Breaking Australia’s system of political cartels

Podcast: Download (Duration: 1:00:00 — 55.0MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Android | RSS | More

The Sustainable Hour no. 526 | Transcript | Podcast notes

That was then, this is now – 11 years of listening to our community

Today’s episode celebrates the 11th anniversary of The Sustainable Hour. This episode starts off with a clip of the first five minutes of the first episode as it went on air on 94.7 The Pulse at 11am on 30 October 2013 – Geelong’s community radio station.

The Sustainable Hour co-host and co-founder Mike Lawrence returns to emphasise the dire need for our political system to break away from the cartels which currently dominate in this space via our major political parties. The recent rise of the community independents is a cause for hope here. The importance of establishing and controlling new narratives is also canvassed as a solution.

10 years ago, Mike ran as an independent candidate himself in the Federal Election.

During our chat with Mike, he mentions Beyond Zero Emissions and Community Independents Project.

“We can be distracted by being busy with the stuff and not getting to the real problem. And the real problem here is the corruption created by political cartels and private donations to political parties. So my enthusiasm these days is closely connected to the emergence of independents. The media want to call them ‘Teals’ because they want just another political cartel. They like to dumb down the political landscape. But we may need a political system that’s made up of individuals who can collectively work for a better nation. The idea that we can run a country where your job is to bring down the opposition – to discredit them, to argue against good ideas, because your political future is reliant on that – is hopelessly inefficient. And the idea that massive donations from companies won’t distort the political landscape is absolutely absurd.”
~ Mike Lawrence, co-founder of The Sustainable Hour in 2013

. . .

On the 6th of November 2024 something is happening that Mik is personally very excited about. Together with the team behind The Business Revolution podcast, he is creating a small event at the Common Ground Project Cafe out at Freshwater Creek, just between Geelong and Anglesea. Their idea is to gather people in the business community to talk about the global transition towards sustainability and talk about how there are lots of tools, lots of solutions and steps, actionable steps that you can take to make your business become part of this global transition. The good news is that you can also make money from doing that. So that’ll be a meeting that is happening next Wednesday 6th of November at 6pm. You can sign up on Humanitix.

. . .

During the Hour, we listen to an excerpt from the American climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe‘s speaking at TEDWomen in November 2018, where she states: ‘The most important thing you can do to fight climate change: talk about it’.

We play one of the five new videos from the Climate Action Pays Off campaign, which has been produced by Investor Group on Climate Change. It’s called ‘From coal to clean tech: Nathan’s climate action story’.

We play the music video by Jacob Collier & Aurora: ‘A Rock Somewhere X The Seed’ which they produced for Greenpeace. In just two weeks the video reached one million views on YouTube alone.

And we round the Hour off with Missy Higgins‘ brilliant climate anthem ‘The Difference’.

. . .

As we start our 12th year of The Sustainable Hour, we’d like to thank our listeners for all the encouragement and positive feedback you have sent us. This makes the work we do all that more encouraging. We are also very grateful for the suggestions we receive for topics to cover as well as guests to invite on. With this continual support, we are encouraged to look further and further afield to show the amazing people doing amazing things all over the world to help the transition to a safer, more just, inclusive, peaceful and healthy world. Onward! Be _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

“We’re playing with fire; but there can be no more playing for time. We’re out of time.”
~ Antonio Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General

→ Subscribe to The Sustainable Hour podcast via Apple Podcasts

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

We at The Sustainable Hour would like to pay our respect to the traditional custodians of the land on which we
are broadcasting, the Wathaurong People, and pay our respect to their elders, past, present and future.

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

Our battle for climate justice won’t be won until our First Nations brothers and sisters have their true justice. When we talk about the future, it means extending our respect to those children not yet born, the generations of the future – remembering the old saying that, **“We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children.”**
The decisions currently being made around Australia to ignore the climate emergency are being made by those who won’t be around by the time the worst effects hit home. How disrespectful and unfair is that?

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

“Bizarrely, the site also claims that because 97 per cent of the donations that the eight teal independents received are from NSW and Victoria, they are not part of a grassroots movement and are instead funded by “big donors”. All eight seats are in Sydney or Melbourne.

During the 2022 federal election, teal candidates experienced targeting of their signage and corflutes with Greens Party stickers. Other independent candidates, who faced Nationals in regional seats, were the victims of ‘dirty tricks’ text messaging campaigns attempting to discredit them by falsely claiming they were backed by the Labor Party.”

“This is a battle between truth and science, and power and lies.”
~ Sheldon Whitehouse, American Senator for Rhode Island

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Climate 200 (@climate200)

COMMUNITY INDEPENDENTS

→ 94.7 The Pulse – Rob Cameron’s Front Page – 21 October 2024:
Podcast interview: Cathy McGowan, independent politician
“Cathy told her story of the birth of the Independent pollie now grown into 9.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Parents for Climate (@parentsforclimate_au)

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

https://twitter.com/AssaadRazzouk/status/1850702485327089919

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

Transcript of The Sustainable Hour no. 526

TRANSCRIPT:
Antonio Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General:
You’re playing with fire, but there can be no more playing for time. We’re out of time.

