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The Sustainable Hour no. 536 | Transcript | Podcast notes
Our guests in The Sustainable Hour on 19 February 2025 are Jane Morton from Vote Climate and Ben Pederick, creator of TAG, The Adaptation Game.
The 536th episode of The Sustainable Hour focuses on critical themes surrounding misinformation, political influence, climate action and community-driven solutions:
In the face of escalating climate breakdown and wild weather disasters, how can we become more resilient? And in the face of an election where Peter Dutton’s Coalition currently stands to win the Government seat, how can we make voters in the community more conscious of the consequences of that choice?
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Jane Morton is a clinical psychologist who went into early retirement to campaign on the climate emergency. She is part of Extinction Rebellion Victoria. At election time, she helps organise the Vote Climate campaign – bringing a climate emergency perspective to election campaigning.
Jane has written a booklet on climate emergency messaging.
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The Adaptation Game – a tool for climate resilience
Ben Pederick introduces us to The Adaptation Game – a serious game seeking to mobilise local climate adaptation, designed to help local communities and governments plan for climate risks.
The game facilitates future planning by simulating climate shocks and empowering players to make proactive adaptation decisions. It has been adopted by local councils across Australia and internationally, with plans for expansion into high schools to educate young people about climate resilience.
Ben Pederick is a documentary and transmedia producer, PHD researcher and founder of The Adaptation Game, TAG. He and his team have created this game to take people through a very real, but imaginary situation, when their community has been impacted by an extreme weather event. This enables them to prepare for such an event while not under the actual pressure that such an event would no doubt bring.
→ More information on this innovative and useful resource can be found on www.tagclimatedrill.org
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Global climate progress and greenwashing
Colin Mockett shares ten significant climate wins from 2024, including record-breaking renewable installations in China and the EU, Australia’s green bank funding, and Norway’s near-complete transition to electric vehicles. He then exposes greenwashing in the Australian steel industry, where a supposedly “green” steel initiative turns out to be heavily dependent on natural gas rather than renewable energy.
The political cheating game over renewables: The disinformation war
John Grimes from the Smart Energy Council condemns misinformation from opposition leader Peter Dutton, arguing that his claims about renewable energy being unreliable are deliberate lies aimed at protecting coal and gas industry profits.
Mik Aidt warns that a Dutton-led government could cap or ban renewables, worsening climate impacts while benefiting fossil fuel interests.
Jane Morton, a long-time climate activist, speaks about the importance of the upcoming election and the role of the Vote Climate campaign in countering political disinformation. She highlights the alarming spread of misinformation, comparing tactics used in Australia to Trump-style media manipulation. The discussion delves into the role of vested interests – particularly fossil fuel billionaires like Gina Rinehart and Clive Palmer – who bankroll campaigns to mislead the public about renewable energy and climate policy. This underscores the urgency of educating voters about Australia’s preferential voting system to prevent strategic misinformation from influencing election outcomes.
The climate emergency narrative
The episode criticises the Australian government’s reluctance to declare a climate emergency, despite evidence of worsening climate conditions, including January 2025 recording a 1.75°C rise above pre-industrial levels. Concerns are raised about the collapse of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which could trigger massive climate disruptions and migration crises. The hosts and guests call for stronger grassroots action and direct voter engagement to push climate issues onto the political agenda.
Call to action: Be involved
The episode ends with a motivational call for action:
Ben Pederick: “Be involved!”
Jane Morton: “Be a rebel! Disrupt the destruction!”
Mik Aidt: “Be part of The Game!”
The overall message is clear: the green transition is inevitable, but it requires sustained public engagement to combat misinformation, hold politicians accountable, and implement local solutions for a safe and sustainable future.
With the election coming up before 17th of May this year, Jane Morton very timely reminds us what we need to do about our broken democracy – a democracy that’s been slowly but surely corrupted by vested interests associated with psychopaths who don’t want the ‘business-as-usual’ model to change, because it increases their personal wealth, while in full knowledge of the damage this model is doing to everyone in our society, as well as animals and plants in our ecosystems – and to our climate.
Jane educates us about the forces that are colluding to get the Coalition elected and the extent to which they are prepared to go to make this happen: spreading sinister lies about their opponents. The only way to counter these lies and disinformation is to get out into the streets and talk to people, hand out flyers, put up posters, organise community meetings, and so on. We really can do many things that will make the next government more likely to take real action on climate.
And once the election is over, Ben Pederick has shown us how we can move forward with his innovative Adaptation Game for local communities, aiming at the grassroots level, ensuring that the players see the value of focusing on similarities and not differences, encouraging conversations about what needs to be protected in our local communities. TAG is definitely an idea that’s time has come. More below.
“The game is not hard to run. We train people to be local facilitators, and once the game exists, once those boxes are in libraries and so forth, it’s an ongoing tool for people to just play and play again. And the game is a storytelling tool, so that the stories that you imagine and tell together within the game are really cool communications assets in a sense. They are anecdotes that you can share. Knowledge is generated every time the game is played, and so the game becomes the source for social media communications, or communications internally within councils, etc.”
~ Ben Pederick, creator of The Adaption Game (TAG)
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We at The Sustainable Hour would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we are broadcasting, the Wadawurrung People. We pay our respects to their elders – past, present, and emerging, and extend that respect to all First Nations people.
The traditional custodians lived in harmony with the land for millennia, nurturing it and thriving in often harsh conditions. Their connection to the land was deeply spiritual and sustainable. This land was invaded and stolen from them. It was never ceded. Today, it is increasingly clear that if we are to survive the climate emergency we face, we must learn from their land management practices and cultural wisdom.
True climate justice cannot be achieved until Australia’s First Nations people receive the justice they deserve. When we speak about the future, we must include respect for those yet to be born, the generations to come. As the old saying reminds us: “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” It is deeply unfair that decisions to ignore the climate emergency are being made by those who won’t live to face the worst impacts, leaving future generations to bear the burden of their inaction.
“The Indigenous worldview has been marginalised for generations because it was seen as antiquated and unscientific and its ethics of respect for Mother Earth were in conflict with the industrial worldview. But now, in this time of climate change and massive loss of biodiversity, we understand that the Indigenous worldview is neither unscientific nor antiquated, but is, in fact, a source of wisdom that we urgently need.”
~ Robin Wall Kimmerer, weallcanada.org
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TAG – THE ADAPTATION GAME
TAG: The Adaptation Game is a playful workshop that simulates how you and your community respond to the next ten years of climate change in your town.
At the moment, the game is being rolled out mainly in local government areas, so far 25 municipalities have bought in, but there are plans to have versions of the game in schools, service clubs, etc.
→ See more on www.tagclimatedrill.org
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“In this post-global heating era, we can expect more severe and frequent extreme events. Disasters will affect you and the people you care about over the coming decades. We must accept and factor this new reality into our plans. Adaptation means changing the language we use and adjusting our expectations and strategies. It requires honesty from our leaders. It is no longer acceptable to talk about global heating as if it is a future possibility that can be avoided. People are dying and having their lives destroyed today; we need a much more practical response.”
