Tree the difference

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The Sustainable Hour no. 521 | Transcript | Podcast notes

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Guest in The Sustainable Hour on 25 September 2024 is Susi Millton, manager of TreeProject.

Susi has been the manager of TreeProject for almost four years. She loves her job and believes that revegetating Victoria one seedling at a time is one of the most important and honourable positions one can have in a career.

With her management skills she has increased tree seedlings being grown from 60,000 to just over 140,000 per season.

TreeProject has almost 400 volunteer growers and ran 55 planting days planting over 50,000 seedlings with over 1,500 volunteers this year. The Committee’s and Susi’s vision is to grow TreeProject to 1 million seedlings a year.

→ Order seedlings | About the growers | Suggested donations

→ More information about the Victorian Carbon Farming Project (VCFP)

The 521th episode of The Sustainable Hour discusses the urgent reality of climate change and the need for immediate action. It emphasises the importance of community initiatives like TreeProject, which aims to revegetate Victoria by engaging volunteers in tree planting. Giving education and support for volunteer growers, TreeProject has been successful in planting thousands of trees across Victoria.

The Hour also highlights global climate trends, local actions, and the significance of connecting with nature to foster a sustainable future. Connecting with nature can inspire individuals to take action for the environment.

It is hard to explain just how uplifting it is to be part of the team putting The Sustainable Hour podcast together. Chatting to Susi Millton today once again was inspirational. Hearing her speak so enthusiastically about her involvement in TreeProject and how it has benefitted her personally as it has grown over the years counteracts all the doom and gloom we so often hear. The ‘it’s’ in ‘Prepare before it’s here.

Week after week we talk to people who share the concerns we have about the climate crisis we face, but none of them have succumbed to the helplessness that can accompany this work.

Take the time to watch and listen to the material we’ve included links to in the notes that accompany the podcasts we put out.

Right now there’s an 81-year-old grandfather who has ridden his push-bike from Perth. He will be in Melbourne on Friday. If you want to meet him, Neville Bruce and his support team will be on the steps at Parliament House this Friday, 27 September 2024. He is on a short stopover before he pedals on to Canberra. Along the way, he is collecting signatures from people who are very much against our current federal government’s gas-led recovery. You can find out more at: cavalcade2canberra.au

We’ll be back next week with more people who are part and parcel of creating this safer, more just, inclusive, peaceful and healthy world for which so many of us yearn.
~ Tony Gleeson

“I just get reinvigorated in an instant. It is the most uplifting and incredible feeling to be heading this group with our committee of management, of course, and all our volunteers, as we are really making a huge difference in our environment. We have to just keep planting the trees. We have to keep revitalising. We’re infilling all this remnant vegetation, you know: help the frogs, the wildlife, everything with ground covers, mid-story, the butterflies, and the waterways.”
~ Susi Millton, manager of TreeProject

→ Subscribe to The Sustainable Hour podcast via Apple Podcasts

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Sustainable House Day Geelong and surrounds 2024 is only a few weeks away

This year, eight remarkable homes from Greater Geelong, Surf Coast and Queenscliff are open to the public including cutting-edge technology, energy efficiency, Passivhaus designs and innovative retrofits as well as a rare 10-star energy rated home. Not only does Geelong Sustainability have these fantastic open homes, you can also book for the Sustainable Homes and Gardens Seminar, Industry Breakfast, My Efficient Home Webinar, or view the houses online and plan your day.

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Connect with the natural world

WorkForClimate wrote in their weekly newsletter:

There sure was a bit of grim news to absorb this week: from Earth possibly breaching seven of nine planetary boundaries to Australia’s Environment Minister approving three new coal mine expansions (a move described as the “opposite of climate action” by environmentalists).

Yet, it was this piece by writer and editor David Sassoon that really stuck. A personal essay about a walk to the beach on a blazing hot summer’s day that was incredibly moving for its ability to connect right to the heart of why we do what we do.

David writes: “As coal goes up our smokestacks all over the globe, they release their captive load of ancient carbon into the atmosphere. In a geologic instant – over the last few centuries, merely – the unfathomably long and patient work of Earth is thus being undone.”

Sometimes this work we do – especially in corporate spaces – can feel disconnected from the very thing we are working to save: the natural world. Facts and numbers and graphs and stats, while all essential, on their own can have a way of emotionally distancing us from the reality of the climate crisis. So, this is just a gentle reminder to step out of the office this weekend and reconnect with the thing that is driving us all on together.  

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Speaking of flooding

Last month, flash floods swept through Bangladesh, leaving destruction and devastation in its wake. Today, the death toll now stands at 71, including 19 children, with more than 4.7 million people impacted across 11 districts. Over 509,310 families remain stranded, while 207,000 people are seeking refuge in emergency shelters.

In 2024, an ongoing series of Central European floods have been caused by a record heavy rainfall generated by Storm Boris, an extremely humid Genoa low. The flooding began in Austria and the Czech Republic, then spread to Poland, Romania and Slovakia, and then onwards to Germany, Hungary and Italy. As of 20 September 2024, flooding across central and eastern Europe and into Italy contributed to the displacement of over 25,000 people.

New leaders and politics urgently required

“The self-congratulatory bullshit from corporates, finance, bankers etc about the massive progress we have made only demonstrates they have absolutely no understanding of the real implications of climate change.