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 and this is a special… another special milestone for us – or Kilometre Stone, I should say. It’s the anniversary of our 11th-year show. We’d like to start off by acknowledging 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’re broadcasting from stolen land, land that was never ceded. Always was and always will be First Nations land. In the ancient wisdom that they honed from nurturing both their land and their communities for millennia, before their land was stolen, lies so many of the answers that we’re going to need as we navigate the climate crisis.

Mik Aidt:
The 30th of October is quickly rolling out – and on the 30th of October in 2013, we broadcasted the very first episode of The Sustainable Hour here on 94.7 The Pulse. Back then, we set out with a quite humble mission to create a new space for conversations about the challenges and the opportunities that sustainability – this word ‘sustainability’ – gives us all.

Today, 11 years later, we are in quite a different world. But I think just to kick off this hour, it would be interesting just to hear the first five minutes of what we talked about 11 years ago when we started The Sustainable Hour:

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

Excerpt from The Sustainable Hour No 1 on 30 October 2013:
The Sustainable Hour – now what’s that about?

Good morning, Mik

Yes, it is about how we can make our houses both greener and cleaner, more beautiful, nicer to live in, healthier, cheaper and more fun. I think so.

Mike Lawrence:
I love your enthusiasm! That’s exactly my vision for Geelong.

Mik:
But is it possible, Mike?

Mike:
I think it certainly is. We’ve got so much opportunity here at the moment. So many like-minded people that are moving forward in this direction. I’m really looking forward to, in the weeks and months ahead, interviewing those people, getting to know them and getting to know the sort of objectives, the sort of goals that we’re moving towards.

Mik:
Because this is something, as we feel it anyway, that’s about the future of Geelong. It’s not just about fun, as I said – it is going to be fun – but it’s about employment, it’s about economy. And what is it about? It’s about convincing people in Geelong that this is the direction we should take this city in. Or how do you see it?

Mike:
That’s right. There’s a lot of people in Geelong now having pretty well hit rock bottom in a lot of ways. They are really looking forward to… in a very enthusiastic and positive way. So a lot of leadership that’s emerging. When things get tough, the leaders emerge and there are a number of different initiatives. Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been involved with the Geelong Manufacturing Council and the Future Proofing Geelong initiatives, the Geelong Clean Tech initiative. We’ve got mayoral elections coming up here, that’s going to be interesting. There’s 16 candidates. To find out where they stand in terms of renewable energy, sustainability broadly, this sort of initiatives that they’re going to bring in. That’s going to be a really fascinating time. Because these people are putting themselves forward as being the leaders for the next term.

Mik:
But Mike, maybe we should introduce ourselves a little bit more properly – to our listeners. i mean, who are we? Why have we come here? And why do I have this funny accent that I do? things like that. What do you think? Maybe you would start. Tell us a little bit about who you are. Your name is Mike Lawrence…

Mike:
Yeah, Mike Lawrence, and I have a renewable energy business. I’ve lived in the area for many years, quite some time ago. I moved to this area from out in the Yarra Valley, and I love living in Geelong here. My girls, which are now in their 20s and all off to university, they went to school here in Geelong. So I run a business here and been involved with a number of different programs in or around the environmental movement.

And now the last couple of years, I’ve been closely connected with the Beyond Zero Emissions group in Geelong, sorry, the chapter in Geelong. It’s an initiative of the Melbourne University, the Melbourne Climate Institute and the BZE group itself. So I’ll be talking a little bit more about that over the coming weeks too. They just have some new reports come through. So we’ll talk a little bit more about that in the future.

Mik:
You were talking to people here in Geelong last Wednesday about that. There was an event at Beav’s Bar, Green Drinks – or Green Sustainability Drinks – or what it’s called…

Mike:
Yes.

Mik:
And you gave something like a presentation of 15-20 minutes.

Mike:
Yeah, a brief presentation of the “Buildings Plan” as it’s just been released three years after what they call the Stationary Energy Plan. So that’s been very exciting. That’s the description of the sort of changes that we’d have to make in Australia to achieve a 53 per cent reduction in greenhouse gases in housing and probably a 44, thereabouts 44 per cent reduction in greenhouse gases for commercial buildings. So it’s all well and truly documented, very accurate descriptions of the sort of technologies that would be employed – and how that would be implemented. And then that impact on moving towards 100 per cent renewables by 2020, which is the BZE objective.

Mik:
That’s very ambitious though. It’s very ambitious. It’s been seven years time.

Mike:
It’s very ambitious.

Mik:
So we’ll come back to all that, I think we should say, because that is an almost endless topic. We can really dig into that. We can go out and see sustainable houses. There was a Sustainable House Day even back in September. And that is a really good thing to begin to talk about because we need to do something about our houses.

Mike:
That’s right.

Mik:
The way we’re wasting heat, for instance.

Yeah, from a sustainable goal, which gets us stirred up emotionally and it raises the question, is this possible? so it gets people interested enough in the solution when you make an outrageous claim like that to really then test the theory and test the technology and think it through. But then we bring it right back to a practical level. What can people do in their own home? How are we going to live? How are we going to enjoy the change? Because it’s pretty exciting. And people are discovering already that the move towards renewables and a more sustainable future is actually a more engaged community view anyway.

