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The Sustainable Hour no. 547 | Transcript | Podcast notes

Stories of climate communities rising through regenerative farming, grassroots banking and land healing.

In this week’s episode, we initially reflect on the federal election result and its implications for climate action, with co-host Mik Aidt noting a shift away from division and denial towards kindness, climate responsibility, and community-building.

Our first guest, Marama Grace Brownsdon, also known as Mims, shares her powerful personal journey from witnessing ecological despair to becoming an advocate for food sovereignty, water conservation, and Indigenous-led land regeneration. She speaks about her travels across Australia, the wisdom of Peter Andrews, and the importance of reweaving our relationship with the landscape. Mims urges young people to get their hands dirty and connect with elders and the land to regenerate degraded ecosystems and communities.

We then welcome Wayne Wadsworth, also known as Wadzy, a regenerative agriculture veteran and former hemp farmer, who shares his story of political activism, community wealth banking, and grassroots solutions for repairing our food and water systems. He calls for practical implementation over performative politics and urges a shift in values towards genuine sustainability.

Our Global Outlook with Colin Mockett OAM brings us:
• A new study showing the increasing overlap of fire seasons between Australia and North America due to climate change
• Indigenous women’s voices at the UN calling for land rights and environmental justice
• The UK’s plan to plant 20 million trees by 2050
• A worrying regression in US environmental policy driven by Trump-era politics

The episode features two powerful original songs:
• “This Is the Time” – a poetic rallying cry for regenerative action
• “Starting From Today” – a hopeful anthem for collective change
→ More songs from The Sustainable Hour here

Plus, we play a satirical Greenpeace Denmark video that exposes the reality of industrial agriculture in a country often lauded for its happiness.

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Marama-Grace Brownsdon – Mims – is a true force of nature and a young nomad on a mission to regenerative our degraded country, currently spending time with Peter Andrews spunging up his wisdom, insights to which can be found on www.restoreclimate.com, www.tals.org.au and www.peterandrewsoam.com.au – as well as in our podcast episodes from 2019: A plant whisperer’s big solution, from 2020: A natural farmer’s big vision for Australia, and 2021: Restoring climate by rebuilding the landscape.

Mims’ youthful enthusiasm and passion for being part of the healing of our country is truly inspirational. Her thirst for knowledge has given her wisdom far in access to her years.

“I just want to see these projects used for practical implementation and change. I’m really sick of it faffing around and being used to chug on our heartstrings. I’m really over feelings and I want to get my hands dirty and practical and we need an army but not that’s willing to pick up guns for Trump. Those willing to pick up shovels and rakes and manure and mulch and seeds. You know, this is the time and yeah like… There’s a lot stopping us in a lot of ways, but we’ve also never been freer. We’ve never been more connected. And as an Indigenous woman, as we’ve been saying, we’ve got voices now. So let’s not get too shy. Let’s just get them out there and, yeah, see what can be done.”
~ Marama-Grace Brownsdon, landscape restorer and permaculture practitioner

. . .

Wayne Wadsworth – Wadzy – is a true ideas man who also makes it happen. Wadzy has 40 years designing and building sustainable projects based on permaculture principles. He is currently in Iron Knob near the Flinders Ranges in South Australia as the desert is the only type of ecosystem he hasn’t built a sustainable existence around himself before. His current project is writing an e-book called ‘Building Utopia 369 with Renewable Economy Banks’. He says he was strongly influenced by this YouTube clip with Richard Wolff to come up with his ideas for Renewable Economy Banks.

Wadzy has designed and built sustainable existences in most types of ecosystems all over the world. The only place he hasn’t done this in is a desert. So now he’s creating a green oasis in Iron Knob in South Australia, a town which experiences temperatures over 45 degrees in summer.

“You have no idea what happens with your money. So by having community wealth banks where the wealth is actually put into the community and by legislation, money would have to stay in the community, couldn’t be actually put into another community. That would then start creating that community wealth where people actually have control over their own suburbs and their own towns. As it stands now, some company can come along and look, we’re going to build X Y Z there, or we’re to put a high-rise building there. And local people really don’t have much control over it.”
~ Wayne Wadsworth, permaculture practitioner, writer and ideas man

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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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From Global Earth Repair’s Weekly Digest:

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EDITORIAL

A mandate for courage, cohesion, and collaboration

In the wake of a landmark election, Australian voters have delivered a powerful message: climate sabotage and imported culture wars have no place in our democracy. The resounding rejection of Peter Dutton’s bid for power, and the support for candidates prioritising climate action and integrity, mark a turning point.