~ Gaia Vince
→ The Guardian – 16 February 2025:
Extreme weather is our new reality. We must accept it and begin planning
“As wildfires, floods, droughts and record-breaking temperatures have shown, the post-climate change era has arrived. Now we need honesty and action from our leaders.”
How is the climate action movement doing? In truth, it’s absolutely failing
January’s temperatures have shattered records, pushing us 1.75°C above pre-industrial levels. If we look at the 30-year trend, we’re on track to exceed the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target as soon as 2029. By then, our global carbon budget will also be exhausted.
We may be even closer to losing the chance to stay under 2°C – crossing that threshold will set off multiple catastrophic tipping points. If the recent rapid temperature rise continues, we could hit that point by 2038 – far sooner than the IPCC has projected.
Leading climate scientists, including James Hansen, have long warned that this could happen. In the worst case, already within 20–30 years, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation – AMOC – could collapse.
If the AMOC collapses, we’re looking at a catastrophic shift in global climate systems – within our lifetime, or our kids’ lifetime.
What the collapse of AMOC will look like
For Australia, the collapse of the Atlantic ocean circulation would mean more intense heatwaves, droughts, and bushfires, as weather patterns become more erratic and ocean currents shift. The Indian Ocean Dipole and El Niño-Southern Oscillation would be thrown into greater instability, making extreme weather events even more frequent and severe.
Europe would experience a deep freeze, with winter temperatures dropping by several degrees as warm ocean currents shut down. Meanwhile, West Africa and South America would suffer severe droughts, devastating food production and displacing millions.
The Amazon rainforest could dry out, accelerating its dieback and turning it into a net carbon emitter – exacerbating climate breakdown even further.
Sea levels on the US East Coast would rise rapidly, flooding major cities, while the collapse of AMOC could also disrupt monsoon systems in Asia, leading to widespread crop failures and humanitarian crises.
In the worst-case scenario, these cascading effects could trigger other tipping points, such as the irreversible melting of Greenland’s ice sheet, further intensifying sea-level rise and global climate instability. Food and water shortages, geopolitical conflicts, and mass displacement would likely follow.
In summary, a collapse of AMOC wouldn’t just be another climate crisis – it would be a planetary-scale climate catastrophe, one that fundamentally reshapes life on this planet.
So why is no one talking about this?
We have a responsibility to do everything we can to stop that. But with the current state of global politics, that’s looking extremely tough.
Trump is in love with fossil fuels and the money and power they bring, so he’s doing everything he can to supercharge the climate breakdown – burning even more fossil fuels, alongside other fossil-fuel autocrats around the world.
Meanwhile, the sluggish and often weak political responses from our own governments are only bringing forward the day when we lose all control over the future.
A lack of climate realism still dominates both media and decision-making at the highest levels. Even the annual global climate summits organised by the United Nations, our only global forum set in place to tackle this threat, have been hijacked by the fossil fuel industry.
Here in Australia, we know all too well what climate inaction looks like. We’ve seen it in the devastating bushfires, record-breaking floods, cyclones, and marine heatwaves that are battering our country. And yet, fossil fuel expansion continues.
While the current government talks up ‘net zero in 2050’, it quietly approves one new coal and gas project after another – projects that lock in decades of emissions, even after 2050.
The so-called “climate safeguards” are riddled with loopholes, and our emissions reduction targets for 2035 are nowhere near ambitious enough.
Add to that what will happen if Peter Dutton and his Coalition party form government after the election in a few months: Australia will be following Trump’s example, stopping all investments in clean energy and climate action.
Some of us have been fighting tooth and nail for a long time to change this. Climate action groups have been pushing hard for Australia to accelerate its transition away from fossil fuels and into renewables, batteries, and electrification. But it often feels like we’re pushing a boulder uphill.
The media, and social media, is not helping. In the mainstream media, the global security crisis gets most of the attention – as Trump continues his reckless flirtation with Putin, throwing Ukraine under the bus with brutal indifference – along with day-to-day chitterchatter about sports, relationsships and cost of living issues.
The impact of the climate breakdown – the flash flooding, bushfires, food crisis and devastion – is being felt and reported on – according to Australian Red Cross, 80 per cent of Australians have faced a disaster at least once in recent years – but the news reporters never find it relevant to educate their readers and viewers by connecting their reporting with the urgent need for change – the need for everyone of us getting off our fossil fuel addiction.
Consequently, the climate emergency, where we may soon cross a catastrophic runaway point of no return beyond 2°C, is being catastrophically ignored.
We are going backwards, while the temperature graphs keep going upwards. And year after year, fossil fuel companies make record profits. Politicians bend to their interests, while we lose more and more of our natural world. The fact that the Great Barrier Reef is dying is not even considered worth reporting on any longer. The loss of species is escalating, we are losing biodiversity at a rate unparalleled in human history. Global wildlife populations have sunk over 60 per cent since 1970.
We are dragging our feet, failing to capitalise on our world-leading renewable resources – but that is at least something we can change, if enough of us would start calling for it in public.
How? Well, for a start and as an example: During the next few months, when you meet politicians and candidates on their election campaign trail, ask them questions about this, turn up the heat and demand honest answers about where we are at, and what they intend to do about it.
If you talk with representatives from the two major parties, don’t let them get away with stories about their own personal views. Because once elected and at work in Parliament, their personal views mean nothing – they will be voting as they are instructed to vote by their party. So ask them instead how they voted, and how their party voted, when important climate-related decisions were made in Parliament. Talk with them about their party’s policies, not their own opinions.
We need far stronger climate targets for 2035 and 2040. If they fail, we will be the ones paying the price – through increasingly more extreme weather events, lost productivity and crop failures, rising insurance fees, mounting economic costs, and the list goes on.
INSURANCE IN A CLIMATE EMERGENCY
“First Street predicts that some 55 million Americans could be forced to migrate in the next 30 years due to worsening climate risks.”
“Canada saw record-breaking insurance payouts last year – $8.6 billion in claims from flooding, wildfires and hailstorms, according to the Insurance Bureau of Canada. That’s double the 2023 total and a nearly 400% increase over the last decade.
Yet even this staggering figure covers only part of the damage. As this article explains, many Torontonians lack overland flood insurance, so the $1 billion from this summer’s southern Ontario floods represent only a quarter to a third of the total cost.”
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→ Katharine Hayhoe, American Climate Scientist – 15 February 2025:
Rising costs and sinking home values
“Climate change is already eroding home values and driving up insurance costs worldwide. A new analysis by First Street warns that as these trends continue, they could fundamentally disrupt how many people build financial security. In Australia, for example, 15% of households already pay more than a month’s salary for home insurance, largely due to increasing flood and storm risks. That’s a massive expense that doesn’t even cover mortgage payments, household bills, or other expenses. Within ten years, as many as 10% of all homes across the country could become un-insurable, one recent analysis warns.”
→ Climate Connections – 10 December 2024:
Atlantic circulation collapse? New clues on the fate of a crucial conveyor belt
“The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which includes the Gulf Stream, is vital to Earth’s climate. Its weakening could spell disaster.”