. . .

Mik (in 2024):
So here we are, 11 years later, finding ourselves in a world where, well, I don’t even know if we reduced our emissions with those 50 per cent that Mike talked about back in 2013, to be honest. What I know is that the concentration in the atmosphere of CO2 has gone from… it was 395 parts per million back then, and we are now across the 420 mark. So we’re over 420 parts per million in the atmosphere. We’ve gone up with about 25 parts per million in these 11 years. And what that translates to is that we’ve added more than 195 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere since we started The Sustainable Hour 11 years ago.

Last year, the global emissions were approximately 35.5 billion tons. And this year, the estimates are that they will be going up to around 37.9 billion tons. So we have increased our emissions from last year to this year with another 2.5 billion tons on top, despite all these efforts that we’re hearing about and all the talk that we have, including here in The Sustainable Hour about solutions and how we can decrease our emissions. We have increased the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere with 6.3 per cent in the last 11 years. And that again translates to that we have raised the global temperature with approximately 0.2 Celsius degrees, 0.2 of additional warming in the last 11 years.

And as Australians, I think we all know very much what that translates to in terms of cost, cost of our inaction, because we’re seeing the floods, the bushfires, the storms, the wild weather that’s beginning to really cost the common Australian.

There’s something else I would say that we’ve also seen growing in that 11 years, which is a spirit of people coming together, a spirit of community. And that’s what The Sustainable Hour has been very much a radio show and a podcast for. I feel we’ve become like a hub for those people who understand what’s going on and that we need to confront, we need to look this monster in the eye… or how you put it – and talk about that, yes, climate change is here now, but we can change, if not climate change, we can certainly change the way we talk about it. We can change the conversation and our narrative around solutions. That’s, I think, where The Sustainable Hours mission begins, changing the language. As we did, for instance, when we campaigned quite intensively around that we need to stop talking about climate change and start talking about climate emergency. Since 2016, we’ve talked a lot about the climate emergency and this campaign for declaring a climate emergency.

And where we are today, I think you’ve heard me talk quite a bit about changing the language in the last month or so since I was in Denmark, where I’ve been inspired by this transformation that I have seen in Denmark, which I feel very much has to do with the language. The Danes have a word for not only where they’re heading, but also what it is that’s going on – and a positive thing, they call it ‘den grønne omstilling’, the “green transition” or the “ecological transition”, the “sustainability transition”, whatever we want to call it. And that discussion is ongoing. I’ll definitely be talking more about that in the time to come.

But I’ve said enough and we’ve kicked this Anniversary Hour off, I think very well, but we do need to hear what’s been happening around the world as usual. And back in the seat we have Colin Mockett OAM, with the scanning of what the news has been in the week that went. Colin, what do you have for us today?

COLIN MOCKETT’S GLOBAL OUTLOOK:
Yes, hello Mik. It was very sobering, I found it – listening to that very first broadcast because there was so much hope in your voices and I think they’ll be a little bit different when we’re talking to Mike again later on today.

Now, my world roundup begins week in Tonga where last week the Pacific Island Forum leaders were addressed by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. In his opening speech, Secretary-General Guterres warned that big polluters have a clear responsibility to cut emissions – or risk a worldwide catastrophe. That’s his words, not mine.

“The Pacific is today the most vulnerable area of the world,” he said. “There is an enormous injustice in relation to the Pacific and it’s the reason I am here. The small islands don’t contribute to climate change but everything that happens because of climate change is multiplied here.”

He said that eventually the “surging seas are coming for us all”, and he released two separate UN reports on rising sea levels and how they threaten Pacific island nations. First was The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in the South West Pacific report, which said this region faces a triple whammy of an accelerating rise in the sea levels a warming ocean and acidification – a rise in the sea’s acidity because it’s absorbing more and more carbon dioxide.

“The reason is clear: greenhouse gases – overwhelmingly generated by burning fossil fuels – are cooking our planet,” Mr Guterres said. “The sea is taking the heat – literally.”

As if to prove his point, on the opening day the venue’s new auditorium was deluged by heavy rains and buildings were evacuated shortly after that because of an earthquake.

It illustrated the challenges that threaten to wipe out their world – which is outlined in the second UN report called ‘Surging Seas in a Warming World’. This showed that global average sea levels are rising at rates unprecedented in the past 3,000 years. According to the report, the levels have risen an average of 9.4 centimeres in the past 30 years, but in the tropical Pacific, that figure was as high as 15 centimetres.

The Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting brought together together leaders from 18 Pacific Islands, including Australia and New Zealand. Many went on immediately to the Commonwealth Heads Of Government Meeting held in nearby Samoa. That was opened by an impassioned speech by our own Head of State, King Charles III.
The environment, ocean health and economic development were his key points at the event, but although the Commonwealth heads made much of rich nations needing to do more to resist the threat of climate change and rising sea levels, in reply, our Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gave a speech saying, and this is a direct quote:

“The Pacific is, of course, a global leader in climate action, and Australia respects and supports that leadership. The meeting that we had today with the Prime Minister of Samoa, and other Pacific partners who we discussed with, was about galvanising action in our region, and it will be front and centre of the next two days deliberation. Australia and the United Kingdom, of course, are old friends, but we’re also close friends. And more than friends, we’re partners, and I’ve enjoyed a positive relationship with Prime Minister Starmer for some time. It’s the first time we’ve been able to meet face to face as Prime Ministers of our respective nations. We today discussed, importantly, our new climate and energy partnership that we will be delivering on. We have a common view about the challenge, but also the opportunity, that climate change action represents. We both are on the path to net zero through the transition, and we see that as an opportunity for new industries, new jobs and a new industrialisation of our respective countries.”

