Earth Day reflections from the heart

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The Sustainable Hour no. 544 | Transcript | Podcast notes

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, but through every human heart.”
~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn, quoted by Peter Martin

Broadcast from Geelong’s Eastern Park, Margie Abbott and Peter Martin offer powerful reflections on our connection with nature and the moral dimensions of the climate crisis.

In The Sustainable Hour no. 544, we mark Earth Day – which is coming up on Tuesday 22 April 2025 – with deep reflections, urgent climate news, and poetic new music. From drying soils to moral courage, blending science, spirituality and song, this episode invites us to reconnect and ‘be the Earth’.

Colin Mockett OAM shares alarming global climate news, from record heat in Australia to drying soils and Arctic warming.

With new Earth Day songs, Return Again and Becoming Earth, and thoughtful insights from Harrison Ford and Charles Eisenstein, this episode invites us to listen, reflect, and reconnect with Mother Earth.

Content of a heartfelt Sustainable Earth Day 2025 Hour

In this special Earth Day edition of The Sustainable Hour, we step outdoors and into deeper reflection, broadcasting from Eastern Park with wind in the microphone and birdsong in the background.

The hour is a heartfelt tribute to our living planet, combining science, spiritual insight, poetic music, and grounded conversation about Earth as being sacred and alive, the power of conscience and moral clarity, listening to nature’s quiet voices, spiritual ecology and the sacred in everyday life – and about hope, collapse, despair and the human capacity for transformation.

Recorded on Monday 14 April 2025 at 11am. Broadcasted on Wednesday 16 April 2025 at 11am.
Location: Eastern Park, Geelong – under the Blue Dot Flag in the rotunda.

GUESTS

Margie Abbott begins with a powerful Acknowledgement of Country and a deeply personal reflection on what Earth Day means in an age of ecological crisis. She speaks about our loss of connection to the sacredness of Earth and calls for a renewed sense of relationship and care.
Peter Martin, former environmental scientist and now priest, explores the inner dimension of the climate crisis. He speaks of conscience, moral courage, and the “line between good and evil” that runs through every human heart. Drawing on mysticism and ethics, he offers a profound call for inner transformation as a path to outer change.

Colin Mockett OAM offers his weekly global outlook, reporting on worrying trends in climate science: record-breaking heat in Australia, rapid drying of the Earth’s soils, fierce winds in China, and warming in the Arctic. He also analyses the current political responses to climate and energy in the lead-up to the federal election.

MUSIC FEATURED

Return Again | Lyrics

– a new Earth Day anthem reflecting on our spiritual and ecological roots. Inspired by Margie Abbott’s 2025 Earth Day speech

Becoming Earth | Lyrics

– a lyrical journey into our connection with soil, trees and the living world with a quiet, grounding sense of unity with nature

NOTABLE VOICES

Harrison Ford speaks about listening to the quiet systems that sustain life – the krill, the ants, the caterpillars.
Charles Eisenstein reflects on the aliveness of Earth and how true climate care requires a shift in how we value nature.

This Earth Day, we invite you to take a breath, listen deeply, and perhaps, as the final words of the episode encourage: Be the Earth.

CONCLUDING COMMENTS

As we face up to what is arguably the biggest crisis ever faced by humans, it is important to take the opportunity to stop our busy lives and reflect on what is our place in this world. Earth Day, the 22nd of April each year, provides such an opportunity to look at our current situation and ask ourselves some important questions.

Questions like:

What’s our purpose?
Are we happy where we are?
Does the way we currently live really serve us?
What sort of future do we need?
What sort of future do we want?

In today’s show we hope we have allowed an opportunity for such reflections.

If we are guided by this week’s concluding request, BE THE EARTH, we’ll all be better off for it – and our future will look and be much safer.

We’ll be back next week with new stories of people who know what’s at stake and are prepared to become active solution seekers. Be part of the green transition. Be part of the solution!

“It’s very painful to read [Tim Winton’s new book ‘Juice’], but it does end on a note which is very inspiring, which is on this amazing generosity and kindness that is within all humans. And all we need to do is restore that sanity.”
~ Margie Abbott, in The Sustainable Hour no. 544

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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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Democracy reimagined: rebuilding trust

How to take part in this online citizens’ assembly
To join this exciting experiment in citizen-powered democracy:

Sign up at www.crossroadsconversation.com.au
Select a date for your small-group deliberation
Join this national assembly on 23, 24 or 26 April 2025, as well as the plenary on 29 April

Participation is open to everyone. No prerequisites. Just bring your voice, your curiosity – and your conviction.

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

→ The Conversation – 14 March 2025:
Plant-based plastics could help reduce the millions of tonnes of medical waste hospitals generate each year
“There’s a growing push to find eco-friendly alternatives to traditional plastics. Bioplastics, such polylactic acid (PLA), may be promising alternatives to the plastics used in medical products. Bioplastics can be made from plants or algae. This means they can be broken down when the temperature, pH levels and moisture conditions are right, and they don’t create any toxic byproducts over time.”

