazing that we can actually achieve this.

And we really want it to be a model for others. And part of our purpose is to share the model. And that includes the finance model because as he said, nobody wanted to help us. There’s no bank out there and the government, we’ve talked to them and so forth, but we created a unit trust, had nine investors who put in, nine members who put in a hundred thousand dollars each as unit. Then we’ve had to borrow the rest, but we borrowed from our members largely. We’ve had some philanthropic support, which has been fantastic. But if we can show that a group of older women can come together, pull this together, work as a membership group, include social housing, include the middle women and include those, then it’s replicable.

Colin Mockett:
And it’s all so wonderful, Mary-Faeth! More power to you and more power to your. I have actually experienced a lot of Castlemaine. There are many people there who are living sustainably. Some of them are living off-grid, and there’s lots of musicians, there’s some really good musicians in Castlemaine. Many people have moved out there since COVID – from Melbourne. They’ve sold their Melbourne houses as you’re going to do, Annie. And you’ll find yourself in a rich community with a lot of sustainable influence. It’s a very different community to suburban Melbourne for sure.

Yeah, and obviously it’s important to us that we go to community where it’s LGBTIQ plus friendly. So we want to feel secure. And for lesbians, that’s important because there’s a lot more anxiety, potential homelessness, a whole lot context in our society. So we want to feel gay friendly and we want to feel that the communities behind us, which it seems it is, but we also want to find kindred spirits and Castlemaine definitely is the place for that.

You also mentioned the social housing as part of the social housing element that you’d be helping fundraising to help pay the rest of that. What will that look like?

We’re working with a community housing provider. As you may know, the state government doesn’t fund the whole lot. So you can expect to have maybe 80 per cent of the funds and then you have to raise the rest. So between the community housing provider finding some resources and we have found some resources to help us well. We’ve also had a very generous donor who’s given us some money for our middle women housing fund. So we expect to be able to fund half of the houses or depends on how much money they have in the bank. And they need to have a 40 per cent to start with because we can’t do the whole lot.

But we are able to fund three of our six middle women at this stage and we’ll be looking for philanthropic support or potentially social investment. We’ve been talking with some social investors as possible ways to fund the rest of our middle women. We hope to have six homes for middle women and we have members who are in that situation where they are middle women. They can only bring 40 to 50, in some cases 60 percent of the money to the party. So we’ll go from there.

And the important, really amazing part of this is that, you know, essentially Winc will, or in some kind of financial arrangements, own 40-50 percent of some of these houses. So in perpetuity, we’ll be able to keep providing that subsidised housing for future residents. I mean, I think that’s what’s really, you know, a really important legacy we’re building. Very much so. It’s a really gorgeous concept when you think about it. It’s a sort of commune that is also tied up with the current housing boom.

Because you know, if you can manage to build your houses in the current climate, you’ll have a huge asset in the value of those houses. And that’s something that’s really unusual in previous communes. Yeah, I don’t know if we’d call it a commute. It basically is, isn’t it? Well, it’s community.

But it is freehold title. We looked at everything. We looked at community land trusts, looked at cooperatives, and so forth, and just decided that it’s so much easier to be able to pass on your asset if it’s something that people understand, freehold title. And as Annie suggests, we know that some of our members will, when they pass on, they will give their land and home to Winc, which will enable us to do a better job funding future women in need.

Monica Winston:
It’s just fascinating what you’re doing on so many levels. I’m wondering with the design brief that you have given the designer and the builders, does it take into consideration how the design will create more harmony in the community that you’re building and how has that manifested?

I think it does. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, they’re all, all the car parks, for example, are off to the side. There are no garages where people can just come in and drive in and hide. So you’ll have to get from your car park space over to your home. They’re in sort of rows because of the nature of the site where there will be two homes sort of linked together. So you’ll have a neighbor quite close.

We’re all within walking distance of the common house and the design is for social interaction. So you’ll see whether your neighbors put up her blind in the morning and is she doing all right? So there’s this encouragement of community through that process. And it’s, there’s a really important balance of having your own private space, but having this interconnected living through the common areas, through having doing gardening together, hopefully going in a hot tub. know, there’s a, yeah, it’s a really perfect combination where people can, you know, tuck themselves away if they’re fairly introverted, don’t want to communicate with people, but there’s a caring community around them that they can interact with and have meals together if they wish. And so I think, and also when you live on your own, sometimes you just need the motivation to get out there and do a bit of gardening or, and we’ll have a big vegetable garden and lots of activities. it’s kind of a, and I think the other social element in a state of communities, breaking down loneliness, reducing loneliness, creating more social inclusion. And that’s really important for us, whether we’re, you know, whatever age, young or old, we don’t want to be, we want to be inclusive. And I think that’s the important part for me in the really attractive parties that will be sharing activities but yeah it’s not a forced interaction it’s it’ll become a natural interaction with each other about how we connect and build that cohesion seems to be nothing but positive

Colin Mockett:
It sounds wonderful. There is a possibility that one of the donors that you’re looking for could well be listening today.

Yeah, well, we hope so. If you give us your connection details, we’ll put it on the front of this particular podcast and we’ll see whether you get, see whether you do draw any donors, any money, any more support in. You certainly have our support.