That was, of course, what we old journos used to call pollywaffle. Today, it’s ‘good statesmanship’: you talk and you talk and you say nothing.  

Meanwhile, the 2024 UN Climate Change Conference CoP29 is preparing to convene with delegates arriving from from around the world to start on 11 November in Baku, Azerbaijan. The city was the former Soviet country’s oil capital, and the man chairing the CoP meeting, Mukhtar Babayav, is an Azerbaijani politician who is Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan Republic. He has worked in various roles for the Azerbaijan state-owned oil company SOCAR since the 1990s.

So not much is different here then – the oncoming CoP conference is firmly in the hands of the fossil fuel industry, which will set its agenda and make sure that progress to a renewable future will continue at its snail’s pace.

And finally the biggest meeting of all of last week was in the Russian city of Kazan, where President Putin had invited China’s Xi Jinping, India’s Narendra Modi and 34 other global leaders for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies. For Russian President Putin, the three-day meeting was a powerful way to demonstrate that efforts to isolate Russia after its invasion of Ukraine aren’t working.

BRICS stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. It’s a strategic alliance that later expanded to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. On the agenda at last week’s meeting was a list of actions these nations can take to balance what the bloc thinks is an unhealthy economic dominance by America, Europe and countries that are broadly called ‘The West’. That would include Australia.

What didn’t appear at all on the BRICS agenda was taking any action on climate change. At all. Nothing. We can only hope that president Xi can influence this new alliance to move in the correct direction.

And I am going to finish with two pieces of good news.

Mike Cannon-Brook’s SunCable project which wis planned to capture solar energy in the Northern Territory and transmit it to Singapore, via an underwater cable that passed a major hurdle in the Singapore government. It got the green tick and it’s on the way.

And the world’s only climate neutral sports club, Forest Green Rovers, drew 1–1 away at Woking and it remains top of the ladder, top alongside York. And those two tiny pieces of good news on what is mostly a bad news week finishes my roundup for this edition..

Tony:
Now, on with the show! We thought it the right thing to get the person who started The Sustainable Hour all those years ago in – Mike Lawrence – to come on to have a chat and see what he’s up to these days – and talk to Mike about the motivations that led to him coming on, starting off The Sustainable Hour 11 years ago. So thanks for coming on!

Mike:
How are you, Tony? Tony very graciously described me as the person who started the Sustainability Hour, but that’s hardly the case. No, just to hang on to Mik’s shirt tile. He would have found his voice whether it was The Sustainable Hour or something else. And we were both obviously very driven – and still very driven – to cause change in this area. And we saw that there’s an opportunity for a radio program where Mik could use his background, his expertise, to give voice to the cause. So that’s how it started in a little café off Little Malop Street, I think it was. Mik described to me what his background was and I said, well, you need a radio program. And so I approached the right people and it all came together.

Tony:
And how did that feel for you that first show? We can ask Mik the same question in a minute, but how did that feel for you to actually see that come to fruition?

Mike:
Look, very gratifying to see it come to fruition. Background, the sentiment that’s sort of driving me more deeply is one of knowing that at the end of the day, we need a much deeper transformational political change to cause the changes that need to happen. So yes, I’m enthusiastic about what people can do, the lifestyle they can create, but us sorting our rubbish, recycling, walking, not driving the car, all these things, they help in a way, but we’ve really got to make sure we’re not distracted by the main game and that’s political change.

As Karl Marx said – and I’m not a communist – but he said, very astutely, that ‘religion is the opium of the people’, meaning that if people have things to do and occupy their mind, then they won’t worry about the real problems. And we can be distracted by being busy with the stuff and not getting to the real problem. And the real problem here is the corruption created by political cartels and private donations to political parties. So my enthusiasm these days is closely connected to the emergence of independents. The media want to call them Teals because they want just another political cartel. They want black hats, white hats. They like to dumb down the political landscape. But we may need a political system that’s made up of individuals that can collectively work for a better nation. And the idea that we can run a country where your job is to bring down the opposition – to discredit them, to argue against good ideas because your political future is reliant on that – is hopelessly inefficient. And the idea that massive donations from companies won’t distort the political landscape is absolutely absurd. We all know it’s absurd, but we still put up with it.

So they are things that need to change and in my mind, globally, that is the only thing that’s really going to take us forward short of dictatorships.

I’m pretty much… I still strongly believe in democracy. But you look at the difficulty of changing, for example, the American political system at the moment, where money is what describes whether you’re politically successful or not. We’re becoming more and more like that here in this country. And that concerns me.

Colin:
The irony of course, Mike, is that the country that’s probably done the most to combat climate change is a political dictatorship. It’s China.