Rooted in life, not profit

“Collapse doesn’t look like the movies. It looks like food prices increasing, it looks like once in a generation storms every few years, it looks like rising fascism and slow brain rot. It looks like silence from the powerful, and burnout for those who care. This system is devouring itself—and us with it. We need a new story. One rooted in life, not profit.”

Collapse is not a single event. It is a drawn-out transition, already unfolding around us. The danger lies not in acknowledging this truth, but in clinging to outdated structures that no longer serve life.

And what if collapse of a sick system isn’t something to prevent, but something to be prepared for – with wisdom, creativity and care?

What if our task is not to rescue the current system, but to nurture what will survive beyond it? Rather than trying to preserve what is crumbling, we can focus on regeneration – for the world that is emerging.

Now is the time to imagine, design and cultivate what the future could be. A future rooted in community, resilience, regeneration and care. A future shaped not by fear, lies, greed, selfishness, shortsightedness or the weapons of mass manipulation, but by our shared responsibility to each other and to the Earth.

Could that be the new story rooted in life not profit?

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Briana Bosch (@blossomandbranchfarm)

Last year’s Earth Day Hour:

All solutions on deck – we all have a role to play

Privious Sustainable Hours with Margie:

Helpful cosmic dust, healthy food and circular holidays

Inter-generational journey towards falling in love with Earth

Be the change of consciousness

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Transcript of The Sustainable Hour no. 544

Jane Goodall, quoting Mahatma Ghandi:
This planet can provide for human need, but not for human greed.

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

Margie Abbott:
Here we are, gathering on Earth Day, but we cannot possibly gather without first paying tribute to the First Peoples of this Wadawurrung Country that we’re standing on and meeting in. We’re going to tread consciously for a few moments as we remember these amazing caretakers of Earth in a time when they used the elements of the sun and the moon and the stars and the soil to lead them into what it was that they needed to do to live. They knew the land was sacred right from the beginning. So we acknowledge their past and present leaders. We give thanks and we lament that the land was stolen and sovereignty was never ceded.

Mik:
It’s April and it’s that time of year. It’s almost like for some people, think for sustainability people, this is like Christmas coming. But it’s not Christmas. It’s Earth Day. The 22nd of April every year is Earth Day. And we’ve made it a bit of a tradition here in the sustainable hour to do something special because of Earth Day coming up. So we’re doing that again this year. We have gathered here a little group of people in Eastern Park in Geelong in the rotunda and have a very nice view of the trees and the water. We have raised the earth flag which is blowing in the wind and if you hear some rumble it’s probably because the wind goes into the microphone so apologies for that but that’s what it’s like when we’re broadcasting live out in nature.

We will be talking a lot more about that very soon, but first of all, I think just like we normally do, we need to have a little bit of a global outlook and hear what’s been happening around the world. And as usual, lucky we are, here we have Colin Mockett OAM. Let us know what has been happening around the world.

Colin Mockett:
Yes, thank you, Mik. Well, it’s Earth Day next Tuesday and I have a quote on Earth Day from Elon Musk of all people. He says he loves the idea of Earth Day because despite its flaws, Earth, he reckoned, is a very good place and he’s really glad that he decided to move here.

My roundup this week begins in London where a new study published last week in the journal Science suggests more than 2,614 gigatons of moisture has been lost from our planet’s land this century. Now it hasn’t disappeared from the planet because we’ve got a finite amount of water and it just keeps getting recycled. But it has been transferred from the land to the oceans.

In short, the study found that the Earth parts of our planet is getting drier and it may have hit a tipping point where it can’t go back for how much water is stored in soil. So great is the decline in soil moisture that it is outpacing Greenland’s melting ice sheets in its contribution to sea level rise.

It’s a trend that scientists think led to a major shift in land-based water storage. That’s sources like ground waters, rivers, lakes, soil moisture and ice since 1992.

The report’s lead co-author, Professor Donnery O’Rioh, said that for some years, scientists have been aware of changes to Earth’s hydrological cycle, the movement of water between the surface and the atmosphere at regional levels. But getting an idea of whether there has been a longer-term global drying trend tied to warming planet has been more difficult to calculate.

So since 2002, the twin satellite program of gravity recovery and climate experience, that’s called GRACE, has helped scientists to measure groundwater depletion and also at the same time sea level changes and ice sheet loss. These sources can then be used to calculate the changes in the planet’s land-based water storage. Areas which have seen the greatest groundwater depletion other than regions include northern India, Central California and Eastern China.