→ Fortune – 16 November 2024:
The world has only deployed 10% of the climate technologies it needs to achieve net zero, new research by McKinsey shows (Article behind paywall)
“Despite the momentum of recent years, the fact remains that the energy transition is only in its infancy. Roughly halfway through what has been called climate’s decisive decade, and in the face of rising global uncertainties, it is time for a pragmatic reality check to understand where are we really, and what it will take to get the rest of the job done.”
Carbon dioxide rise threatens 1.5°C target, Met Office warns
According to the Met Office, Earth is ‘off-track’ in limiting global warming to 1.5°C, a key goal set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in the Paris Agreement.
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→ Financial Review – 13 February 2025:
‘Worst in a decade’: Why the campaign against renewables is thriving
“After a recent boardroom shake-up, Australia’s top renewables industry group wants to take the fight to its enemies.”
→ Nature – 4 April 2024:
Increase in concerns about climate change following climate strikes and civil disobedience in Germany
“This paper investigates whether concerns about climate change increase following demonstrative protests and confrontational acts of civil disobedience. Following climate protests, we find increases in concerns about climate change by, on average, 1.2 percentage points.”
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Having said also this, there are still reasons for optimism. Renewable energy is booming globally, with China driving rapid expansion in solar, wind, and batteries. Here’s the weekly good-news list compiled by Assaad Razzouk:
Good climate news this week
1 US record-breaking growth in renewables in 2024, up 47% v. 2023
2 Global electric vehicle sales up 18% in January
3 China electric vehicle exports up 30% in January
4 Friends of the Earth taking court case against Shell to the Dutch Supreme Court
5 Indonesia to boost renewables in new electricity supply plan from 12% to 35% in 2034
6 Colombia’s renewables capacity up 70% in 2024
7 New York approves power line for massive 816MW offshore wind farm
8 UK: 13 more oil and gas licences could be cancelled after court ruling
9 RWE, historically the largest emitter in the EU, posts 8% drop in lignite-fired generation in 2024
10 Institutional investors with $1.5tn in funds have told asset managers to step up on climate action or risk being dumped
11 Lawsuits against the Dutch, French and Spanish governments increase pressure on EU countries to make sure that Marine Protected Areas are truly protected
12 World’s largest ad firm WPP reported to the UK branch of the international corporate watchdog OECD, for allegedly failing to meet the OECD’s guidelines for corporate responsibility through its promotion of polluting clients
13 Philippines storm survivors join climate protest outside Shell HQ in London
14 Greenpeace files an anti-intimidation case against an American fossil fuel pipeline company
~ Compiled by Assaad Razzouk, Chief Executive Officer at Gurīn Energy
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Transcript of The Sustainable Hour no. 536
Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary-General:
Failure is not an option.
Jingle:
The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean and sustainable Geelong. The Sustainable Hour.
Tony Gleeson:
Welcome to The Sustainable Hour. As always, we’d like to acknowledge that we’re broadcasting from the land of the Wathaurong people. We pay tribute to the elders past, present, and those that earn that great honour in the future. We have so much to learn from the ancient wisdom that they honed from nurturing their land and their communities for millennia before their land was stolen.
John Grimes, Smart Energy Council:
We’re hearing, actually, a stream of comments from Mr Dutton that are either dangerously misinformed or he is simply lying to the Australian people. He’s saying that renewable energy cannot power a modern economy. It’s a lie.
Mik Aidt:
Says John Grimes from the Smart Energy Council. And he warns us that if Dutton and the Liberals win a majority of seats at the next election, that’s going to mean a cap on renewables, actually a ban on new solar and wind in the years to come. And why? When we know that solar and wind is both cleaner and cheaper? Well, it’s because there are some people in the coal and gas industries who would like to continue making their profits for a little longer. And in the meanwhile, our climate will continue to break down and destroy people’s homes and lives with floods, fires, cyclones and prices going up.
So that’s what at stake at this election. And if you would like to ‘vote climate’, you’ve come to the right place! Here in The Sustainable Hour, we’ll be talking about how to ‘vote climate’ today – and how to find an innovative new pathway that could maybe create meaningful change when it comes to fixing this climate problem. But first let’s hear some news from around the world with Colin Mockett OAM, who’s got our global outlook. Do you, Colin?
COLIN MOCKETT’S GLOBAL OUTLOOK:
Yes. Thank you, Mik. I’m going to start this week with 10 good news stories about climate change that were sent by a reliable source, one fellow by the name of Tony Gleeson. I’ll follow that with a wonderful example of what should be a good news climate story that was released in the new year at the beginning of the year. But in truth, it’s a prime example of how the fossil fuel industry and politicians are combining to pull the wool over our eyes.
But to start with, here are Tony’s 10 positive stories.
1) China broke its own record in installing renewables in 2024, with solar and wind up 45 per cent and 18 per cent.
2) The EU’s solar and wind growth pushed fossil fuel power to its lowest in 40 years.
3) Australia injected two billion Australian dollars into its green bank.
4) Italy’s 2024 gas consumption is the country’s lowest in 15 years.
5) Australia is in $1.2 billion green aluminium production credit to switch malters to renewables by 2036.
6) 2024 was a record year for German wind power with 2,400 new onshore turbines approved.
7) Coal power in the EU is down 61 per cent over the past decade.
8) Norway is on the brink of achieving a target of 100 per cent of new cars to be electric by the end of this year.
9) China’s oil refinery throughput in 2024 was down for the first time in more than 20 years.
And 10) India is set to beat its 500 GigaWatt renewables target this year, five years ahead of its 2030 schedule.
Now after that space of wonderful news, here’s a little piece of political greenwashing.
You will remember that midway through last year, we reported and spoke about Australia’s largest steel maker, BlueScope, and the nation’s two largest iron ore producers in BHP and Rio Tinto. They were in talks to open up a new steel smelting plant, using only renewable electrical power. You remember that we spoke about that and it sounded wonderful.
Well, just before Christmas, the West Australian government announced the project was going ahead and Kwinana would be the location. Kwinana is on the West Australian coast, just 32 kilometres from Perth.
The project was launched with a media fanfare by the State Premier with a host of business leaders and the Government calling it ‘The Holy Grail for Western Australia’.
The project, will be run by a new identity called NeoSmelt, which is a consortium of BlueScope, BHP and Rio Tinto with a new full partner in Woodside Energy. The new entity will develop the plant, with electric smelting the key to producing green iron and steel.
WA Premier Roger Cook said the new company would be Australia’s largest electric smelting furnace, which, in turning Pilbara iron ore into steel will finally make the state into ‘more than a quarry’.
He said NeoSmelt would take iron ore from the Pilbara region and use renewable energy to produce molten iron, a process which removes coal from the smelting process. He said steel being manufactured in Western Australia would change the state’s entire business model.
‘No longer will we just be a quarry … we will become a producer of green iron as part of the global supply chain for green steel,’ he said.
‘Securing NeoSmelt for Kwinana puts WA at the cutting edge of the global green energy/green steel push,’ Cook said.
‘I can’t over-emphasise the importance of this announcement. Downstream processing has been the Holy Grail for the mining industry in Western Australia for decades.’
The pilot plant would produce 30,000 to 40,000 tonnes of molten iron a year, he said.
But then came the greenwash red flags.