Mike:
It’s so much more efficient, but we’re not going down that road because the human rights issues, the atrocities that can result from just a very distorted power balance with dictatorships is not something that I think humanity needs. the human condition is really not one that embraces that type of leadership. In the words of Maslow and his hierarchy of human needs to move towards self-actualisation, I don’t think the communist regime is something that allows us to do that. So we don’t need to be philosophical at this point, but the main thing is we look at ways of getting our democracy to be more effective. And I think we can do that. But we’re going to make sure that we’re very focused and every move we make is along the lines of causing political change.

Mik:
And we have a federal election coming within the next half year or so. So the time to mobilise locally would certainly be now. And some positive news there, when we talk about this community independent movement was just one and a half weeks ago, where we saw in the Pitwater by-election, it was a community independent who won over a liberal candidate. And also in the ACT, there’s been an election, a state election, and there was huge success for the independent candidates there. So certainly this movement is still alive and kicking.

Mike:
Very much alive and kicking. I also believe that they don’t necessarily have the… Independents that emerge, they can be quite extreme and opposed to climate change and the like, but they’re individuals that can be talked to and rationed with, and logic can emerge. But that’s not the case with politics. So I think we need to be broadly supporting people who have the courage to put their hand up and run as independents and be less concerned about their political platform but more the change in political landscape and the effectiveness of parliament when we have more independents involved.

Colin:
That’s certainly one of the highlights but another of the big problems that our political system has, Mike, surely, is the fact that we’ve only got three year terms and it’s very difficult to make ongoing long-term decisions when you’re really concentrating on getting re-elected in three years time.

Mike:
That’s true and that’s why political parties, every word that comes out of their mouth, the major parties, is about getting re-elected. Very little on effective policy.

Colin:
When that’s happening, when a fossil fuel company, when a multinational oil company will come along and say, ‘We think it would be a good idea if you take the tax off of large vehicles. By the way, how much money do you want? Do you want us to donate to your party getting reelected?’

Mike:
Yeah, that’s right. Well, that’s just blatant corruption. And that’s the way the system works at the moment, because you’ve got so many examples of that that have been very well produced documentaries that expose that issue. You’ve even had Malcolm Turnbull talking about the difficulty of moving towards some other system that doesn’t have that corrupting effect. Really, the only hope for humanity is to get back to how parliamentary was initially designed, that there are individuals that collectively would work together for a better nation, not against someone else so that they can stay in power.

Colin:
Hey, looking back to when you first started, could you recognise the hope in your voice then? And what is your feeling? Have you changed? Have you changed your views? And have you changed your way of living over the course of the last 11 years?

Mike:
Personally, I live in… Mik would know, he has been to our house where we live – with a very low sort of carbon footprint, as best we can. But my enthusiasm for the movement is channeled towards political change. It was then. But you can’t be on that all the time because people don’t listen and people also need to connect with something that they can do. You can’t have them overwhelmed.

I remember my daughter was a representative for the Australian climate youth movement at one stage and she went to Thailand and she pinned a medal on Ban Ki Moon and she had quite a high profile there. But she rang me in tears one night and she just was quite overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem. Even though she was on the front page of the Guardian magazine, you know, Guardian newspaper, which she thought she would have been quite excited about. But she was just the more she was involved with the political side of things, the more she was disturbed by how big the problem was.

So you’ve got to give people… and I said, ‘Emily, you really have to focus your life on the big change, also small things you can do so you can stay grounded and you’ve got things that you can have control over in a short period of time because it’s good for your mental health. Otherwise, the whole thing’s overwhelming.’

So we’ve to balance our approach with this very difficult issue as to what people can do, but also not be too distracted by what they can do on a daily basis, but also make sure that where we have good strategies, we think very clearly about how to get more independents into politics and how to get rid of private donations.

Mik:
And not be afraid of this word ‘minority government’. That is actually something that could change everything if we could have a minority government at the next election, which means that it is not the big parties that rule anymore, but that the big parties need to talk with the independents in order to get something through in Parliament.

Mike:
They have all sorts of terms like, we’ll have a ‘hung parliament’ and how do we make decisions, that sort of stuff, which is quite ridiculous because it’s just a show of hands, and whatever, you count the hands and things go through.

Now we’ve got to… The language that we need to articulate is talking about political cartels. That groups of people gathered together to then stay in politics. It’s not tolerated in business, that sort of collusion. shouldn’t be tolerated in politics, but we’ve got so accustomed to it for the last hundred years. That’s what we live with.

And Labor saw the sense in doing that initially. And then not long after that, the Liberal and the country party, I think they were merged with the same idea that, if you just all band together, then we’ve only got one opposition and we just have to denigrate them and we’ve got a chance of staying in.

And one way or another, they stay in front of the cameras rather than having the voice of parliament spread across all suits.

Colin:
As you pointed out in the very beginning too, the system is set up in order to keep this going.

Mike:
Yeah.

Colin:
And one of the things that gets to me is that if something, well the media is on the side of A) the parliament and B) the climate change deniers. I mean they’re very subtle about it these days because they, you know, but the point being is that we’re not going to really get anything done until the system changes. And it’s very difficult to change without a revolution.