Climatologist Dr Georgie Foster said the increasing vapor pressure deficit, that’s the VPD, in recent decades was a result of human-caused global warming. It’s making the recovery of lost soil moist to increasingly difficult, she says. The authors suggest that droughts over recent decades have been so widespread and severe that more than 2,600 gigatons of water has permanently now being transferred from the continents to the oceans. Now that’s the equivalent of more than 4,000 Sydney harbours. Everything has to come back to Sydney harbours to give you an idea of just how much it is.

Now to northern China where winds reached 150 kilometres an hour last weekend. They hit Beijing, Tianjin and other parts of Hebei district as a cold vortex moved southeast from Mongolia. Millions of people were urged to stay indoors, with media outlets warning that people weighing less than 50kg might be easily blown away, when you look at the Chinese, there’s an awful lot of that weigh less than 50kg. For the first time in a decade, Beijing issued an orange alert for gales.

That’s the second highest in a four-tier weather warning system. Gale force winds sweeping in from Mongolia are not uncommon at this time of the year. But the winds of last weekend were stronger than anything the area has seen in years. Temperatures in Beijing dropped by 13 degrees Celsius when the strongest winds hit on Saturday. The Beijing Meteorological Service has called the winds extreme, long-lasting, and affecting a wide area. They rated them as highly disastrous. Now China measures wind speed with a scale that goes from level 1 to 17. 11 wind, according to the CMA, can cause serious damage, while a level 12 brings extreme destruction. The weekend winds range from level 11 to level 13.

Sporting events were suspended, parks and tourist attractions closed as authorities told residents to avoid outdoor activities, while construction works and train and air services were all suspended. An alert was issued for forest fires and all outdoor fires were prohibited. The forewarning did mean though that thousands of trees across the city were reinforced or pruned to prevent them from falling. And the Chinese social media displayed the nation’s rarely seen sense of humour. This wind is so sensible, it starts on Friday evening and ends on Sunday. Disrupting work on Mondays at all, said one user on Weibo. While another one said she had eaten extra just to keep her weight up for the weekend.

Elsewhere, the past weekend marked the start of a prolonged and widespread risk of severe thunderstorms across central and eastern parts of the US. This threat continuing through much of the coming week. The past weeks have seen severe weather from the Great Lakes to Texas, with several tornadoes reported, along with straight-line wind gusts of up to 154 kilometres per hour and all of this brought three inches of hail.

And in the Arctic, scientists reported that 2025 has already recorded the warmest temperatures on record. Arctic sea ice extent is expected to continue its decline in the coming years due to a combination of warmer temperatures, warm seas, breaking up ice, thinner ice, and all of these are exacerbated by the man-made climate crisis.

Some climate models suggested the Arctic could experience ice-free summers before 2050, though these projections remain uncertain. Back here in Australia, the environmental scientist Saul Griffith has taken a look at the major party’s election promises about climate change, and he sees a lot of good in the government’s climate policies, and also some bad. The good news is that energy is on the political agenda this election cycle.

And finally, we are seeing what he described as a race to the top. Electrification as a strategy is front and centre, he said, and solar, wind and batteries are the cheapest way forward. Labor’s battery plan is good policy. The Greens’ solar plan for tenants is a serious attempt with a good idea for solving some of the hard equity problems in the energy transition. And the Coalition even released a report on how household electrification can be good for climate, health and wallet. The independents are pushing for transparency, faster climate action and solutions that work for households.

But the bad news is that we are still approving new fossil projects that are unnecessary and look like giving, they look like a giveaway to multinationals, he said. We still subsidise fossil fuels where we should be pushing cheaper renewables with those same dollars. Our regulations haven’t yet caught up is where we, the people, are going, he said.

Our research efforts are haphazard and full of gaps. And he warned that prolific misinformation is making people angry and scared. Good projects are being delayed. We should be working towards a lower cost energy system that also rapidly addresses climate change. Fortunately, these things are no longer in conflict. A zero emission all-electric Australia is also going to be the lowest cost energy system and we have the opportunity to vote for it at this election.

Still in Australia and the Bureau of Meteorology is forecasting a warm winter with above average temperatures from May to July nationwide. The Bureau’s latest seasonal outlook that was released this week points us to experience one of Australia’s warmest winters on record. This comes after Australia recorded its hottest March ever with mean temperatures soaring well above average in almost every state and territory. Since last August, Australia’s average temperature has been 2.1 degrees above the 1961 to 1990 baseline. That’s about 2.5 degrees warmer than pre-industrial levels. And that’s exactly the benchmark we were trying to avoid when we signed the Paris Accord.

The heat has continued into April. In Victoria, temperatures are sitting 4 to 6 degrees above average, particularly in western parts of the state. It’s due to what is described as a very hot air mass moving from northwestern Australia into the southeast.