1.5°C degrees is, to all intents and purposes, here. Every day we are now seeing major climate-related disasters somewhere in the world, which myopic media choose to ignore.

In terms of the key priority, to reduce global emissions, in thirty years we have achieved precisely nothing – they are still going up.

Current leaders are unwilling and incapable of addressing the problem. New leaders and politics urgently required.

We seem to have forgotten this is a genuine emergency.”
~ Ian Dunlop, Director at Chôra Foundation

From the frontlines of a burning planet

Matt Krogh, Amazon Campaign Director at Stand.earth, wrote: It feels like the world is on fire right now – and in so many ways, it is. This summer, like many folks, I watched the news in horror as wildfires tore through Jasper National Park in Canada, leaving destruction in their wake. Entire ecosystems were devastated, and local communities are still recovering. These weren’t just natural wildfires – they were fueled by human actions and climate change. The forests that once stood strong, absorbing carbon and keeping the climate in check, are now being bulldozed for fossil fuel projects or logging for the biomass industry – leaving behind fast-growing, fragile trees that can’t handle the heat and feed the flames. Watching the disaster unfold felt like a punch to the gut, but this was just the beginning. Thousands of miles away, in the heart of Peru, fires are raging again – in one of the most biodiverse places on Earth. A state of emergency has been declared in the Amazon. And just like Jasper, these fires, like so much of the climate crisis, are man-made. The rainforest is being cleared to make way for oil and gas extraction, along with livestock and grain production. Fossil fuel extraction and expansion led the industrial push into Amazonia, threatening not only the environment but also the people who have stewarded these lands for generations. The Amazon, the lungs of our planet, is burning. And with every acre lost, it feels like the planet itself is struggling to breathe – edging us closer to a tipping point. The rich biodiversity that could help stabilize our climate is being reduced to ashes. This isn’t a fire that will just burn out – it’s the destruction of entire ecosystems and the livelihoods of Indigenous and frontline communities. Without the Amazon, there is no stable climate. It’s as simple as that. But here’s the thing that keeps me going: it doesn’t have to be this way. We know the solution. We need to stop fossil fuel expansion, guarantee the permanent protection of Indigenous and traditional lands, and slam the brakes on industrial development in the world’s forests. At the last United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) at COP15 – a major international conference where global leaders come together to address biodiversity loss – we fought tooth and nail to make sure Indigenous Territories were included in the Global Biodiversity Framework. And we won. That victory acknowledged the critical role Indigenous Peoples play in protecting ecosystems vital to our planet’s survival. So why am I sharing all of this with you? Because despite the devastation we’ve seen, there’s a real opportunity ahead – and it gives me great hope. As COP16 in Cali, Colombia, approaches, we’re getting ready to fight again. It’s time to turn the promises made in the Global Biodiversity Framework into real, on-the-ground action. Our team is working around the clock to secure key meetings with decision-makers from Colombia, Peru, and other crucial regions. We’re pushing to make sure that forests are protected, and that life-sustaining biodiversity gets the attention it desperately needs. There’s so much more to this story. The Stand Forest team is working closely with our Indigenous partners on the ground to amplify and push forward an ambitious plan to protect northern forests and Amazonia. In the coming weeks, you’ll see it unfold. With grit and determination, Matt Krogh (he/him) Amazon Campaign Director Stand.earth

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Transcript of The Sustainable Hour no. 521

Antonio Guterres:
Climate change is here, it is terrifying and it is just the beginning.

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

Tony Gleeson:
Welcome to The Sustainable Hour. We’d like to acknowledge that we’re broadcasting from the land of the Wadawurrung people and our guest is from Gunnai Kurnai country. We’d like to acknowledge elders, past, present and those that earn that great honour on both the countries we’re on today. We’re on stolen land, land that was never ceded – always was and always will be First Nations land. And finally we hope that we, well – much more than hope, we insist that we learn from the ancient wisdom that they’ve honed from nurturing both their land and their communities for millennia before their land was stolen. In that ancient wisdom, there’s so many responses, so many solutions for us as we face up to the climate emergency.

Mik Aidt:
The other day I found a postcard in my mailbox. On the front it shows a flooded street with water levels rising, swallowing up the house that you can see on the photo. The new reality of flooding that we see on the news almost every day now. And which thousands of Australian families are facing, having lost their homes and seen their homes become uninsurable.

On top of the image, it says the words, ‘Prepare before it’s here’. And on the opposite side of the postcard, the headline goes, ‘Being prepared means taking action’.

‘Taking action’… For decades, we’ve been talking about climate change as some sort of thing that would happen in the future, as the radical impact that may or may not be coming, projections and so on. And we’ve listened to the United Nations – certainly here in The Sustainable Hour – telling us that if we don’t act, consequences will catch up with us.

And so here we are… with a postcard arriving in my mailbox in September 2024, courtesy of Australia Red Cross and the Australia Post, telling us that the real climate emergency has arrived and the time to prepare… well, I would say: it’s not today or tomorrow, it’s yesterday! We should have received this postcard ten years ago – but at that time, if you remember, everyone was like, ‘Let’s wait and see. Let’s see if it really will happen.’

Well, the postcard here says it’s happening. And now we need to prepare. ‘Get in the know’, it says. ‘Get connected’ and ‘get organised’.