The new plant will initially use natural gas to process iron ore to direct – reducing iron or DRI, the premier said, but once operational the project aims to use lower-carbon emissions hydrogen for the process.
That’s it. That one line covers the so-called renewable clean energy claim. Gas to start with while hydrogen energy is developed.
That’s why Woodside is involved. Woodside is Australia’s largest operator of oil and gas production. There was no mention of solar energy at all, despite WA having one of the most reliable sources of solar power worldwide.
Beyond Zero Emissions chief executive Heidi Lee said Kwinana was the perfect location for new technology to be piloted. But, she added, a genuine commitment to green steel-making now needed to rapidly move towards coal and gas-free production.
And that note of greenwash honesty ends my roundup for the week.
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Jingle:
Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.
Mik:
Our first guest in The Sustainable Hour today is a well-known guest. We’ve talked with you, Jane Morton, many times, not the least because you have been instrumental in this climate emergency campaign that ran… almost 10 years ago, we started in 2016, and you have been on the streets so many times with Extinction Rebellion and now it’s election time, and then we know, almost, that we’re going to hear from you, Jane, because you are always getting fired up when it’s election time. What’s the plans for Vote Climate, the project that you have been running this time around?
Jane Morton:
Vote Climate and Extinction Rebellion.
Election? I think the interesting thing about elections is that politicians, become interested in what people think. So I think there’s lots of opportunities. I’m more active with Extinction Rebellion and in the past we’ve done actions actually at various politicians’ offices, know, like Peter Carville’s office in Melbourne.
I think in coming weeks we’ll be focusing on postering. Partly because we’ve got this terrible problem now with social media. Social media is just not the way. Social media is a way that’s easy to use to organise or, well, to get the truth out these days. And of course, there’s of there don’t know right? So basically, the way I see it is we’re heading towards a campaign where the opposition tries to be Trump-like. They’re already trying all sorts of messages. There’s a fabulous advertising agency, the same one that got Morrison in – it’s depicting Dutton into a daggy dad rather than a dangerous person. So yeah, we’re up against cleverness, I think, and we’re in danger of Trump-like pain.
This is a very, very important election. The coalition is trying all sorts of Trumpian messages.
A lot of money and a lot of this camp leading to a Trump-like election and Trump-like government under Dutton. result.
This is just a terrifying prospect. On the other hand, a real possibility, I think is the Greens and Teals, holding the balance of power with Labor. And in fact, we’ve got, you know, an electorate where it’s almost a balance of popularity, almost a third, and a third, please give me anyone else. So it’s an interesting election. We’ve got good channels of communication.
But the problem we’ve got is some things that people need to understand that even people who are quite politically active don’t understand, like how preferential voting works.
I’ve already seen people saying, it’s really bad when it’s so close, you know, because people will get it and think they have to vote for Labor.
I’ve got to vote Labor because I want get Dutton out. They don’t understand preferencial voting.
“Heard from Internet” “afraid” “It’s still a mystery” We just have to overcome basic bits of lack of knowledge like that.
Mik:
Just explain to me, Jane – preferential voting for dummies. Like someone, you know, like me who has recently come to Australia, well, a decade ago, but still. How do you explain preferential voting? How does it work?
Jane:
Well, the first thing to know is it’s completely different from the UK and from America. So everyone goes, wait to vote. You know, because in America, if you vote for anyone except one of the major two parties, you’re basically going to help the other one get in. In Australia, you can vote for anyone you like, you know, you can vote for the one you really want first. And if that person doesn’t get in, second preference, it goes through to your second preference at And it’s Get sure. At full value. At full value.
So you can vote for a teal or a green or a socialist or an animal justice party person and it can go through if that person doesn’t get in initially. You know, say it ends up being a contest between Labor and Liberal in your seat. You’re not disadvantaging yourself at all. Your vote goes through at full value. And that’s the most important thing.
Mik:
So the most important thing, Jane, that you’re saying is that it is whether you rank, for instance, Labor above or below Liberal. That’s the trick?
Jane:
Yes, that’s the trick. In every … it’s which order you put the two that are going to be the main contenders. But you can put, you know, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, all the little ones, and then put Labor second last, Liberal last. You’re still going to, it’s still going to be exactly the same as far as the Liberal versus Labor contest. It goes through at full value right down. That’s one really important thing. Another thing I always do with climate change is like at the moment, you only have to above the line thing with the Vote Climate Senate scorecard is you only have five above. The vote is so much more powerful if you number but you’re to to do that everybody that you think is remotely okay. Because in the Senate contest, you can end up with just a few hundred swings in last place in some of those contests in each state. And it’s very sad if the last contest turns out to be between, you know, Animal Justice and Clive Palmer. But you didn’t number past the first five because that’s what the Vote in the, It’s so sad if you vote the way the party’d how to vote card told you to do
But look, there’s incredibly powerful and horrible elements like the disinformation campaign already starting from Advance and the Atlas network.
They are saying they think that it’s a really good outcome for them if there’s a minority Labor government. That’s going to be really unstable and then they’ll get in next time.
If you look at where their money is coming from. It’s from Advance, part of The Atlas Network, to run vile attacks. Who say they’re shit scared. They are backed to a high level by the fossil fuel industry.
The Greens and the Teals are their major targets. We seeing is are seeing fear from vested interests in trying to portray a minority government with Greens trying to drag labour into doing something about the fossil fuel industry. So you’ve got Advance and you’ve also got a thing called Australians for Prosperity. I don’t know if you’ve seen them down your way, but we’ve got “Australians for Prosperity” – in big commas – in city electorate spreading fear in the voters.
They’re mostly funded by vested interests. That’s the way that happens. It’s got proper preferential voting, but it’s got this terrible problem that it’s too easily scorned. If you have enough money… I was watching commercial television the other night, Clive Palmer was on every five minutes telling people false solutions to the of living. People are very concerned about the ‘cost of living’ issue.
I know that, but I find it hard to believe that they think Dutton, for example, who wanted the stage three tax cuts only to go to the wealthy. It’s unbelievable that people think that he will fix this important issue
Our political system is broken. Like the real strengths of democracy because so many of us are swayed by fear mongering by big money interests who aren’t afraid to spread spread downright lies and disinformation.
Most of those people really think that he’s going to fix cost of living. But there’s this incredible sort of advertising campaign, this incredible sort of reach by parties backed by wealthy people and just saturating social media with this idea that nuclear is going to fix your cost of living, that renewables are causing problems, but the extraordinary disinformation being ramped up already with such force through the mainstream media.
And it’s been effective if you believe the polls.
There are such vast amounts of money behind it. Anyway, we’re going to be doing a lot of posters, stencils, flyers, house signs, the streets and be trying to talk to people face to face because we cannot access through mainstream media and we have almost no access through social media now. Community radio, of course, another one. We’ve got to get on.
. . .
Jingle:
Scott Morrison:
This is coal. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be scared.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse:
At the heart of this conflict is a battle between truth and science and power and life.
. . .
Phoebe – facts piece produced by The Sustainable Hour:
It’s time for a clean up in the morass of clean energy misinformation
In today’s show we’re cutting through the noise and diving into the numbers and stories that really matter. The world is experiencing a seismic shift in energy, and it’s unstoppable. The green transition is a reality, and here’s why.