And finally, it is not good news from the world’s most environmental sporting team, Forest Green Rovers, they lost two goals to three at home against Gateshead. That still leaves them in third position on the ladder and likely to get promoted at the end of the season. Providing they start winning again, and I must admit that I am a fan of Gateshead as well because when I was in Gateshead in 2019, I was at a meeting and I gave money to help save the football team, Gateshead football team, from the clutches of corporate sponsorship. So I was really a bit torn when they were playing the Rovers. So I wanted both sides to win. But there it is. Gateshead are in fifth place at the moment and they are, the way things are looking, it looks like it’s likely to be Forest Green but Gateshead or another contender. either way, that’s my round up for the week.

. . .

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

Margie:
This is a great day to be meeting Earth Day, celebrating Earth Day, celebrating from where we came and unto whom we will return, Mother Earth. Personification of Earth has been poetically said by so many, over so many eons, especially Do We Know and So Well, Brother Sun, Sister Moon, but today it’s Mother Earth, the divine feminine flowing through all of our veins that brings us here together to celebrate Earth Day.

I really want to say hail Earth and thank you for what you give us. And I also am aware that we’re meeting in a really beautiful place, whether we look to the east, the north, the south or the west, we have ocean, we have a botanic garden, we have so many trees and if you took a teaspoon of soil from anywhere nearby those trees, every teaspoon of soil carries more microbes, living microbes than all the people in the world, the population of the world. And you know that’s billions, don’t you? So it’s pretty amazing that this living soil generating so much life for us.

Well, one important point I think that I’m sharing today is can we take anything for granted? No, we can’t. We cannot expect that what we have now and what many of us have had, somebody like me who was born at the end of the Second World War, what I’ve been able to enjoy the fruits of Mother Earth, many people in the future won’t.

The heat will come. The water will become scarce. The oligarchs will want to wipe out those who’ve got nothing. And they don’t know that they themselves are being fed by Mother Earth.

I lament what’s happening in the world. And also I’m conscious that we’ve got a lot of scientists who are giving us so much information to digest. One of them is that there are nine planetary boundaries and six of them have already been crossed and the acidification of the oceans, which is number seven, is very close nearby to happening. Once that happens, what will be felt is: ‘What have we done to ourselves? Did we do this? Did humans do this?’

Yes, we did. And we do belong to an Earth community. I cannot go today in this little reflection without remembering that Earth community consists of the atmosphere, the soil, and the sacred ground.

The animals and the insects, the fish and the birds, we’re all interconnected.

. . .

SONG

“Return again”
– A song for Earth Day

[Verse 1]
I hear you, Mother Earth, not in words
but in the silence beneath the trees.
A heartbeat in the soil,
a whisper carried by wind

The soil breathes
The trees remember
Tending the Earth
as she has tended us.

[Bridge]
We came from you,
and to you, we will return.
Every breath we take is a gift
Every drop of rain, is kindness of Planet Earth

[Chorus]
Return again, to the land of fertility
Return again, to what we once knew
It’s how we listen, it’s how we care

[Verse 2]
We are not separate.
We are not above.
We are the air,
the birdsong,
the trembling leaf.

[Bridge]
There is still time
To touch the ground
with bare feet.
To teach again
the language of kindness,
of courage,
of enough.

[Chorus – gently]
Return again, to the land of fertility
Return again, to what we once knew
It’s how we listen, it’s how we care

. . .

Margie (at 21:49)
Return again, return again to the land of your soul because that’s what we’ve been called to do. And you know in recent times we’ve had the gift of that beautiful writer Tim Winton writing in his book Juice about what a future world might look like if we don’t act now.

And I know that he’s had scientists work with him. I know that he’s just not made it up in his imagination that this is what’s going to happen. And it’s very painful to read the book, but it does end on a note which is very inspiring, which is on this amazing generosity and kindness that is within all humans. And all we need to do is restore that sanity.

Colin:
Thank you Margie, don’t go. You touched upon the fact that you were born after, shortly after the Second World War. Personally, I was born during the Second World War and we have shared a life where we have seen so much change. Not just the ending and the starting and the beginning of new wars and all those sort of things. We have seen the end of apartheid. We’ve seen the end of communism. We’ve seen the end of the Berlin Wall. We have seen that profound change can occur. I also am very much aware that never have we had so much information about the things that are causing the problems that we have as we have now. As such, I am very hopeful and confident that as a mankind we are going to get through this climate crisis. I would like to start by asking whether you share that hopefulness.

Margie:
I don’t.

Colin:
You don’t. Good. Tell me.

Margie: (at 24:03)
Well first of all humankind is not up to it. Humankind has got too used to this illusion of separation. I can still get what I want from the supermarkets. I can still get what I want for my next mobile phone. And there’s not a regular daily, if you like, reflection on the fact that everything that we have and that we use is coming from Earth and there’s not an endless supply. I think there’s, we have one Earth, Colin, and we’re using, my latest bit of research shows that we are actually using four and a half Earths every day.