Mike:
Yeah. Well, I think that to support independents in politics is the best we can do. There’s not going to be a revolution per se because there aren’t enough people interested. People are too comfortable. People have to be starving to revolt as they did in, you know, in times past. People are very comfortable sitting in front of their big screen TV with the air conditioner on these days. And it’s about what the government will do for them. Cost of living issues. You know, that’s really what this political campaign will be brought on in future campaigns for quite some time, because it’s an easy one. Everyone feels that they don’t have enough. Doesn’t matter how much you earn. As my father used to say, ‘It’s not it’s not what you earn, it’s what you save.’

So that’s an easy one, politically. That and, you know, these sorts of security issues, global threats in terms of war, those issues are very easy to get people to vote for – or to change their opinions. And we can’t go down that road. We’ve just got to continually talk about the weakness of political cartels and articulate the corrupting effect of private donations. And hopefully we can win enough people, and hear enough intelligent independent voices in politics to make people say: ‘Gee that’s a breath of fresh air’ instead of talking about what the opposition is or isn’t doing they’re talking about what they can do.

Mik:
The good old Buckminster Fuller quote about ‘If you want to create change, don’t fight the old world, but start building a new one.’

Mike:
I agree totally. And that… It’s very exciting. You know, I have the same enthusiasm for that political change, enthusiasm for that, that I’ve had all along the way in this issue with this issue. So because I see people are starting to understand the benefit of it. And if we hear the independents talk on all sorts of different issues – away from climate issues, just on any particular political issue, they make sense. They can articulate their ideas and cause people to think. This is very hard for the media because the media just wants to look for controversial issues. They’re looking to play one person off against another, because that’s what sells newspapers or sells ads on television. But there has to be a change. And if we can be part of that, then that’s terrific.

Mik:
And it’s also about which story we tell Mike, isn’t it? Because… I don’t think people realise, but fossil fuel jobs here in Australia have actually dropped over this period where we’ve been doing The Sustainable Hour. There’s 20 per cent less jobs in the fossil fuel industry. At the same time, in the renewable energy area, jobs have surged by something like more than 80 per cent. So jobs are moving away from the fossil fuels and over to the renewables. This has been happening all the while we’ve been doing The Sustainable Hour the last 11 years.

Mike:
But you take that information to the average party politician, they’ll say, ‘Yeah, well, that’s going to happen anyway. So let’s just go for the money we can get out of fossil fuel companies to stay in politics for as long as we can.’ And that’s how they’re going to think about it.

. . .

SONG
Jacob Collier & Aurora: ‘A Rock Somewhere X The Seed’ (at 36:21)

I’m on a rock somewhere
It’s the only one I know, and I know it well
And somehow, I know you’re there
And I’m waitin’ on the world
I’m ringing the old church bell
I’ve forgotten how it goes but it feels like Hell
I guess you’re in Heaven now
And you’re never comin’ home

‘Cause even when I’m wide awake, I know
That you give Heaven other dreams for sure
If nothing’s ever gonna change at all
I’ll be waitin’ on the world

Conditional words, I swear
See the people come and go, and they go so well
They countin’ the coins back there
It’s the only thing they know

And even when you’re down and out, I know
That you’ll be up in higher ground for sure
If nothing’s ever gonna change at all
I’ll be waitin’ on the world
I’ll be waitin’ on the world

I’ll be waitin’ on the world
I’ll be waitin’ on the world
You cannot eat money oh no
You cannot eat money oh no

You cannot eat money, oh no
You cannot eat money, oh no
When the last tree has fallen
And the rivers are poisoned
You cannot eat money, oh no
You cannot eat money, oh no
You cannot eat money, oh no
When the last tree has fallen
And the rivers are poisoned
You cannot eat money, oh no

. . .

Katharine Hayhoe, American climate scientist (at 41:32)
The planet warms. Scientists release yet another doom-filled report. Politicians push back even more strongly, repeating the same science-y sounding myths. What can we do to break this vicious cycle? The most important thing to do is, instead of starting up with your head with all the data and facts in our head, to start from the heart. To start by talking about why it matters to us. To begin with genuinely shared values.

We don’t have to be a treehugger to care about a changing climate. All we have to be is a human, living on this planet. Because no matter where we live, climate change is already affecting us today. If we live in the Western North America, we’re seeing much greater area being burned by wildfires. If we live in many coastal locations, we are seeing stronger hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones powered by a warming ocean.

If we live in Texas or if we live in Syria, we’re seeing climate change supersize our droughts, making them more frequent and more severe. Wherever we live, we’re already being affected by a changing climate. So you might say, ‘Okay, that’s good. We can talk impacts. We can scare the pants off people because this thing is serious.’

But fear is not what is gonna motivate us for the long-term sustained change we need to fix this thing. Yes, we absolutely do need to recognise what’s at stake, but we need a vision of a better future, a future with abundant energy, with a stable economy, with resources available to all, where our lives are not worse, but better than they are today.

There are solutions, simple solutions that save us money and reduce our carbon footprint at the same time.

The bottom line is this, climate change is affecting you and me right here, right now, in the places where we live. But by working together, we can fix it. Sure, it’s a daunting problem. Nobody knows that more than us climate scientists, but we can’t give in to despair. We have to go out and actively look for the hope that we need that will inspire us to act. And that hope begins with a conversation today.