Did you know the world now invests almost twice as much in clean energy as it does in fossil fuels? And here’s the kicker: in most places, solar and wind energy are not just viable alternatives – they are the cheapest sources of new electricity in history.
As UN Secretary-General António Guterres put it recently, “Solar and wind are now the fastest-growing energy sources, ever.”
Let’s put this into perspective. In 2024 alone, over 700 gigawatts of new solar and wind energy capacity were installed worldwide. That’s nearly double the total nuclear capacity built over the past 70 years. Think about that for a moment: renewables aren’t just catching up; they’ve taken the lead. Renewables are no longer “alternative energy”, they are mainstream.
But despite this incredible progress, the conversation around clean energy is still mired in misinformation. You’ve probably heard the same tired arguments: “renewables are unreliable”, “they’re too expensive”, or “they’ll never meet our energy needs”. These claims dominate certain media outlets and social media platforms. Yet the facts tell a completely different story.
In 2024, the price of solar modules dropped by 34%, and large-scale battery storage is more affordable than ever. Measured over their lifetimes, solar panels and onshore wind turbines are now cheaper than oil, gas, or coal – even without factoring in the enormous subsidies fossil fuels still receive.
And those subsidies? They’re staggering. Here in Australia, federal and state governments handed $14.5 billion to the fossil fuel industry last year, a 31% increase from the previous year. Globally, that figure reached $7 trillion.
And yet, the renewable revolution powers on. Communities worldwide are benefitting from this transformation. Lower electricity costs, thousands of new jobs, and significant emissions reductions are just the beginning. In Europe, emissions from the power sector dropped by 19% in 2023 and another 13% in 2024. Wind power in the EU even outproduced fossil gas for the first time, with renewables making up 48% of the power mix.
Here in Australia, 40% of electricity in the National Electricity Market now comes from renewables. That’s up from just 15% in 2017.
And every third Aussie household has solar panels on their roof, making Australia a world leader in per-capita solar energy. Yet, many Australians remain unaware of these achievements. Why? Because misinformation spreads faster than the truth.
TV channels like Sky News Australia consistently misrepresent renewables as unreliable or dangerous. Stories about wind turbines killing wildlife or transmission towers ruining landscapes are weaponised to create fear and resistance. But these narratives overlook the bigger picture: renewable energy is helping communities thrive, not falter.
So, what can we do? We change the story. If the media won’t tell it, then we have to. Share the facts. Celebrate the successes. Highlight the human stories behind this energy revolution.
As António Guterres said earlier this year, “The world now invests almost twice as much in clean energy as it does in fossil fuels. We must incentivise this green transition, address barriers, and accelerate the shift from voluntary pledges to mandatory action.”
The challenges are real. With Donald Trump’s return to the White House and climate-sceptic leaders gaining ground globally, there are fears the energy transition could slow down. But let’s not forget: the green transition survived Trump’s first term, and it will survive his second. In 2017, the transition was just leaving the station. Today, it’s reached escape velocity.
So don’t be a silent bystander! Make sure you become part of this unstoppable movement. Renewable energy is here, and it’s brighter, cleaner, and more sustainable than ever before. And most importantly: It is CHEAPER than ever before.
You can sing that from your solar powered rooftop next time you get up there: “Every third Aussie household now have solar on their rooftops!” “Australia has 40% of renewables in the electricity grid.”
Let’s get the word out there: The green transition is a reality. Unstoppable. Inevitable. Because… again: why? Because it is cheaper.
. . .
Mik:
What does it mean, the fact that January this year has turned out to be a staggering 1.75°C degrees hotter than the pre-industrial period? 1.75°C should be like headlines in the news and the rest. And yet it seems like, nobody’s listening. It’s not out in the news anyway.
Jane:
That was January, so yes, it was about 1.5°C degrees of warming in 2023, 1.6°C in 2024, and 1.75°C in January. And the really scary thing about that is now in La Nina, you know, it should be getting cooler. When we should be getting cooler, going, well, you know, we hit 1.5 but again, with La Nina. It’s right on the runaway and 1.6°C last year. Now it’s 1.74.
And there were even scientists saying: ‘Don’t worry, it’ll drop back’. Well, it’s not dropping. Obviously, people are not concerned about it. And I think this is because Labor has made a decision not to say that it’s an emergency, not to talk about the science. It’s because they’re embarrassed about fossil fuels. Like last election, Chris Bowen was saying, telling people that is so important.
‘The world’s climate emergency is Australia’s jobs opportunity.’ This is something we actually coached him to say, and it was good. He doesn’t say it much now because how can you can go around saying it’s an emergency when you’re still opening up new coal and gas. They’re just caught. They can’t stop. Because they fear the fossil fuel lobby. It’s so great.
This is, you know, like, I guess I don’t think Dutton’s is unelectable, but with enough money behind it, they’re going, ‘why don’t you have a few more guts?’ And this clever advertising agency continually churns out material indicating he is not unelectable. So we’re stuck. We’re stuck. I mean, Labor is not providing the leadership to tell people about them. They’re not telling people the 1.6°C, about the AMOC – the terrible, terrible news that the currents that distribute warm air all around the world, this very important AMOC, has slowed 15 per cent and could stop – and cook us by mid-century. But then, they fear telling the truth about that will make them unelectable.
Mik:
So not only, Jane, do we have the floods and the bushfires, which obviously means rising insurance costs, food crisis. We also have, like you talk about with the AMOC, the unrest that will come from immigration pressure, because AMOC translates into chaos in large parts of the world, which means people will need to move away and seek somewhere else to live.
Jane:
Yes, I’m just reading a book called ‘Nomad Century’, it’s a book. initially I found it hard to read, you know, a vision of what could happen this century. It’s just… 4°C degrees of warming – we will easily get to this before the end of this century. We’ve got just a large amount, like a third of the population, relocated to the poles. Up in Russia and China and Alaska and down in Antarctica. I couldn’t read it initially.
When I finally read it, it’s actually, well, it’s an optimistic vision that it is possible because the argument they make is that, you know, Russia and China with those will be wanting to open up or create cities, big circle with hundreds of people to populate those cities so that actually just relocating isn’t the answer.
The argument that… those, know, up around the archipelago, they will actually need millions of people. Anyway it’s still a horror story
Like the chances of turning out are very slim. This could be one of the last elections, possibly the last before those tipping points are reached. And it’s up to Extinction Rebellion. Ideally, it’s up to the rest of the climate movement to tell the emergency story. But we still have a situation. We do not understand why the broader climate movement won’t use the E word, won’t say it’s an emergency which it definitely is, And really, I think – this must be standard even as we touch the 1.75 degrees of warming. I think that’s the responsibility for Extinction Rebellion to get climate on the scorecard type arrangement. But it’s a scorecard that always is taking account of emergency, like in scoring the parties on their response to the emergency, rather than on, you know, zero by 2050, net zero by 2050. It’s part of the delusion being ‘sold’. It’s how the climate movement has not been in terms of not an emergency, that zero by 2050, especially net zero by then is not going to come within coee of saving us. We have to keep banging on that focusing on 2050 as a target isn’t going to get us anywhere near the science is demanding we need to be.