Colin:
You’re talking about minerals that went to…

Margie:
Yeah, I’m talking about all the extractions, talking about coal too.

Colin:
Yeah. But look, on the plus side, on the positive side, we are aware of that. You’ve got the statistics and we can work on it. If we could bring the same sort of enthusiasm that we do into wars and elections and the things that we see as important at the moment onto the things that are really important. I recall an anecdote which went something We’ll get closer together here. We’re having a hug everyone. If trees gave off Wi-Fi signals, we would plant them in every garden. But they don’t. They only give off oxygen, which we need to survive. And we ignore it.

Margie:
We just are unconscious. That’s unconsciousness. I don’t think we’re ignoring on purpose, I think it’s just that we’re unconscious.

Colin:
Exactly. Well, in our lifetime since the Second World War, we have bought plastics. We lived through the plastic generation has been our lifetime. We were aware of the dangers and the problems that that’s causing. And we now need to address it. Now, that awareness is the thing that gives me my positive outlook, because we, during the course of the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, didn’t really realise just what harm we were bringing by buying plastic goods or wrapping our food in plastic. We thought it was just convenient. Now we know we can act. And that knowledge is power.

Margie:
It is, is Colin and I couldn’t, I can’t even begin to disagree with what you’re saying about knowledge being power. However, over the last number of years, I’ve been, I’ve put my body in the city of Geelong doing psychodrama in the streets. I’ve been out the front of banks and bringing up awareness to the investments that these banks are making and I’ve joined groups to do this.

And then in the end I reflect on it and think, I don’t think that’s going too far. I don’t think it’s going anywhere. So what is it I can now do in these latter years of my life that I can do and know that it’s my work to do? I think it’s, whilst I don’t have that hope that you have, I do believe that the Czech, he’s now dead of course, Václav Havel.

He said like about hope, look, it’s worth doing even if it doesn’t turn out. You know, it’s worth doing. So being on the sustainable hour is worth doing. And if we don’t have a cast of thousands, who cares? It’s worth doing. And I think that’s what we are, that’s the message. Let’s do it. Let’s relate. Let’s take nothing for granted. And I’ll tell you, that’s a gift from my reflexologist. She gave me a good meditation on that this morning.

. . .

Mik Aidt:
The Sustainable Hour is, as you can hear, in Earth Day mode today and that’s because on the 22nd of April, which is on Tuesday, it will be the annual Earth Day once again. And the first speaker we’ve been listening to here at our little Earth Day event in Eastern Park is Geelong’s own Margie Erbord. And here is a contribution from Harrison Ford:

Harrison Ford: (at 28:45)
My humble request for the coming year is that we make time to listen to the quiet.

My dear friend E.O. Wilson, rest his soul, would say that the quiet voices are the most important. The krill and the caterpillars, the beetles and the bacteria, the ants.

The systems that sustain life on Earth, that put birds in our skies, water in our rivers, oxygen in our atmosphere, our mind bogglingly ancient, densely interlocking and only partially understood tapestries composed of millions of species, all exchanging matter and energy in a glorious whirling ballet which is so beautiful. It can put you on your knees when you start to fit your mind around

But ecosystems aren’t just quiet symphonies to admire. Ecosystems allow us our impossibly rich, dazzlingly beautiful lives. Yet we yank threads out of these magnificent tapestries every day. We unravel our own support systems. Every day they grow quieter, while everything else grows louder.

Our lives are but a finger snap in the 3.5 billion year history of life on our planet. Any individual life, mine or yours, is nothing but a wisp of thread in the miles long rope of life. The most meaningful thing we can do in our time on Earth is to ensure that the rope isn’t too frayed for the next generation.

Which young person do you love most in the world? Can you picture them? By the time they’re your age, don’t you want them to be able to wander into a field some evening and hear the smallest things? The ants and the caterpillars? The seeds germinating in the soil?

Don’t you want them to grow up with the last few mysteries? Opening quietly in the darkness.

That’s what the living Earth has to offer us. A whole poetry of mysteries, of possible discoveries, an infinitude of adventures, and ultimately, insights that are the cornerstone for a new way of understanding the beautiful intricacy of our planet and how we can best steward its enduring stability in listening to the voices of biodiversity and taking action to reimagine how we care for our planet.

. . .

Mik: (at 32:40)
Our second speaker in this special edition of The Sustainable Hour, which is a tribute to Earth Day coming up on Tuesday the 22nd of April, is Peter Martin, who has, just like Margie, been in The Sustainable Hour actually a surprising number of times, when I look. And you have that, Peter, because first we talked with you as a priest and we talked the spiritual side of sustainability in many ways. This was many years ago. Later on you became very active yourself as a kind of climate activist within the church system. Welcome and let us hear a little bit about your reflections on Earth Day, Peter.