. . .

Colin (at 43:49)
Are you still in the industry, Mike? And is your daughter still a warrior for climate change?

Mike:
My daughter works for a recycling cooperative in Hobart and is very much involved with sustainable issues and working way down there. I’m not directly involved with providing renewable energy technology these days. I just wanted to change my lifestyle from running that type of business. So no, I’m not directly involved in providing renewable energy technologies. My interest is in political change. That’s my focus. And I wish I could do more. I’m not Simon Holmes a Court. There’s some people that have the financial resources to make really big change. And I’m very pleased that he’s involved with this.

Colin:
We’ve had a couple of big shifts in the 11 years since this program started. Number 1 is the number of people who’ve now got solar panels on their roofs and think they’ve now solved the issue as far as they’re concerned. At the same time, they’ve gone out and bought ‘people movers’, what we now call people-SUVs, which is far worse for the climate and the economy and just about everything, than the small cars that we were driving with… I thought that the Ford, the Commodore, was a big car, but it’s probably a third smaller than the normal SUVs that people are driving these days.

Mike:
Yeah, that’s right. People don’t think that’s through. They think they’ve done their bit to pay the money and they’ve got the solar hot water system or whatever it might be. But there’s… I’m going to keep coming back to this point. We’ve just got to look to have political change and we’ve got not to be too distracted with, yeah, I was so frustrated with my involvement with politics where politicians were talking about all sorts of exotic renewable energy technologies, when the Beyond Zero Emissions report showed there was mature, ready to go, off-the-shelf technology that for eight dollars a week per household would have had Australia with 100 percent renewables within 10 years. And that was reviewed by Sinclair Knight, the environmental engineering company that audits these types of reports. It was not a big cost. And the cost of renewable energy, particularly photovoltaic energy, is a tiny fraction of what it was back then. And that was a combination of solar thermal with storage and wind power.

So we could have done it back then. We don’t need to go spending millions of dollars on exotic technologies. They will emerge along the way. But politicians like to distract us so that we’re investing in some sort of wave-power harvesting technology that’s going to provide power to remote areas. All that’s great. But the real problem is about base power, power generation through solar thermal storage. Now battery power has come into that, and wind power. And the cost of photovoltaics has dropped so low now that it’s very much a part of the program as well. 50 square kilometers of photovoltaic power in Australia would power the whole nation.

Mik:
So Mike, what if we put it the other way around and said, everything begins with the narrative. Everything begins with the story that’s out in society and where everyone understands that something is logical, it’s cheap, it’s better, and so on. And then they demand it. What if everyone was demanding that kind of change? And how do we get to that point where there is a change of narrative which could then push the demand upwards towards the politicians?

Mike:
Yeah, I think that’s very true, Mik. And I love your spin on these things because you’re very much about… You are a very good storyteller. And changing the narrative overall is essential. I’m a little cynical for one of a better term about the motivation of the average Australian to get out of their comfort zone for any particular reason. You know, because they ARE very comfortable, we live compared to most nations in the world. Live with terrific comfort and we’ve got a very large immigrant population that… they’re not likely to want to do something that’s going to put them more uncomfortable. They’ve come from very difficult circumstances. They see financial security and financial opportunities and health opportunities and peace. And so they’re not likely to be strongly motivated.

So overall, the general population is very difficult to motivate them for change. You talk about a revolution. We’re a long way from that. We just need to put pressure on politicians to justify why they take private donations, and to highlight the fact that the system is corrupt, and that we’re fed up with politicians attacking each other and not getting on with running the nation. That narrative I can support.

And as I said 10 years ago, if, you know, at some point… People are drowning in the river, at some point, someone’s got to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in. And to me, this is the root cause of the problem. On this scale, you know, the impact that we can make in this country is relatively small. But the idea of independents in the North American landscape, the political landscape has emerged.

The Americans spent three trillion dollars over 20 years and they were beaten by men in turbans riding horses. And then they came out with the movie ‘Top Gun’ to try to gain some faces to how powerful America is. You know, it’s a farcical. The money is there to solve the problem. It’s a political problem, political will, and that’s what we’ve got to be continually orientating ourselves towards.

Colin:
That’s a very interesting thing that you put in there with Top Gun because it strikes me that America, which is leading what we term the West, believes that this solution, thanks to Hollywood probably, is to send in the army.

Mike:
That’s exactly right. They lost in the Middle East because people were passionate about protecting their homeland and their own culture they lost in Vietnam. You know, that’s irrelevant really. The main thing is that there is the money there. When there is the political will, incredible things can happen. So we’ve just got to say, well, how do we create the political will? And it’s not going to happen when you’ve got fossil fuels that keep people in power. They shouldn’t be there, fossil fuel companies.

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

Senator Whitehouse:
This conflict is a battle between truth and science and power and lies.

Mik: (at 51:46)
That’s all, folks, we could fit in the 11th anniversary Sustainable Hour. Thank you for listening and thank you to Mike Lawrence: thank you for being part of this program.