Because obviously, flood waters – that’s just one thing. Bushfires is another. Cyclones, trees falling over. Heat waves, lethal humidity. ‘Prepare before it’s here.’ And the truth is, if you open your eyes to what’s happening, that feels a lot like preparing for a storm that’s already raging outside. We hear that in Colin Mockett’s Global Outlook every week. Isn’t it, Colin?

As a global community, what this means is – if we’re honest, and as we talked about in The Sustainable Hour last week: we have failed.

We failed to act with that urgency that we were told was required, by the United Nations, by the scientists, and so on. Instead, we prioritised our short-term economy, short-term gains, exploiting what we have of natural resources, the coal and the gas in particular here in Australia. And we have just continued to pollute, put up all this smoke in the atmosphere, millions and billions of tonnes of it.

So as this postcard illustrates now, consequences have arrived. Our streets are being flooded, trees are falling over – or being burned.

And now what? What does ‘preparation’ even look like?

Of course, that’s a long story. And that’s why we are here in The Sustainable Hour. We are talking about what this preparation that the postcard talks about really looks like on an individual level and on a community level.

We talked about it the last couple of weeks actually already, but you could say that these things that we can do as individuals and with our community, that’s just band-aids. What we really need to do is to dismantle the system, that system of exploitation that brought us to this point. And we need to rebuild something that’s lot more resilient and more just and more in tune with the natural world. And to do that, what we need in a democracy is to vote in some people who understand this.

And we have, here in Australia, a number of elections coming up.

First there’s a local election, and then there’s the federal election coming soon. And that’s where we need really to start getting ‘prepared before it’s here’.

Enough from me. Let’s hear what’s been happening around the world. Colin Mockett, I hope it’s not as gloomy and bad as it really has been almost every week when you tell us what’s been happening around the world, Colin?

Colin Mockett:
Well, it is connected with what your warning is going on about. And of course, your warning really shows, Mik, that we are reactionary rather than progressive. We’ll react to something rather than avoiding it. But Tony, you’ve got something to add to this before I even start my World Outlook?

Tony:
Yeah, Mik, I know that you mentioned it in your talk, but what was the group? I think it’s worth emphasising who they actually are.

Mik:
So, ‘The Australian Red Cross and Australia Post are working together to deliver essential information to help Australians prepare for disasters.’ That’s the little text that it says at the bottom. Australian Red Cross and Australia Post. And what impressed me in a way was that Australia Post goes into this – because it feels like it’s coming from an authority now.

Tony:
Yeah. Hardly radical groups.

COLIN MOCKETT’S GLOBAL OUTLOOK:
Okay. World outlook. I’ll start, if I can, with two very short Australian pieces. The first is that this week in September, the rollout of renewable energy power in Australia surpassed that of all of 2023. And it’s only September. Well, it shows that basically we are going, and we’re moving in that right direction. But still the Energy Council is saying that we’re not moving fast enough. We should have been doing more and we should continue to speed up.

The other thing that I wanted to point out before I start on the world is that the current wave of heavy rainfall across our nation is… The meteorological office has said that it is going to last all week, and it’s going to be across the nation. It’s going to be widespread and it’s probably going to lead to flooding.

And that leads in turn to a report by the Pacific Institute, which found almost 350 water related conflicts between nations and societies were documented worldwide in 2023.

Now that was a rise of 50 per cent on 2022, which was also a record year. And it shows really, it demonstrates the importance of water and how climate change is pushing this to the fore. The report noted that water-related violence has been rising steadily since 2000, when just 20 water-related conflicts were documented.

Now we’re up into the mid-300s. And the major cause, but not the only one, is always related to climate. In drought-stricken Latin America and the Caribbean, the number of incidents rose more than threefold to 48. That includes an incident where Colombian police fired guns and tear gas to disperse residents who were protesting a 10-day water outage, while in Honduras, a water activist was shot and killed. Water conflicts in the Middle East accounted for 38 per cent of last year’s total. They were driven by attacks on a Palestinian water infrastructure with Israeli settlers and armed forces contaminating and destroying water wells, pumps and irrigation system on 90 occasions.

In India, severe droughts drove a 150 per cent interest increase in water conflicts, including an attack by hundreds of police from the state of Andhra Pradesh against the Telangana state police who were guarding a dam on the Krishna River. Then there were 32 reported water-related attacks in the war between Russia and Ukraine, including Russian forces blowing up a dam, unleashing floods that killed hundreds of people. Other incidents include deadly battles between Iranian and Afghan forces over access to water from the Helmand River and clashes between farmers, herders and others over access to water in Sub-Saharan Africa, which is suffering a years-long drought.

With the exception of the Russian-Ukraine war, most of the conflicts were due to the record heat, with global heat records being broken almost every month, making 2023 the warmest year since records began. But here’s the kicker. It is continuing and ongoing, with every one of the months to September 2024 setting new marks as the hottest month on record.

Along with this, water-related violence has surged too, with the Institute reporting more than 300 occasions this year up to September. So our planet is not only heating up, it’s getting more violent, with the two apparently in lockstep. Now there’s much better news from Norway, where the country’s Public Roads Administration announced that as of this week, I think it is, or maybe next week, there will be more EVs on Norwegian roads than petrol-fuelled cars.

The figures that were published last week revealed that at the end of August there were 751,450 electrified cars in service on Norway’s roads and 755,244 petrol cars, each accounting for around 26 per cent of the total number of cars on the road. But it’s not all good news because the same figures showed that there were another 1 million diesel cars on Norway’s roads. But according to the authority, the stock of diesel fuel passenger vehicles peaked in 2017 at close to 1.3 million and has since been declining.