Peter Martin:
Thank you, Mik. Thank you, Margie, for your reflection and taking us to those lovely places. I’m really delighted the yellowtail black cockatoos are around in force. Similarly down in Point Lonsdale and Queenscliff, they’re loping low and very significant for the Wadawurrong people for spiritual guidance and rebirth, that’s what the black, real Attar Black Cockatoo, that’s part of its role in their cosmology.

We gather with one desire and that is to change things for the better at a time when change is desperately needed. So I want to talk about a front line of climate action which is always present but often out of sight.

It was Alexander Solzhenitsyn who said, the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart and through all human hearts.

The line separating good from evil runs through your heart, my heart.

This is the front line of climate action that I want to talk about briefly. It’s always present, but often obscured by our own busyness and engagement with other entirely worthwhile front lines of action. It’s not to dismiss or minimise the front lines of action out there, but I’m just inviting you to come inside.

Our wonderful scientists and journalists, educators and environmental advocates are able to map out, measure and to a degree even predict the unfolding impact of those human behaviours that damage and degrade our world. Now that body of knowledge and discourse has been building for over 60 years now into a body of knowledge that should persuade any reasonable person of the necessity for prompt action on climate change.

I’ll let you in on a personal secret. My first vocation was environmental science. I did the first degree course in Australia – in Canberra – in that area. And after two years, I personally, at the age of 20, decided that it was hopeless, that the human species had proved itself unworthy to survive, and may be taking a lot of life down with it. I achieved that insight in 1972. There’s been a whole journey since then, but it’s still an open question, as Margie has pointed out. But just an open question. I wouldn’t be closing it just yet, personally.

Alongside this body of knowledge, we are perplexed by the human family’s capacity to turn a blind eye to truth, its willful ignorance, and its demonic capacity to choose and persevere in trajectories that deliver death rather than life. Well, not only are we perplexed, at that point we can become sad, discouraged, angry, even depressed. On a bad day, we can be tempted to lose hope when it is difficult to see grounds for hope when we look around us.

We must never lose hope, whatever that might mean. At this point, it becomes clear that this is much more than an issue of the availability of information and technologies. All the information we need for the human family to enable flourishing of all life on the planet is available and has been available for decades. So, there are deep currents of moral perversity at play.

Moral perversity that often derails constructive discourse on climate and even poisons it at its very roots. So let’s try and name this moral perversity. Very old fashioned. Avarice. Greed. Lust for power. Indifference to the suffering of others, even the enjoyment of inflicting suffering on others. And not just humans, course, other sentient beings. Desire to use the Earth and its life forms for acquisitive gain, for domination and control.

These are the cogs that make the world go round. This is the way of the world. They have a momentum of their own. Avarice, greed, lust for power and control, the insatiable desire of the few to have an inordinate share of the world’s resources which in turn generates poverty and suffering for others and always the ready step to go to war to protect all this and so increasing fratricide, the killing of our own brothers and sisters – and the game continues. The game continues. Now it’s right to call these things out not just because they are irrational, they are immoral.

They are wrong.

This way of the world needs to be replaced by compassion, humility, spirit of service and sacrifice to others, an eye for beauty.

Now, how do we make this replacement? The most effective way of dismantling those destructive tendencies we see driving environmental degradation is to first dismantle them in our own heart to go to that place, that line in our own heart.

The starting point is that I stop playing the game. I need to withdraw my participation in the game. And we do this by attending to the ways that, particular ways, we make our contribution.

When it comes to measuring these things in ourselves, we can’t. These are subtle movements of the heart and to quantify them is not the point. For example, I’m probably never going to be brought before a international criminal court for eco-side, personally. I look forward to the day when that’s possible, but I personally probably won’t get there. A bit like when I was a prison chaplain. My mistakes probably aren’t going to make the front page of the Herald Sun, but there’s a sense in which me and those I was ministering to were all on a level playing field, the same continuum – frail humanity.

It’s not us and them, it’s me, it’s us together. That connectedness, it’s not about measuring, it’s not about quantity. So, where do we start? Well, certainly living simply and sustainably in our own lives, in our lifestyle, is part of withdrawing our contribution to the game. Most importantly though, is the inner work to be done as we attend to that line in our own heart, that line of good and evil.

How can my small life with my small, relatively small moral failings in the grand scheme of things, make a difference one way or the other. The thing is, when dealing with these things of the human heart, we are in a realm that really can’t be measured, it’s not quantity, it can’t be measured. It’s in another realm. And so it’s not a question of quantifying or measuring other people’s failures compared with mine. Can’t do that. And Jesus reminds us that we need to attend to the log in our own eye before we attend to the splinter in the eye of the person we are judging. It doesn’t matter who that person is, it’s a splinter. Let’s just think about the log in our own eye, even though it’s not going to get in the Herald Sun.