But this victory is only a beginning. While the new Parliament may hold more pro-climate and pro-nature representatives than ever before, momentum alone is not enough. The energy transition must now happen faster – and with real accountability. That means holding the fossil fuel industry responsible for the damage it continues to inflict on our society.

Unnatural disasters now cost Australians $38 billion annually. Yet, while the fossil fuel industry receives generous government subsidies, pays little or no tax, and boasts record profits in the billions, it’s everyday Australians who foot the bill when disaster strikes.

We must hold Labor to account for its election promises on climate, because they have, in fact, been significant: support for home batteries, investment in clean industries, and even a bid to host the next UN climate summit.

Yet, as we’ve seen, the same government continues to approve new coal, oil, and gas projects – undercutting its own commitments and putting lives and ecosystems at risk. The disconnect between Labor’s words and actions has never been more dangerous. And they must be called out.

At the heart of this disconnect lies the influence of fossil fuel money. An analysis by Lock the Gate revealed that companies receiving federal environmental approvals have poured nearly $55 million into political donations. Woodside and Santos alone have given almost $3 million each to Labor and the Coalition – and in return, they’ve received a combined 17 project approvals. When polluters are allowed to bankroll politics, public trust suffers. Our democracy suffers.

Implementing stricter regulations on political donations would enhance the integrity of Australia’s democratic processes and support more robust climate policies.

We will have to explain to the Labor government’s new leaders how this would become a win-win both for the Australian people and for the re-election of their own political party in 2028, considering that we now know for a fact that a majority of Australians want their government to do more to address climate change.

The Investor Group on Climate Change – representing more than $35 trillion in managed funds – is urging this 48th Parliament to act decisively in its first 100 days. Their top recommendations are clear and achievable: set a strong 2035 emissions reduction target, deliver sector-by-sector transition and adaptation plans, and legislate climate risk assessments. These aren’t radical demands. They are the bare minimum for this country’s economic stability and environmental survival.

As RE-Alliance’s Andrew Bray points out, regional Australians are ready to embrace renewables – but only if the transition is done with care, clarity, and fairness. Local Energy Hubs, community consultation, and reinvestment in rural areas are practical ways forward. A just transition must mean jobs, security, and dignity for everyone – not just investor confidence.

Independent voices like Senator David Pocock are rising. His vote in the ACT has doubled since 2022, and the community-led movement for cleaner, fairer politics continues to grow. This election saw the Community Independent movement retain key seats such as Warringah, Wentworth, Mackellar, Curtin, and Indi, with Helen Haines securing a third term. Overall, Community Independents are projected to hold eight seats in the new Parliament, reflecting sustained public support for community-backed representation focused on climate action and political integrity.

This points to a deeper, more urgent question facing the country: can our democratic institutions rise to meet the challenges of overlapping crises – climate, security, health, inequality, and geopolitical instability?

As the Peace and Security Quarterly puts it, Australians are experiencing “profound insecurity.” The government’s most critical duty is to provide peace and climate stability. Without these, there is no real wellbeing – and no climatesafe future.

The Sustainable Hour podcast dives into these stories, voices, and solutions. Because if this election was a mandate for anything, it was a mandate for courage, cohesion, collaboration – to build climate communities.

ma

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The Dance of Carbon

“Millions of years of earthly wealth have been consumed and eliminated in the past two centuries. Reefs are perishing, pollinators are declining, oceans are acidifying, fisheries are ransacked, forests are toppling, soils are eroding, lands are desiccating, birds are vanishing, and wildlands are dwindling.

A future can only be grasped if there is an accurate understanding of the present. We are attempting to sever the human world from the natural world as if that were possible. The current system of production and consumption eats its host. Enshrined economic practices beget and ensure the losses.

Challenger writes, “Our cities and industries have left their imprint in the soil, in the cells of deep-sea creatures, in the distant particles of the atmosphere. The trouble is that we don’t know the right way to behave towards life. This uncertainty exists in part because we can’t decide how other life forms matter or even if they do.”

Replacing fossil fuels with renewables is crucial but insufficient. Humanity depends upon its relationship to all of Earth’s habitats and denizens, even if we don’t think so. Society, commerce, and governments must focus on what journalist Eric Roston calls the dance of carbon, the constant regeneration inherent to life.

This does not preclude technical innovation and invention. Technologies are needed that pass an essential threshold: does a solution, stratagem, or proposal create more life or less? We have tried less, and this is where it has brought us. What does more look like? Pure water, clean food, vibrant cultures, honored people, ancient forests, human health, equity, education, abundant fisheries, wildness, quiet green cities, rich soil, living wages, and dignified work.