Today diesel cars make up just under 35 per cent of Norway’s passenger car fleet. While Norway’s EV numbers include hybrids and pure battery electric vehicles, the numbers nevertheless highlight the electrification trend and the benefits of favourable government policies. But there’s no evidence of Australian politicians even noticing the Norwegian trends.

What has happened recently though is that the federal government in Australia has finally given the green light to the first stages of Mike Cannonbrook’s Sun Cable project, which will build a huge solar energy collection farm in the Northern Territory and transmit the power via an undersea cable to Singapore. If you remember, we’ve been reporting on this project for the past three years.

Now the federal government has discovered it and it’s hailing it as the country’s biggest renewable energy project ever. That’s environment Minister Tanya Plibersek announcing that the $30 billion project was a massive step towards making Australia a renewable energy superpower and that the project will be economically and socially transformational for the Northern Territory.

The project will include a huge solar farm on a former pastoral station between Elliott and Tennant Creek, and it’ll have an 800-kilometre transmission line to Darwin and then a 4,300-kilometre underwater cables to Singapore. There are no start or finishing projected dates announced, but the clearing of federal government approval is clearly a positive step to end this round up for the week.

No, they’re not. Just for Tony. He’s always interested in the world’s only sustainable sports club, Forest Green Rovers in Nowesworth in England. They won this week against the Gateshead, and they are now joint top of their division.

Jingle:
Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.

Tony:
Go the Rovers. It looks like this season is going to be a better one for them, Colin, and we haven’t given up on getting them on The Sustainable Hour. We’ll keep trying. I think we’re the unofficial Australian cheer squad leaders.

Colin:
I think so too.

Tony:
I haven’t heard anything to the contrary of that. Yes, so on with the show.

Our guest today is Susi Millton. Susi manages the TreeProject and their aim is to revegetate Victoria one tree at a time. Thanks for coming on, Susi.

Susi Millton:
You’re welcome and thank you. I feel really honoured to be part of The Sustainable Hour. So thank you for inviting me, Tony.

I’ll just give you a bit of a background. TreeProject started 35 years ago when two women stood up in a forum and said, we need to change our environment. We need to do something. We need to plant more trees. And they declared in this forum was Dr Maggie McLeod and Belinda Goss. And they stood up and said, we are going to plant a million trees. And it took them 10 years.

But they did it and their first planting day, 700 people turned up in the city and they planted 5,000 trees before lunch. And they said to each other, we’re on a really good thing here. People care about our environment. Let’s keep going with this. And so what they started with was people growing seeds, from seed to seedlings in their backyards. And essentially the model that we use today hasn’t really changed.

We teach, I’ve got about 400 growers, volunteer growers that grow seedlings in their backyards for five or six months. when they’re ready to be planted, they go out into the paddocks of everywhere all around Victoria to be planted as shelter belts, wildlife corridors, for biodiversity, for revegetation, to help waterways, et cetera. And we have this amazing group of people that live in the city or outside Melbourne, and they really want to do something for the country. So that’s how they feel that they contribute to their part in revegetating and their part in improving our environment by growing seedlings for five months in their backyards. And then we take them out to the country and we plant them.

We are planting around, physically we’re planting around 50,000. We have a planting program of 1500 volunteers and we go out into the Yarra ranges and we plant all those seedlings. the rest of our order basically is 140,000 indigenous seedlings each season and they are from all around Victoria.

So we plant, we grow, we mass educate lots and lots of people and even today we’ve got a group of corporate volunteers here packing seeds. So we order from the not-for-profit seed banks.

So if someone doesn’t order, say Mansfield, collect, we get the seeds from those areas so it’s all in provenance, we don’t move seeds around and then we bring them into the city and we have a group of 15 people here packing the beautiful seeds into little envelopes and then those envelopes in November will go to the volunteer growers. Volunteer growers will then take them home and then grow them for five to six months. Yeah, so it’s a beautiful program, and then we…

Colin:
That’s commendable.

Susi:
Thanks Colin. Yes, we’re very proud of, we’re very proud. It’s such an honour to head up this organisation and we’ve been going for 35 years.

Colin:
First up, are the choice of trees that you select likely to be native to the area where you’re planting them? They are, yes, they have to be. What sort of trees are you actually planting around? It strikes me that you’re not sort of asking people to plant in their own region just to grow and then you take them and you put them in the other ranges is that right?

Susi:
So we order so we’ll order the seed from the regional area where the order comes from so it’s very different from South Gippsland where I’m from Lee and Gathas Seed Bank not-for-profit they will supply us all of those seeds so we only plant those seeds so in provenance.

So they have to be in provenance. We wouldn’t… – If someone said to us, ‘we’d like you to grow a hundred palm trees,’ we’d say no. So we grow a number of eucalypts, some beautiful wattles, all the acacias for shelter belts, for corridors, but they all have to be in provenance. So that’s very important that we don’t move seeds around from different areas.

Colin:
Yep. I have to, I hate to play the devil’s advocate, but I live in a street which has trees that were planted by the local government some 50 years ago and they are New Zealand natives and they do not attract any of the local wildlife. Many of the people along our street have asked them to be taken out because they cause itching and they’ve got a seed pod that causes itching and they’ve replaced them with non-fruiting fruit varieties, mostly plums, neither or none of them are natives to our region and that now sort of concerns me a little bit that you’re not putting native trees back, you’re planting different areas, trees in a different area and that could have repercussions in the future. Just settle my mind and say that that’s not the case.