That line in the heart between good and evil is illumined by the inner light of conscience. My experience around the interfaith table has taught me that the human conscious is not a mere social construction. It’s not something manufactured by human enterprise or smart people or moralistic people even or by religions necessarily.

But interestingly, the one thing we had in common around that interfaith table was this region of conscience. People from different cultures, histories, languages and faith systems, as together we looked out on our community to discern how we might act together to serve the community, the deep bond of solidarity and the ground of common action that we shared was in this region of conscience.

It was here that we found profound common ground. Now conscience may be informed by ideology, conscience may be informed by the truths of science and even religious belief, but it can’t and should never be dictated to. Conscience is an essential part of our human freedom. When we consult our conscience,

We are at that front line of the heart, that line separating good from evil, and it’s a particular journey each of us has to make. You can’t get the book. There’s nothing off the shelf. It’s something we, it’s self-knowledge. It’s knowledge of one’s own heart. And the idiosyncrasies and the subtle movements within our own heart, they’re unique to me. Only I will really, hopefully over a lifetime, get to know it a little bit.

And here lie the agencies, the foundations of human agency. Our actions are important here, how we decide to live locally, for instance, not to travel as much, to prefer walking, riding a push bike. When we decide to change our diet, steering away from meat, moving towards plant-based foods, to be kinder. Any one of many lifestyle decisions that will enable us to live simply so that others may simply live. All these are important actions. And science will tell us that there’ll be a ripple effect. Environmental benefits will result through these actions.

That’s true. There is an outward ripple. But… Think for a while of the inward ripple, the transformation in ourselves. This transforms us because we are saying no to something and sometimes that’ll be costly, we’ll sacrifice for the sake of saying yes to cross that line into what is good and right, to say yes to something. It can be costly, as it was with people like Solzhenitsyn, Martin Luther King Junior.

They are costly to stand for something in your conscience. And climate change is one of those issues.

So we say no to those movements of avarice and greed, our need to control, our insensitivity to the suffering of others. We attend to these things. We are transformed and we shouldn’t underestimate that in our own transformation that we put a ripple out. Our transformed hearts make a difference.

Apart from anything else, we become part of a community of people being transformed, connected to a community which is on about transformation. This will have a ripple effect and more powerful than what appears to be the Goliaths out there. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn said: ‘The line separating good and evil passes right through every human heart.’

And as I said, I may not be brought before an international criminal court for ecocide, but however, I do need to attend to my own contribution and to withdraw from the game. I’ll finish with a favorite quote of mine, which is from a seventh century Syrian mystic. His name’s Isaac. He was asked, what is a compassionate heart?

Clearly, that’s the heart we want. He says from Syria in the seventh century, it is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for birds, for the animals, for demons, for all that exists. At the recollection at the sight of them, such a person’s eyes overflow with tears, owing to the vehemence of the compassion which grips the heart. As a result of this deep mercy, this person, the compassionate person’s heart shrinks and cannot bear to hear or look on any injury or the slightest suffering of anything in creation. This is why that person constantly offers up prayer full of tears, even for irrational animals and for the enemies of truth, even for those who harm him so that they may be protected and find mercy. This is the one argument I have with Isaac. This person even prays for reptiles as a result of this great compassion which is poured out without measure. I love reptiles. I don’t see the problem. Anyway, he thinks they’re the most unlovable things, clearly. Even reptiles, as a result of the great compassion which is poured out without measure, after the likeness of God in his heart. Thanks.

Colin:
Thank you Peter. That was a huge journey that you’ve taken from environmental scientists to priests. And the, if you like, the litmus paper, the thing that made you do it was your disillusionment with mankind. That you didn’t think that mankind throughout the world was capable of fixing the problems. You’ve still got that belief?

Peter:
There’s no particular guarantee that we’re going to come out of this. what I would say. However, I do think the human project, the human species can be transformed. If I can just say, Martin Luther King Jr., one of the other lines, which I didn’t mention, was he said, the arc of history turns slowly towards justice, something like that. He said in one of his fabulous speeches, how long is it going to take? Not long. How long is it going to take? Not long. The arc of history turns towards justice. And then he says, which is not quoted, I’ve seen the glory of God. And so what he’s talking about is a reality that is part of who we are, but it’s beyond who we are. It’s a divine dimension which is an agent of transformation. And we’re not totally dependent on our puny human resources. If that was the case, I don’t have hope. But I do have hope that there is a transformative power that we can invite and cooperate with that can bring us into a future. I think I got glimpses of it in some of the things you mentioned. The changing fortunes of East Timor, it was absolutely breathtaking. This is when it can happen in history. The breakdown of apartheid was absolutely breathtaking and happened very quickly. Why rule out gifts from heaven? The things that can’t be explained by human agency because just things line up.