Mik:
So what are the plans exactly for the vote system there with the scorecards you talk about?
Jane:
Well, it’s actually a collaboration between a whole lot of local climate groups. There’s already very dedicated people and I admire them working on what the criteria should be, which you would think would be an easy task, but it’s not. Just what’s the fairest way. How to distinguish between the different parties.
So there’ll be a whole lot of local scorecards, in key electorates, ones where the fight is really important.
I’ll do the Senate with the emphasis on to number more than five.
We’ll face the problem of how to get it out. But we’ll do our best. We’ll both be able to have people at Polling booths, in crucial crucial electorates. Apart from climate, one the issues we’re pitching for in the postering is the interconnection between it and the cost of living? Ensuring that we’re differentiating what is the real difference between parties on climate? Because as you mentioned, this information is not going to a large number of people that are paying more than one month’s for. So what happens to your house price then?
Another thing we’re seeing is whole area are becoming uninsurable.
When you can’t insure your home, no one can get a mortgage on it.
These are all messages we’ll be addressing in the lead up to the election.
So there’s that, as you mentioned, there’s Look, the main, so there’s sort of a climate contribution to cost of food. But I’m actually working on some posters that are just on the theme of ‘greed of the few’. It’s the greed of the few. It’s this small number of billionaires, who have so much money, who make $billions, who have so much money they could never spend it in a thousand lifetimes and they are pouring money, still putting an influence into not fixing the tax system. These vile attacks on the teals are about cost of living rather than paying their bills. They’re talking about taxing superannuation balances of more than three million with their head in their hands and then saying all the time, know, decrease your pension.
I don’t think most of the people with their head in their hands trying to pay their electricity bills have got more than three million in their superannuation accounts, but people cannot make even these tiny little changes to protect the wealthy. So we’re having to do posters that have greed of the few equals cost of living crisis and then a bit of explanation. Greed of the few equals climate collapse because it’s the same problem. It’s the same problem with democracy that the greed of the few
The mainstream media’s ability to influence the election ensures that climate change affecting the changes, even the taxes in the tiniest, tiniest little way. And I think there’s a very important education project that people must recognise that we’ve got a fundamental problem of vested interests in our democracy, one of the that extinction rebellion has always kept front of mind
One of the things I campaigned on, ‘citizens’ assemblies. At first, I could never see how we had to really campaign on them. But I think the moment has come, there’s going to be, as citizens simply are randomly selected people who are helped to deliberate thoughtfully on major issues like climate.
Back in Greece, in the early days of democracy, they said that the ruling body had to be randomly selected people, because as soon as you had representative democracy, representatives chosen, the wealth would dominate and everyone else would get poorer. Look, there’s been periods where that’s been reversed after this, but mostly not
It’s very interesting. You can just see, well, especially in recent times, this strangle hold of the ultra wealthy, just taking us hurtling off the cliff. Basically, to educate citizens of the strength of liberal democracy.
So basically, we’ve been doing anything we can think of. And to get rolling at a local level, I’m seeing social media, mainstream media rolling together.
At a local level we’ve got this problem with social maintenance. You’ve got to get people face to face so you don’t get those horrible divisions because that’s what they showed with the assemblies. Like they been used to deal with marriage equality, abortion law reform in Ireland via these assemblies because politicians couldn’t act. The Catholic Church would vote them out, get them voted out because they’re wealthy too.
Ordinary people came up with referendum warnings that ordinary people supported. Who’d thought? Got past that horrible division.
Mik:
Yeah, I mean, we can look to America right now and we can see how a man, the world’s richest man, buys his way into political power. And now he’s the best playmate in a government. I’m of course talking about Elon Musk. And I’m just wondering: would Gina Reinhart become the equivalent here? You know, with Peter Dutton now – there was a YouGov poll that came out in the weekend, which said that Peter Dutton would get 37 per cent of the votes, and Labor would get 29%. So right now, if there was an election today, we would have the coalition and Peter Dutton as the next prime minister and government.
What makes you wonder about Mr Dutton’s relationship with Gina Reinhardt and how she buys her way in, first of all, he received half a million dollars in donations from her last year. But then when you hear… – here’s clearly someone here who doesn’t think about his carbon footprint – he flew all the way from Sydney to Perth, that’s a round trip of nine hours in the air, to spend one hour at Gina Reinhardt’s birthday party. And you just wonder, if he’s flying nine hours to be one hour together with Gina at her birthday party, there’s something going on there that doesn’t sound right.
Jane:
Exactly. Best buddies. But look, those polls are not necessarily as bad as you say, right? Because 37 per cent liberal, 20 per cent, whatever you said, Labor. The rest are largely Greens and Independents. Gina and the Independents, right?
So it totally depends on how many those independents are right wingers pretend-independents? Some do deals with Labor, and how many random… like the Independents helped swing the Prahan Victorian election.
Yes, so very close. It’s very close. But yeah, Labor is losing more probably than the Liberals… but they’re both, they’re both just losing. They’re both on the nose.
I saw an extraordinary poll recently. I think it’s something like 75 per cent of Americans think that the system is broken. It’s something like: 60 per cent think it’s been broken in the last few years, and 25 per cent of them think it’s been broken for a long time – wow! That’s a lot of people who are catching on to the bad state of our democracy.
Australians are starting to think the same thing. I think they’re onto the idea that it’s not just a duopoly of Coles and Woolworths, but there’s a duopoly of Labor collaborating with the Liberals to do a lot of stuff that’s not really helping ordinary people.
Yeah, Gina and Clive. They’re our equivalent of Elon Musk. Trump did a deal with the fossil fuel industry. Like he’s so blatant. He can’t close doors, right? In America, he just goes to a great big meeting and goes, well, I’ll support you guys if you give me a billion dollars.
You know. In Australia it happens too. So yeah, It’s shocking, it’s shocking. But ordinary people have really got to get active this election.
Mik:
Hmm, that’s the bottom line, isn’t it? We can’t just sleepwalk into this.
Jane:
No, this is – well, we’ve sort of said it before, but this… It’s do or die.
You know? And look, the interesting thing is that as well as stopping fossil fuels, which turns out to be just so hard, there’s actually some very interesting stuff that we could do, drawdown restoration.
Even if Labor is under the heel of the fossil fuel industry, it’s the sort of things that Greens and Teals in the balance of power with Labor could negotiate for. There’s really no downside. Like we could start watershed restoration, you know, restoring the rivers. And thus, obviously, want to maintain them growing in the forests and grasslands you’ve got. But restoring the rivers gets the water back into the landscape and makes revegetation a lot easier. So there’s really quite large scale things that we could do if we get a decent government that wouldn’t be that hard.
Mik:
Hmm, it’s going to be interesting. Certainly from this end, from The Sustainable Hour, we’ll keep following this, Jane. And you’re most welcome back if you have different kind of news about what’s happening in the grassroots field and how the climate movement is doing and should be doing locally here. We are trying to support the parties that have endorsed the so-called climate rescue accord, which is a longer policy that parties can read and they can say, ‘Yep, we believe in that!’