Susi:
That’s not the case. We can also, if people, landholders want to provide their own seeds, we also do that. So they’ve, I’ve just got a whole big, bags of it in the office. And we’re divvying that up to go back to some of those areas. So people can collect their own seed and give it to us. Otherwise the local seed banks will only collect seed from those areas, and they will only go back to those specific areas. So the seed banks will only supply local seed that will go back to that local area, to that local paddock.

Colin:
Good. Now I have another sort of semi-related query. It strikes me that many building projects, certainly in the region that I live, are knocking down previous houses, and replacing them with much bigger MacMansions. And part of that process is that they clear all of the trees and the MacMansions take up the entire block with a huge house and swimming pool and leave no room at all for replacement trees. Has your project in any way taken this on board and are you encouraging people to put trees into suburban settings?

Susi:
Yeah, that’s a good question, Colin, and we would love to be involved in that in time. Our orders are for all reveg and they’re for 500 plus seedlings at a time and so our model is revegetation. So we don’t really grow for backyards, we just grow it so we’re only doing big orders of five, six, seven, 10,000, 20,000 seedlings at a time. Yeah, big projects. We’d like to – yeah, we’d love to just keep growing and putting trees everywhere and seedlings. We do not only trees, we do ground covers, we do mid-story, big canopy trees. It’s not all – everything – that we do. We do the whole biodiversity ecosystems.

We’re replacing vineyards. People have moved into properties in the Araranges and said they’ve never heard a bird noise. And because they’ve never heard sounds of birds, because they’ve had vineyards there with loads of chemicals. And you get that chemical drift from neighboring properties, so the birds aren’t interested in going there. And in one of the properties, we’ve just put in 18,000 seedlings over the last three years, their properties come to life with sound and movement. It’s wonderful.

You mentioned before about your growers. I just, like I’ve been one in the past and I think it’s worth mentioning the education that you give your growers. You don’t need to be a Rhodes Scholar on Botany or anything like that.

Tony:
Can we talk a little bit about that, about the support that’s given to growers?

Susi:
Yeah. What we have, you know, we have a few recommendations and we have people apply to become a grower, but you don’t need to have a horticultural background, just a love for the environment. You know, during COVID, we were one of the organisations that grew substantially with volunteers because people said walking out to their backyard and looking at those tiny seedlings, poking their heads through, gave them hope.

And so we just, yeah, we had a lovely, lot of feedback from that. So getting back to your question, you have to have six hours of sunlight in your backyard. So we don’t encourage people to grow with balconies and, you know, not under trees or anything. So full sunlight for six hours. They’re grown in our recycled tubes. So the forestry tubes, we have a group of… I know I’m getting off the point but I’m excited about this because we have a group of volunteers that are there at our depot every weekend washing the forestry tubes so we recycle them. So we’re reducing our plastics, we’re reducing purchases and we’re reusing all of our old forestry tubes.

So we will get through a hundred thousand this season before we start putting seeds in these forestry tubes again. So there is a three hour training that people are, people must do before they get a kit and a kit is seven boxes and so the kit will grow 250 as a minimum, 250 seedlings and there’s a WhatsApp group and some of our growers, Tony, have been growing for, you know, 25 years plus. So there’s a wealth of knowledge and they all support each other on the WhatsApp groups.

So people can post photos, you know, if they’re not sure about something, they can post photos. If they’ve got anything that doesn’t look normal, they post those and someone will say, I think you’re not putting them in the sun enough, or you need to rotate your box, or that looks like you’ve had something eaten it. Make sure it’s off the ground. So in a world of knowledge that supports each of the growers. And we also have every eight growers have one very experienced coordinator and that coordinator is available to show photos, to talk, to come around, to transplant, to help people thin.

We’re also growing in hubs now so we’re actually expanding, we’re expanding out to regional areas so there are people in Bendigo, Ballarat, they’re doing amazing things with different groups, schools, kindergartens, and they’re teaching people how to grow in hubs. they’re working with groups and supporting them amazingly. It’s just fantastic. So really good support for each grower.

Mik:
Are you active in Geelong as well?

Susi:
Yes, Geelong too. Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo. Yeah, we’re spreading out because the other thing we’re finding is that the landholders all around Victoria are a bit hesitant to be driving into Melbourne. Melbourne has got so busy, so they’re preferring to just go to their local area and someone in Bendigo or Ballarat or Geelong have been growing for them.

ABC News reader, 17 September 2024: Deadly flooding:
44,000 people from Nysa in Poland are the latest to be evacuated – at the local hospital racing against time to move patients. Further west in Lasek Drój, a dam burst sending a torrent of water through the town. ‘The water was incredible. It was Armageddon.’ The flooding’s now receded, but it’s left a mess. Poland’s government has declared a natural disaster.

Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations, addressing UN Summit of the Future:
Welcome to the Summit of the Future. I called for this summit because our world is heading off the rails and we need tough decisions to get back on track. Conflicts are raging and multiplying from the Middle East to Ukraine and Sudan with no end in sight. Resources that could bring opportunities and hope are invested in death and destruction.