We would like you, if you wouldn’t mind, both of you, to come back and report on your progress as it goes through each stage. Yeah, we’d love to. That would be exceptional. Thank you. Because we’re coming towards the end now. Is there a website where people can reach you already? Yes. It’s WincCohousing.org.au.

And yeah, people can go to our website and just, you know, find out what we’re about and be in touch, definitely. And we’d love to hear from people. And we’re open to some other possible ways in the future. Like we have some younger people who have said, well, what about the possibility of buying a home there? And we want our members to be residents then if fit and they became a member and they bought a house but they’re not ready to live there they can rent it to someone who does want to live there who’s another member we do have some members who can’t afford to buy they want to be part of it and they want to rent and how about the dogs and cats that’s most frequently asked question the answer is yes yes dogs we have a pet friendly community to and without it’s probably one of our most controversial discussion areas about – I’ve been carrying the pet policy at the moment. We do have a lot of women who have dogs, being lesbians we tend to have dogs. But so there will be a healthy dog community and they’ll have a lot of rights as well.

Mik Aidt:
That’s all we could fit in one Sustainable Hour. And what a wonderful and cheerful Sustainable Hour. Thank you very much, Colin, Tony, Monica, Annie and Mary-Faeth. We usually round off with saying, ‘Be the difference’. I was wondering if you have some alternative suggestions to what we could be.

I think ‘be the community’ is the one for me.

Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. ‘Be the community and make it happen’.

I was going to rebel and say, ‘Enjoy the difference!’ – or: ‘Enjoy the change’.

Monica, you’ve always been a rebel.

Not like anyone else here.

. . .

SONG (54:02)
Janelle Kroll: ‘Walk With You’ (2018)

Even in the day and night and in the cold of the day
The burning light and the darkest way
I’ll walk with you
Even in the light of dawn
In a lonely out of the broken heart when your mind is gone
I’ll walk with you
I’ll fall with you, I’ll break with you
I’ll change for you, it’s hard to do
I’ll hurt with you, I’ll lie with you
Get drunk on you, I want the truth
Some kind of magic, baby we have it
Whatever happens I will walk with you
Some kind of magic, baby we have it
Whatever happens I will walk with you

I will walk with you
I will walk with you
Even in a hell of time we fall apart
When you fall behind, when they break your heart
I’ll walk with you

Even in a deepest blue and the black is black
When you’re far away and you kill the bad
I’ll stand by you
I’ll run with you, become with you
Be one with you, the whole way through
I’ll fight for you, to ride by you
This life with you, it’s hard to lose

Some kind of magic, baby we have it
Whatever happens I will walk with you
Some kind of magic, baby we have it
Whatever happens I will walk with you

I will walk with you
I will walk with you
I will walk with you

Some kind of magic, baby we have it
Whatever happens I will walk with you
Some kind of magic, baby we have it
Whatever happens I will walk with you

I will walk with you
I will walk with you
I will walk with you
I will walk with you

. . .

Trailer for The Business Revolution podcast:

The Business Revolution.
Hello everyone and welcome to the Business Revolution. A podcast where we’re going to dive into the vibrant transformations that are happening in the corporate world. Towards being green, circular and sustainable. I’m Cherry. I’m Alan. And my name is Mik.
We are three independent consultants who are navigating transformative tides in Australia’s corporate landscape and we want to help businesses how to do this. And we’re going to be embarking on a series of really enlightening interviews and engaging conversations and segments and we’re hoping that you’re going to join us on this journey.
We’re putting 6.2 billion dollars on the table. We started three years ago. We’ve already saved 400 million to make ourselves fully fossil fuel free by 2030.
The reality is that the force of logic, cheaper power, is on the side of the renewable revolution.
Climate change is affecting the Australian economy, it’s affecting businesses, it’s affecting individuals, our employees. I think it’s not an issue that business should have its head in the sand on.
And yes, revolution – it’s a big word. We know that. But listen, everything begins with a word, with a thought, an idea, maybe just a feeling.
When you think about it, after all, this entire beautiful world that humans have built on this planet is all the making of human thought.
In this podcast, we are ready to stare down the dragon.
So we want to tackle challenges with courage, with honesty, and maybe, well, definitely with a little bit of humor because we need that. We need optimism and positivity.
Absolutely, Cherry. This is so important because that’s what brings us together. And that’s what we need in a business revolution. Something that brings us together, something that builds community among those of us who want to be first movers in this space. We want to create a space for exploring and sharing the latest knowledge and insights, whether it’s on carbon footprint reduction, ESG legislation, emissions accounting, and best practices in this ever evolving space.
We need extraordinary, revolutionary action. We need a revolution. Revolutionary thinking, revolutionary action.
So hit that subscribe button on Spotify or Apple podcasts. And you can contact us of course on our website, which is www.businessrevolution.earth. Let the business revolution begin, one episode at a time.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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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Live-streaming on Wednesdays

The Sustainable Hour is streamed live on the Internet and broadcasted on FM airwaves in the Geelong region every Wednesday from 11am to 12pm (Melbourne time).

→ To listen to the program on your computer or phone, click here – or go to www.947thepulse.com where you then click on ‘Listen Live’ on the right.

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Podcast archive

Over 500 hours of sustainable podcasts.

Listen to all of The Sustainable Hour radio shows as well as special Regenerative Hours and Climate Revolution episodes in full length.

→ Archive on climatesafety.info – with additional links
→ Archive on podcasts.apple.com – phone friendly archive

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