And for instance, the Animal Justice Party have done just that. The Greens haven’t yet. They’re talking more about a ‘safe climate’, but that’s still something. And there are different groups like smaller parties like Fusion Party, which are not up in all electorates, but in the places where they are, they have a very strong and good climate policy. So we’ll keep informing about who to vote for in your electorate if you want to climate.
Jane:
And look, the easiest thing if you want to join thousands of people trying to spread emergency word through posters, would be great if people would also join this at Extinction Rebellion (ausrebellion.earth). And have the climate and actions. It’s easy. and say you’d like to help and someone will get back to you. Also tune into Vote Climate. later on when deciding look closely at the scorecard for your electorate.
Jingle:
[Music]
Mik: (at 40:20)
Our next guest is Ben Pederick, who is a film producer, but also someone who is working with the climate crisis, as we have talked about here, and making tools for how we deal with the climate crisis, so-called ‘climate adaptation’. Welcome, Ben, to The Sustainable Hour.
Ben:
Good morning Mik, how are you?
Mik:
Yeah, very well, except for as we’ve talked about the situation in the world. But you are working on something very interesting that also has to do with what we’ve talked about here?
Yes, definitely. It’s called ‘The Adaptation Game’, and it’s a tool for local government and local community to engage and mobilise people to adapt for known climate risks within their own lives, in their own towns and to play space games. it transfers itself and represents where you live according to climate science and local expertise. And you get to play and imagine what you might do about it individually and together.
Mik:
So how is that done?
Ben:
So the game, The Adaptation Game – TAG – is a tabletop game that’s played with a facilitator, usually for players, but it’s quite flexible in terms of how the game works. It’s a game, it’s a box, it looks like a game. And it’s a storytelling and scenario-based game where the map of a local government area is placed on the table in front of you and then using that map, we time travel 10 years, two years at a time, 10 years into the future. And each time we time travel, we do or do not, depending upon the vagaries of the game, confront a climate-related shock. And that shock shows you, well, how does that affect where I live and what kind of things will happen according to science and the council’s own projections.
And there’s a whole range of play equipment that the game gives you.
It’s particularly focused on the adaptation card. So that’s your superpower within the game. What can you imagine that you might do as yourself, not as like Albo or Gina Reinhardt or just like you and you and your community? What could you imagine that you will do and want to do?
So you play those cards into the game and those cards actually also become collective so that you can merge them, different players can merge them, they’re collective adaptations. And we also have real council programs, the actual council programs on the table as well.
So there’s like three layers of adaptation that you have. There’s a whole range of other things that happen in the game, but fundamentally use adaptation to respond to an increasingly uncertain and risk laden world. And the way that we make that is with local councils and communities. So, so far there’s 24 or 25 local governments that have bought and are implementing The Adaptation Game.
What we do is we go through a localisation process with them, where using online design tools like Miro and so forth, we actually make, we hyper-localise, we make the game local. So there’s a whole lot of player equipment, there’s maps and so forth. Every single time we do it in a different place, we end up putting that place inside the box.
It started in Merri-bek and there’s a TAG Merri-bek, and then it went to Bendigo, there’s a TAG Bendigo. TAG Melbourne, TAG et cetera. And now there’s actually a TAG Calgary – that’s nearly finished – and a TAG Northland in New Zealand, as well as ones in Western Australia, Queensland and Tasmania and across Victoria.
As it grows, obviously we get these amazing… like, local councils are full of such excellent people and such expertise.
So that expertise then becomes a community, like a peer circle. And that peer circle also gathers together each month to learn. And the game itself is a systems tool where the idea of networking the games is built into the game itself.
And the final thing to mention is the game’s not super hard to run, so we train people to be local facilitators, and once the game exists, once those boxes are in libraries and so forth, it’s an ongoing tool for people to just play and play again. And the game’s a storytelling tool so that the stories that you imagine and tell together within the game are really cool communications assets in a sense. They’re anecdotes that you can share.
Knowledge is generated every time the game is played and so the game becomes the source for social media communications or communications internally within councils etc. It’s good.
Mik:
So have I understood it right that the people who play the game are actually professional people who work with climate in a council situation?
Ben:
No, it’s deliberately designed to be a socio-political tool to create conversations with everybody in the places that they are as they are. You, me, our neighbors from any age or background talking as an expert in your own lived experience about your life within the context of climate change through the years. So the reason that TAG exists is to engage and mobilise and unblock people’s sense of agency within the climate crisis.
The climate crisis is usually described to people as being a vast and overwhelming global problem about which they can do not much more except vote. What TAG is saying is you can collectively in your town make yourself more or less resilient. You can in your own house make yourself more or less resilient. And the theory I suppose of impact within that over time is you get a more resilient community. And if you look at the impact of climate shocks here and overseas, people are not prepared for known risks, like profoundly unprepared for known risks. If people are more prepared for risks, the results are that there’s a lot less harm. It saves a lot of money and it saves a of resources. And it’s a lot easier to recover with a prepared cohesive community where there’s lots of social capital.
So TAG’s saying: First, let’s try and prepare people. Within the notion of preparedness, within that process of building agency, you start to have conversations with people which unblock their sense of agency within the climate crisis. They start to practice collective thinking about how do you solve this thing? And that connects to other things you can do, you know, this is still theoretical, but if you can do this effectively across many councils, you start to be able to help councils get beyond the limits of their own agency too.
Councils can only make resilient the things that they’re directly in charge of. They can only be zero emissions within the body of what the council controls. If they want a zero emissions community, you need to reach into the community to do it. So TAG is reflecting on the idea that if you’re not having a political conversation with people, if you’re not finding storytelling and anecdotes and conversations which give them something that they can do in their own lives, then climate change remains overwhelming. And what we find within TAG is that when people play it, it reduces their anxiety, it increases their sense of hope, it reduces their sense of despair and increases their sense of agency.
Mik:
Now, I’m thinking of a little group that we have here in Geelong, gathering once a month, the fourth Friday of the month, called a Climate Cafe. And there’s between 12 and 18 people sitting around a table. And it’s a good mix of people who have been in the climate movement for years, some of them for decades, and others who are newbies and who are in that space that you talk about anxiety, and feeling helpless. Could that game be used by a group like a climate cafe in Geelong?
Ben:
Yes, absolutely. We’ve actually worked with people in Marybeck who are part of the Climate Cafe movement. That’s the first ever time we did it. there’s really strong, I suppose, similarities in the intent of what TAG’s doing. So the people who are a part of something like Climate Cafe would actually be what we’d find that the first generation of people who got trained up to deliver TAG to people.
You know, they play tag and they might be the kind of people that are like, oh, I want to learn how to facilitate this game so I can play it with other people. Yes. And the thing about tagging inherently is like that we want to foster collaborative relationships, like within people that play it, but also tag itself. The term that I use is like, it’s a boundary object. Like it sits between council and community or stakeholder groups and community. And it provides a third place where you can like safely and imaginatively think about these things together, know, constructively much like Climate Cafe. And so yes, partnering with things like Climate Cafe is an ideal example of how we work.
Mik:
That’s great. So what’s the next step? Does it cost something?