Huge inequalities are a brake on sustainable development. Many developing countries are drowning in debt and unable to support their people. And we have no effective global response to emerging, complex and even existential threats. The climate crisis is destroying lives, devastating communities and ravaging economies. And we all know the solution. It is a just phase-out of the fossil fuels – and yet emissions are still rising.

Roger Hallam: ‘Work together or die together’
If we don’t work together, we’re going to die together.

Sir David Attenborough, speaking at COP26:
If working apart, we are powerful enough to destabilise our planet, surely working together, we are powerful enough to save it.

Scott Morrison:
This is coal. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared.

Senator Whitehead:
At the heart of this conflict is a battle between truth and science and power and lies.

Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action: ‘Insurance Costs’
www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtXUuw3YNhY

Hello Sunshine Insurance, this is Kelly.
Hi Kelly. I just got this bill in the mail. I think there’s been a mistake. My insurance is usually around $1,500 but this says it’s gone up by 30per cent.
That doesn’t sound right. Let me just check that for you.
Great.
No, that is correct. I think you’re one of the 50 per cent of Australians who live in a bushfire risk area.
I live in the suburbs.
According to our mapping, your suburb is at risk.
But I’ve lived here for 20 years. What’s changed?
Bushfires have gotten worse. Climate change. Yep.
I can’t afford this.
You’re actually lucky you can even get insurance.
What?
One in 25 properties won’t even be able to get insurance by 2030 at any cost.
So you’re telling me that my insurance is unaffordable and in a few years I won’t even be able to get insurance?
Yeah.
I want to make a complaint.
I understand. I can put you through to the fossil fuel companies.
Why them?
The emissions from the mining and burning of fossil fuels are making climate change worse so we get more extreme bushfires and you have to pay more and more for your insurance. So they’re causing the problem, I’m getting the bill and they’re making profits. $12.7 billion in fact. What? Last year Santos and Woodside alone made $12.7 billion in profits.

Enough to pay for the annual insurance of every single house at risk of bushfire. 12.7 billion? I couldn’t earn that if I’d been working since the ISAE. Before the first homo sapiens, in fact. And not only are they not paying for the damage they’re causing to our homes, the planet, our futures, they barely pay any tax, while taxpayers like you and me give them more money via subsidies. And my insurance goes up by 30 per cent. F**kers. So how would you like to pay?

Nick Cave on American tv show: ‘Letter to Valerio’
Okay, so the question someone has written in called Valerio from Stockholm has written in saying, following the last few years, I’m feeling empty and more cynical than ever. I’m losing faith in other people and I’m scared to pass these feelings onto my little son. Do you still believe in us human beings? So this is the letter that I wrote.

‘Dear Valerio,
Much of my early life was spent holding the world and the people in it in contempt. It was a position both seductive and indulgent. The truth is I was young and had no idea what was coming down the line. It took a devastation to teach me the preciousness of life and the essential goodness of people. It took a devastation to reveal the precariousness of the world, of its very soul, and to understand that the world was crying out for help.

It took a devastation to understand the idea of mortal value and it took a devastation to find hope. Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard earned, makes demands upon us and can often feel like the most indefensible and lonely place on earth. Hopefulness is not a neutral position, it is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism. Each redemptive or loving act as small as you like, such as reading to your little boy or showing him a thing you love or singing him a song or putting on his shoes keeps the devil down in the hole. It says the world and its inhabitants have value and are worth defending. It says the world is worth believing in. In time we come to find that this is so.
Love Nick.’

SONG

Charlie Mgee: ‘Trees Eat Us All’
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwwMou-2558

Designer, you’re now a recliner
So long and thanks for the yield
and your tools left behind
have all sharpened our minds
to keep growing the change in the field

The future is looking quite shady
Under all the ideas that you’ve grown
And to look out the window
At food in the ground
Gives us power to face the unknown

But trees eat us all in the end
So plant one for me when I’m gone
Then if you hear that I’ve died
You can tell them they’ve lied
I’m just shading-out somebody’s lawn

Tapping into the rhizomes of wisdom
You wove them all into a tale
And with seeds in your pockets and dirt on your hands
You took us into the belly of the whale
You took us into the belly of the whale

So go on and tell us another
Cos your stories are food for the soul
Helping us see the forest for the trees
And ourselves as part of the whole
See ourselves as part of the whole

Yeah trees eat us all in the end
So plant one for me when I’m gone
Then if you hear that I’ve died
You can tell them they’ve lied
I’m just shading-out somebody’s lawn

Though the problems around us are many
The answers come to us with ease
Take care of the land, your friends and your family
And remember to plant lots of trees

Cos trees eat us all in the end
So plant one for me when I’m gone
Then if you hear that I’ve died
You can tell them they’ve lied
I’m just shading-out somebody’s lawn

credits
from Earth People Fair, released March 15, 2019
Written by Charlie Mgee & Formidable Vegetable
Recorded at Grey St, Fremantle WA & Chez Mal, St Kida, VIC.
Mixed by James Newhouse @ Real2Reel, Bunbury WA
Mastered by William Bowden.

Charlie Mgee: ukulele, vocals
Mal Webb: horns, gourd bass, beatbox, vocals
Kylie Morrigan: violin, vocals

Colin:
So Susi, you’re looking for volunteers who can grow your trees up until transplanting. But are the volunteers also able to, for example, suggest public lands where the trees could be planted? And if so, how do they contact your group? And I have a supplementary question which really comes down to how is your group funded? Are you using government money or are you looking for donors?