Colin:
Martin Luther King was among many other strains. His principal fight was with segregation in the United States. He may not have seen it ending because he was assassinated, but it did end. He started a movement and nowadays blacks and whites in the United States are no longer segregated. They have, what can we call it, a mottled unanimity that wasn’t existing at his time. That’s why he fought it. So it can be changed. And Martin Luther King was one of the agents of change at that particular time. Do you not think that you could have been an agent of change if you had stayed an environmental scientist and not become a priest. Do you ever regret becoming a priest?

Peter:
No, I don’t. did decide after I stepped away from that course because I was losing faith in people’s capacity to grasp the truth of science. then when I was over the next 12 months, I was traveling in Asia. And then I was able to see my… That’s when I realised the problem was in the human heart because I learned something about my own heart.

And so my course into faith and spirituality was because I decided, not that it wasn’t important to be… – need our environmental scientists, but for me, I was interested in the… I saw the root problem as the human heart. And as a priest, that’s something I could work in. I did have the opportunity about halfway in midlife to go back into environmental science. In fact, for a year I became education officer in a wildlife park, and but it didn’t last I was drawn drawn back into my priestly work so I did I actually did give it a second go.

Colin:
Finally, Peter, as a former journalist I can tell you that getting on the front page of the Herald Sun is no big deal. There’s still hope. I’m going to come on Geelong Advertiser.

Peter:
Yeah, I might start with a Geelong Advertiser.

Anthony:
Peter, I’m wondering to what extent do you see alienation from the natural world to be the major contributor to the climate change issue?

Peter:
Well, one of the, my parishioners probably got very tired of a recurring message of mine and also those who came on retreats that I led. That this is, that our, and this is why I love that quote from Isaac that I read. We cannot connect with the suffering in creation outside human suffering. I mean, we have difficulty connecting with suffering with our fellow human beings.

They’re fairly paltry on a good day. But I tried to, in my own life, but also tried to work out teaching which would help people connect with suffering, the suffering that’s around us in the webs of life that we are a part of. Because I think once we feel the pain, once we feel it here,

This will be part of forcing us to respond compassionately to the suffering that’s there. Information is good, but it needs something more to actually motivate us to alleviate suffering, I think. So yeah, I think it’s a key thing. I didn’t work, I never really, I’d probably give myself a very low score out of 10 in terms of my success in opening up that area of how we grow our capacity to connect with creation. Of course, modern urbanised life makes it more difficult. That’s part of what has to be transformed, definitely.

Jingle

Mik:
It’s Earth Day on Tuesday next week and we hope we’ve inspired you maybe to mark that day or the whole week for that matter in good company together with like-minded souls who also want to reconnect to take that deeper step and be part of the regeneration the reinvention of what it means to be human on this blue dot we call Planet Earth.

Thank you to Margie Abbott and Peter Martin for inspiring us today. If you want to know more about them and other inspirational links and videos and so on, take a look at our show notes on climatsafety.info. And what should we be? I would say: Be the Earth.

. . .

SONG

‘Becoming Earth’

[Verse 1]
Tall grass between my fingers
Dirt beneath my skin
Something pulling me down
Into where you begin
Can you feel me here?
Just letting go

[Pre-chorus]
The weight of me
Sinking slow
Your soil and my bones
Starting to flow

[Chorus]
Am I becoming earth
Or is earth becoming me?
When I lay here so still
Where do I end, where do you be?
(Where do I end, where do you be?)

[Verse 2]
Root tips touch my shoulders
Time moves like rain
Your breath in the breeze now
Teaching me your name
Every blade of grass
A finger reaching up

[Bridge]
(La-di-da-da, mm-ba-da)
(Earth-a-mama-soul-a)
Roots and leaves and soil speak
(Di-da-la, so-ma-be)

[Chorus]
Am I becoming earth
Or is earth becoming me?
When I rest in your arms
Where do I end, where do you be?
(Where do I end, where do you be?)

[Outro]
[Nature sounds growing stronger]
Let me sink deeper
Let me flow free
Ahhh-ooo-ahhhh
(Earth-a-mama-soul-a)
[Fading wind sounds]

Audio clip at the end:
Charles Eisenstein in a podcast interview with Russell Brand:

Earth is alive. Its health depends on the health of its organs and tissues. And what are those? Those are the forests, the wetlands, the seagrass meadows, the mangroves, the elephants, the whales, the fish, the corals. Everything that is destroyed by development is necessary.

If you are in the carbon mine frame, then even if you value forest for its carbon storage and sequestration, once you’ve reduced it to that number, you could cut it down if there’s, gold to mine underneath it or oil and plant another forest somewhere else to make up for it. We’re not treating Earth as alive and precious and sacred.

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

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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