Ben:
It does cost something. So the councils buy it and then we design it with them and then produce game kits for them and train them. So that’s what we call phase one. And the next step for us is to continue to grow in Australia in terms of the number of places that we’re in and also to continue to seek to grow into other countries. Continue to work on the questions about ongoing use within community and the communications that it generates. So we’re doing that work with a few councils at the moment where we’re making communications tools that come out of playing the game. And then also starting to move into playing it with groups of councils so that there can be a conversation that increases agency at that layer of decision making.
The other thing that we’re working on at the moment is with the three councils here is we’re taking the tag game, which is a box and it has a series of stages that you go through in the game and we’re adapting it into a series of modules for high school students. So probably be focused on year nines and those modules will be there on the council website, freely downloadable by teachers in that council area to be used. And the goal for that is that obviously those children at high school and in primary school as well at the moment are well aware mostly of the world being incredibly uncertain.
Climate change is a part of that perspective. And they have a sense of a lack of agency and hopelessness as well that’s kind of brimming at the edges of their world. So TAG wants to do the same thing that it does with everybody else, which is take them on a journey of understanding their agency so that they confront the world they live within.
They work out what they can do about it within the context of a school community. They work out how they can do that. Like how can they enact that thing that they’ve imagined? By going to council to get a grant or whatever, mean, going to community to seek support, whatever it might be. And then they share that with their school community and their parent groups.
So that’s our immediate kind of, there’s a lot going on for TAG and it’s making it sort of an urgent need that keeps us very busy. There’s only six of us. And so we’re quite busy. And I’m doing my PhD. This is my PhD tag. So I’m quite busy and I have to finish my PhD by July. Otherwise, the university will come and find out where I live and it’ll be bad. But within all of that, what we’re trying to do is solve the questions around how does this thing achieve impact with through partnership in a sense. So when we’re going to places like Western Australia or Calgary or New Zealand or wherever it might be.
We can’t fly there, like that would be unproductive. So forming those practices with people that allow them to sustainably do this work and then also foster it and continue it to grow. There’s a lot. There’s a lot. Yeah.
Mik:
So just again for me to understand as a climate cafe in Geelong, if we wanted to play the game, then we need to first go to our council and get them involved and say, hey, you need to contact Ben or how does it work?
Ben:
Yeah, usually that’s the way it would work. So we’re actually talking to Geelong at the moment. So we could literally go and do that. There’s a conversation with someone in Geelong who is really interested in doing it within the council. What TAG suggests, what TAG is recognising is that it would ideally be a government program to make their communities climate resilient. Ideally, that would be happening. It’s not happening for the reasons that you and Jane were discussing, the politics of this conversation.
So what we’ve got is a Faustian bargain with capitalism where in order for us to do this, we have to turn it into a service that we deliver to councils. But also recognising that you cannot expect people to volunteer their way towards climate resilience. At some point it needs to be enabled by local government. It needs to be enabled by resources.
So TAG’s taking that process of enabling local climate field adaptation and it’s forming relationships that hopefully start to feed those conversations back and forth, transformative conversations with enabling people inside council and enabling people inside community. So that’s kind of the theory, suppose, and there’s a lot more to say about that. But in a nutshell, we work with local council resilience-based officers, people that are focused on that, and people like yourself in Geelong community. And together, we localise it.
We create TAG along and then we work with you on a rollout strategy so that it can be handed to you and you can take it to your community. And that’s the way it works.
Mik:
I think innovation is needed. Clearly the climate movement the last 10 years has not succeeded. know, emissions are going up and the rest. So we need to start rethinking, I think, what it means to be a climate movement. And I love the empowerment that your idea here could give, you know, us as citizens on the ground. That’s really where everything begins.
Ben:
The idea that the left or the progressive parts of political movements often carry with them is that change will come by debating or forcing government to behave in a way that makes sense. And realistically, it’s often not the case. The suffragette movement did not have that. Women’s rights didn’t come because government was like, yeah, that’s a good idea. It came because people threw themselves on the horses, you know, like change comes because it’s driven from the ground up, you know, and it finds a way to get allies within those places. And it gives those allies the resources that they need to bring about change.
And I feel like one of the opportunities within talking about adaptation with people is that you are talking to people about their lives and you’re also engaging with them in what they know and are expert at. You don’t need to polarise the conversation. You can then lead towards the idea of like, we all know, you know, unless we’re really out here and we just never gonna agree, 70-80 per cent of us know the world is more uncertain and yeah, the weather’s changing. People know that. They just don’t know what to do about it.
It takes all kinds of action. You need to have radical action in order to move the spectrum of the permissible out. But then you do need to, for the rest of society, give them a mainstream, deliberate and understandable, not polarised, vision of how they fit into that. Adaptation is kind of, I’m not saying it’s the solution at all. That is not what I’m saying. But adaptation has hope within it because it says, yeah, if you go and do this thing, when there’s a heat wave, your house will be safer.
By doing that, you’re engaging with a shared horizon about social well-being, a shared horizon that says heat waves are more likely, storms more likely, bushfires are more likely. We all agree. That’s positive. Australia has a profound relationship to deep time survival and storytelling. Like our first peoples, our indigenous peoples, the traditional owners of this place. They have, in my life, like working with Indigenous people and First Nations people here in Australia and other places, a lot of the thinking within the adaptation game has emerged from that idea of how important it is to be place-based, how important it is to have a connection to where your food comes from, where your water comes from, and think about those things in deep time terms.
There is a remarkable and resilient sense of agency and meaning that comes from doing that. And it does sort of solve or at least mitigate some of the hopelessness about a vast and overwhelming global but really ephemeral problem. Whereas if you just talk about where your food comes from, where you live, what you know, how you’re to get together, that’s something that’s very deep and very human and that’s all that TAG is doing in a sense.
Mik:
That’s all we could fit in one Sustainable Hour, which went very quickly, I felt, today. Ben and Jane, we usually end off on a ‘Be…’: ‘Be the difference’, or ‘Be something’. ‘Be a place maker’. What do you say, Ben?
Ben:
‘Be involved’ because of what Jane was talking about and that work that you’re doing, Jane, I just want to celebrate that. Get involved, be involved! I’m going to be involved!
Mik:
How about you, Jane? What’s your ‘Be’?
Jane:
Be a rebel! I think disruptive. We need to disrupt the destruction. look, we’re playing the adaptor.
We need ordinary people just play the adaptation game, talking to their neighbours, being part of local assemblies on local issues. Making fun cities, you know, to prepare for what’s coming, regardless of what we do. And be proud, because this climate movement is huge. There are so many different bits.
Mik:
And I would say: ‘Be part of The Game.’
Ben:
Let’s play together. Love it.
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Events we have talked about in The Sustainable Hour
Events in Victoria
The following is a collation of Victorian climate change events, activities, seminars, exhibitions, meetings and protests. Most are free, many ask for RSVP (which lets the organising group know how many to expect), some ask for donations to cover expenses, and a few require registration and fees. This calendar is provided as a free service by volunteers of the Victorian Climate Action Network. Information is as accurate as possible, but changes may occur.
Petitions
→ List of running petitions where we encourage you to add your name
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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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