Susi:
Yeah, good question, two good questions, yes. Most of our orders come from private, come from private, they’re private landholders. They pay $290, are you ready for this, for 500 seedlings. 500 seedlings for $290, that’s 55 cents each, and they choose what species they get grown for them. So we grow to order. So the materials that I purchase like soil, boxes, tubes, fertiliser, smoke, all of that seed just covers those, that $290. So are we looking for philanthropic donations? Yes, we always are because nothing else gets covered, not wages.

We make lunches for the volunteers because we’d like to say thank you for coming out and planting with us. We’d like to say thank you to all our growers. We do a couple of thank you days a year to help keep them feel part of a group so that they feel like they’re not working by themselves. They’re part of the big picture, which we want to make sure that they feel.

Yeah, make sure that they feel part of that bigger picture that there’s a change and we want to be part of that change. We want to lead that change. TreeProject is moving forward and with an idea of growing and planting a million trees in 10 years time, we have to be prepared. We need bigger infrastructure. We need a nursery to grow back up. We need philanthropic support to help us move forward. We don’t get government grants. We rely on the goodwill of people and their support. It’s wonderful what people will give to help TreeProject move forward. this mass education that we are doing, we really want to make sure that people feel it and come along with the journey with us.

Mik:
Speaking of the bigger picture, Susi, the carbon that trees are so good at taking out of the atmosphere. Do you have some numbers on the impact that all these trees that you have planted or the trees that you will plant, what kind of impact are we talking about in terms of helping repairing the climate as you actually are?

Susi:
Yes, Mik, I don’t have any figures for you right now, but TreeProject has been involved for the last year with a Victorian carbon farming project which is a trial in Northern Victoria. And we are growing trees to sequest carbon and those species are chosen very carefully to maintain and maximise the sequest of the carbon. And it’s a 10 year program and we are monitoring, which we will monitor very carefully.

TreeProject doesn’t want to be involved in any sort green washing or any of those. So we want to be very specific with what we’re being involved in and what we’re asking our volunteer growers to be involved in. So we are picking and choosing what we want to be. Well, there are some obvious, you could say, the immediate effects of trees on there, like shading, the humidity in the air.

Yeah, you walk out into a big cattle field like I live in now in dairy country and you walk out to some of those paddocks and you go, this is beautiful, but what’s missing? You’re like, we’re missing a shelter belt. We’re missing that big green space where the cattle can shelter in the sunny hot weather or they can get behind that during those big winds that are just throwing themselves across the paddocks through the day and at night. know, the cattle get better yield.

They are less stressed. You know, there are so many benefits to doing these plantings that, you know, it’s exciting. It really is. It’s easy.

Tony:
Are you’re restricting to Victoria at the moment. Is there any thought about going north of the Murray or west of the Murray?

Susi:
Yeah, there’s, there are, there’s an organisation in South Australia, that I, not on the tip of my tongue, Trees for Us or something in South Australia that we would, yeah, we would love to be all over Australia. It would be wonderful. It really would. But at the moment we’re doing what we can in Victoria. As I said, we’d like to get our orders up to a million a year. Our orders at the moment are about 80,000 with orders closing in about a couple of weeks. And we’ll hopefully get up to 150,000 seedlings for this year.

Tony:
Like overall in that million trees planned in the season or seedlings, is there any kind of overall view of connecting the shelter belts and the corridors?

Susi:
Yeah, yeah, that’s a good question. Currently with Yarra Ranges, we’re doing a Ribbons of Green program that’s supported by the Yarra Ranges Council. And if you imagine being in a helicopter looking down, and imagining all those ribbons of green all connecting, that’s what it’s starting to look like. We’ve planted well over 200,000 in those areas so far and the numbers are growing again. we’ve just got, and that’s what we’re planting, that’s what we planned, 50,000 last year, just finished in winter. And it’s very exciting, it’s beautiful. But that’s the council, know, the council is, phenomenal with the support for the landholders and greening those areas with those ribbons, that ribbons of green program.

But it takes that, Tony. It takes the councils to take a step forward and say, this is what we want to do for our landholders.

Tony:
Well, it’s in their interests. They benefit from it ultimately – councils do in supporting that. There’s a keen group that’s outside the council that wants to help, it’s really in their interest to take advantage of that or to not take advantage of it, that’s got bad connotations, but to work with that.

Susi:
Yes. Yes, that’s right. I was at a planning recently and there was a company that had a whole group of their employees and it was all, it was a day in lieu of work.

Do you have much of that? And is it something that you’re encouraging? if there are companies listening today that want to do good as part of their mission, how do they make that happen? Yes, we have a huge corporate planting program that happens from all over from May to September. And we have 1,500 at the moment coming in and all they do need to do is get on our website, www.treeproject.org.au and hop in there and pop in their details. We’ll send them a whole list.

We had 55 planting days this year and we’re welcome of a donation. And the landholders are so pleased to get all their plants in because everyone knows when you’ve dug 30, 40 holes, you’re like, but when you’ve got 500, 5,000 seedlings, you look at that the massive work that’s involved in getting them in the ground in their forever homes. And if you’ve got 30 people arriving at your house to help you get those in, you get a thousand in a day, you are very happy. And so part of their gratitude is that they make the volunteers lunch. So not only is it a fabulous day where you have colleagues and connecting to country, and doing something amazing for the environment. Some people that have come to our planting days have never been to the country before. It’s just so wonderful to see their faces when they get out there and they’ll, it’s beautiful.