I would like to spruik here that on the 6th of November something is happening that I’m personally very excited about. We are creating a small event at the Common Ground Project Cafe out at the Freshwater Creek, just between Geelong and Anglesea. And what we’re doing there is we’re trying to gather people in the business community to talk about the global transition, or the green transition, or whatever we call it, and talk about how there are lots of tools, there are lots of solutions and steps, actionable steps that you can take to make your business become part of this global transition. The good news is that you can also make money from doing that.

So that’ll be a meeting that’s happening on the 6th of November, Wednesday, coming up soon, and you can sign up to that on Humanitix, but we can put a link out as well in the show notes on climatesafety.info.

Apart from that, thank you very much for listening. Some of our listeners have been with us all the way, all these 11 years, and that’s been 11 years of building community and building resilience, having uncommon conversations about solutions, bringing people together about how we tackle this big, big problem called the climate emergency.

Tony:
Yeah Mik, in that 11 years – one thing that I’ve noticed is that… I’d like to contribute towards the end … is that there are far fewer groups that are saying to each other that ‘You’re too radical for us to work with’ or ‘You’re not radical enough’ – and to me that’s encouraging because all that does when it happens is play into the hands of the psychopaths that are causing the problem. But again, together, that won’t happen as much. There’s an attempt going to push back against all of this insanity. It’s benefiting very few people, more and more people becoming dissatisfied and saying, ‘Well, it doesn’t have to be like this’. And what you’re saying is incredibly true, Mike, and lots and lots of insight in that, in what you’ve said today. So thanks for that.

Colin:
We only scratched the surface today. We did.

Mike:
I’d just like to thank Mik for your… You’re such a great anchorman and you keep all this thing going. Good luck the next 10 years – it will be very interesting. But eh, we’ll just stay with the game.

Mik:
Exactly. Let’s end the way we have ended so many times over these 11 years with saying, ‘be the difference’ and then have a listen to Missy Higgins with her song, ‘The Difference’.

Colin:
Be the difference.

. . .

Missy Higgins: ‘The Difference’

I know the world’s gone mad, it’s true
Am I gonna die, am I gonna live, or am I gonna sit on the edge of it
Am I gonna fall, am I gonna fight or am I watch from the outside
Sometimes I wake from the deepest sleep, oh and I feel tomorrow in me
Like I don’t wanna let the hand of yesterday hold me back

But everything I see, everything I watch, makes me wanna hold my ears till it stops
Makes me wanna run, makes me wanna hide, makes me wanna set this house alight

Oh but I remember my mother’s voice
Telling me that every day’s a choice
For where there’s good, there’s bad
But my child you always can

Be the difference
Be the difference
I know the world’s gone mad it’s true
(she said) be the difference
(you can) be the difference
Cos I see a fighter locked in you

Be the difference
Be the difference
When hope is a hand you don’t wanna trust
(She said) be the difference
(you can) be the difference
Cos darling the future’s watching us

So am I gonna open everything up, am I gonna let fury fill my cup
Am I gonna be an anthem singing in the dark, gonna light up this burning heart
Am I gonna still as rock, while everything shakes and tumbles off
Am I gonna remember the truth

Cos I wanna be nasty, wanna be brave, not let his fear make me afraid
I don’t wanna pretend I’m too small to jump the wall
I’m just trying to remember her voice
Telling me that every day’s a choice
For where there’s good there’s bad
But my child you always can

Be the difference (be the difference)
Be the difference
I know the world’s gone mad it’s true
(she said) be the difference
(you can) be the difference
Cos I see a fighter locked in you

So you gotta fight it
You gotta resist
Every days a choice to light the dark

You gotta sing loud
You gotta shout out
Fear is not a choice but you can choose to be the difference

Be the difference
I know the world’s gone mad it’s true
(she said) be the difference
(you can) be the difference
Cos I see a fighter locked in you

Be the difference
Be the difference
When hope is a hand you don’t wanna trust
(She said) be the difference
(you can) be the difference
Cos darling the future’s watching…

VIDEO
From coal to clean tech: Nathan’s climate action story

I think we’re so privileged to live here. It’s one of the best places in the world. You’ve got beaches, you’ve got the lake, but it still feels like a small town. I’ve got close ties to the community. Friends, family, footy club. It kind of makes you passionate about protecting it all for the next generation. My ambition all started in the garage with my old man. Thinking outside the box and being creative. I started out working in the coal mines with all my mates.

It set me out well to pursue a completely different path.

Now I’m at Energy Renaissance. I designed, prototyped and built the first outdoor energy storage system made in Australia. A battery system that’s completely recyclable, which was really cool.

Turns out dad was right, thinking outside the box can pay off. We’ve got a long history of heavy industry, power generation, we have a high skill set, we have the right people, we just need to get them into the sector. I think the future is really bright for the area. That’s why I love the footy club, helping young kids, they’re the future I reckon. Don’t be afraid to have big ideas, so all Aussies can benefit, that’s my belief. Climate action pays off.

Antonio Guterres:
We’re playing with fire, but there can be no more playing for time. We’re out of 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

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

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.

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

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

Receive our podcast newsletter in your mailbox

We send a newsletter out approximately six times a year. Email address and surname is mandatory – all other fields are optional. You can unsubscribe at any time.