Colin:
I’d personally love to see your organisation working with people like VicRoads or V/Line Rail because I’ve, well, not infrequently get the train to Melbourne and I spend quite a bit of time looking at graffiti on concrete when I’d much rather be looking at trees by the side of the rail line.

Mik:
So Susi, one thing is that what your organisation is doing for the climate and for our environment and for the birds and many other things, which is fantastic. But what’s this project doing for you? I mean, what’s driving you? What’s making you put so many hours into being part of this big project?

Susi:
You know, about 30 years ago, one of my friends had a birthday party and part of the birthday party was planting trees. And I thought, this is novel. This is a great idea. And anyway, we’re all still friends and we often visit that planting site. And now 30 years later is this huge canopy of trees. And back then I thought, well, we’re really planting for the next generations. And all of the trees that we’re planting with all our corporate groups and individuals and, you know, 50… plus planting days a year and 50,000 seedlings we’re planting, it is really for the next generation. And we are making a difference. And that’s what wakes me up in the morning. And the big impact of what trees can do for our environment is the thing that keeps getting me excited. And if I have a heavy day or whatever, and then someone says to me, what do you do for a living?

And then I just get reinvigorated in an instant. It is the most uplifting and incredible feeling to be heading this group with our committee of management, of course, and all our volunteers, as we are really making a huge difference in our environment. We have to just keep planting the trees. We have to keep revitalising. We’re infilling all this remnant vegetation, you know – help the frogs, the wildlife, everything with ground covers, mid-story, the butterflies and the waterways. We just need to just keep going.

And that’s what I stand for. That’s what TreeProject stands for. And while we’re educating, you know, 3,000 volunteers a year, we want it to grow. We want more people to be involved in our environment. We need some capital to keep going, to keep educating, keep training. And you know, we’re making a big difference one seedling at a time. We really are. Fantastic. And this really comes down to that headline I was mentioning. I’m still sitting here with the postcard from Australian Red Cross and Australia Post where they say being prepared means taking action. And they talk about getting connected. And what you talk about is get connected, not just with your neighbors. That’s important, but get connected with nature. And here’s an avenue for that.

Yes. Brilliant, Susi.

Yeah, thank you. And just again, a reminder to how can people then connect with your organisation and your project, the TreeProject? Yes, please hop on our website, treeproject.org.au. You can register as a volunteer, as a grower, you can register to donate, all of it. We’ll take everybody.

[Jingle]

Mik:
That’s all we could fill in one tree field and green sustainable Hour today. That’s been really, really, I think, encouraging to see someone who is doing something constructive as we talked about being prepared, taking action. ‘Prepare before it’s here’, as the postcard that I talked about said. Certainly with Susi here, we have someone and a whole group of people that is worth connecting with.

Tony:
And there’s other jobs as well, collecting the seeds and packing up the seed and putting the kids together.

Mik:
TREEPROJECT.ORG.AU, was it?

Tony:
Yes, that’s it. We’ll put notes on how to connect with them in the podcast notes.

Mik:
And the show notes, or the podcast notes, you can find them on climatesafety.info.

Colin:
I tend to think, fellas, and Susi, that we do tend to emphasise very much the sustainable energy elements and the transport elements of climate change. We don’t in many regards… Trees, planting trees is a Cinderella, but it is really important bearing in mind that trees transform carbon into oxygen, and we all breathe, we need the oxygen that the trees are breathing out and they’re taking the carbon dioxide that we’re breathing out. So it’s really important. We don’t want to remove trees, we want to plant trees sustainably. And in that regard, let’s finish off today by ‘tree the difference’.

Mik:
Don’t be bogged down, be a grower and tree the difference.

SONG:
Aurora: ‘The Seed’ [National Geographic Earth Day Eve 2021]
Just like the seed, I don’t know where to go Through dirt and shadow I grow I’m reaching light through the struggle Just like the seed, I’m chasing the wonder I unravel myself in slow motion.

When last tree has fallen and the rivers are poisoned You cannot eat money, no You cannot eat money, no You cannot eat money, no When the last tree has fallen and the rivers are poisoned You cannot eat money, no suffocate me so my tears can be red I will water the ground where I stand so the flowers can grow back again cause just like the seed everything wants to live we are burning our feet
Bet we’ll learn and forget
You cannot eat money, no You cannot eat money, no When the less tree has fallen and the rivers are poisoned You cannot eat money, no You cannot eat money, no

History has fallen and the rivers are a poison you cannot eat
Sunlight, me
Feed me truth and feed me
Feed me sunlight, feed me air
Feed me truth and feed me prayer
Hell yeah, hey,
You cannot eat money at all
You cannot eat money
As fallen in the rivers are tossed and you cannot eat

Climate Moms advertisement, 1 minute: ‘If you knew’

If you knew this was your last trip to your favorite family camp spot before it went away, how would you spend it? If you knew this was your last chance to enjoy your favorite lake, how would it look like?
If you knew this was your last opportunity to visit that spot on the beach, how would you make the most of it? Hurricanes are taking a heavy toll. Damage to our coastlines will be permanent. Huge fire burning at a local campground. than 97 per cent of the park was destroyed. If you knew this was your last, best chance to protect all the places you love, what would you do?

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

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

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

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
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