Though largely ignored by the media and news feeds, the movement to regenerate the living world exists in thousands of organizations and millions of people. Life-giving communities are smaller, submerged, and unnoticed by mega-institutions whose marketing, publicity, and social media dominate.”

Excerpt from Paul Hawken’s book ‘Carbon – the Book of Life’

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Transcript of The Sustainable Hour no. 547

TRANSCRIPT:
Antonio Guterres:
The climate time bomb is ticking.

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

Tony Gleeson:
Welcome to The Sustainable Hour. We’d like to acknowledge that we’re broadcasting from the land of the Wadawurrung people. We pay tribute to the elders – past, present, and those that earn that great honour in the future. We’re on stolen land, land that was never ceded, always was and always will be First Nations land. They’ve been nurturing their both their land and their communities for tens of thousands of years before their land was stolen. And in that they’ve acquired an ancient wisdom that’s going to serve us well as we face up to the climate emergency.

Anthony Albanese, on election night 3 May:
Every Australian knows that climate change is a challenge we must act together to meet for the future of our environment. And knows the fact that renewable energy is an opportunity we must work together to seize for the future of our country (applause). We will be a government that supports reconciliation with First Nations people. Because we will be a stronger nation when we close the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous.

Mik Aidt:
The success of Labor combined with that the Greens will have quite an influence in the Senate means that the stage is set for accelerating the green transition here in Australia. Labor has been given a mandate to continue where they left – with stronger emission targets, supporting the clean industry, innovation, and EVs, and so on.

So that’s a relief, I think. It was a big rejection of the politics of division, the politics of Trump, manipulation, the cheating, the denial. People didn’t fall for all the propaganda, all Clive Palmer’s SMS text messages, all the coreflutes in the landscape from the Liberals. No.

As we talked about in The Sustainable Hour last week, this was an election about values. And, happy to say: Australians chose kindness over bullying. So that’s a good feeling. I think it’s a good way to move forward.

I think it was also a very strong vote for coming back after the rejection of the Voice, which was very much influenced, I think, by manipulation and things that happened in social media. Indigenous communities, like here in Australia: the Aboriginals, have sustained life and community, as Tony says, every week in our Acknowledgement of Country – for more than 60,000 years. And their success was not from policies, but from weaving sustainability deeply into their cultural identity, you could say, all the daily practices. Environmental stewardship wasn’t separate from who they were. On the contrary, it was who they were. And that’s our opportunity. We need to start building Climate Communities in that spirit. Climate Communities where we feel that we belong meaningfully and joyfully in a world that takes care of planet Earth as a natural and simple thing that we just do in our daily lives.

This is not about policies. This is about stories, and about experiences at the personal level. Climate action should feel less like a sacrifice and more like we are participating in something that is deeply meaningful and fulfilling, even exciting, and saving us money. It’s cost saving in a cost of living crisis.

It’s a place where our sustainable choices reflect our values and where we’re proud to display that and defend that. So that’s what I think needs to happen now – after this election – we need to get back to work, continue building Climate Communities and climate resilient and climate aware communities.

Let’s hear what’s been happening around the world. we always have Colin Mockett OAM with us with the global outlook – and Colin, apart from the election, what have you been looking at this week?

COLIN MOCKETT’S GLOBAL OUTLOOK:
Our roundup this week begins with a new study that warns Australia’s risk of bushfires. Specifically, researchers from the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research found that fire weather seasons are increasingly overlapping between eastern Australia and western North America. The research team examined the cause of this shift and its implications for cross-border cooperation between the fire services – Canada, the US and Australia. Their findings were published in Earth Future magazine last week.

Its bottom line was that climate change is increasing the risk of bush or wildfires as they call them in many regions of the world including ours. This affects the cooperation between countries that support each other by swapping and leasing their equipment during these crises.

The international team of scientists set out to examine how the timing of fire weather seasons in the two regions has altered as a result of climate change. The researchers took into account rainfall temperature, relative humidity and wind speeds. They used this data to identify fire weather days, that stays with a high risk of bush or wildfires. And this found that the fire weather days, and that’s the risk of wildfires, has been increasingly overlapping since 1979.

The greatest likelihood of overlap, that’s around 75 per cent, occurs between July and December each year. Overall, the number of simultaneous fire weather days in eastern Australia and western North America has been increasing by one day per year for the past 40 years.

“This is because the fire season in eastern Australia is starting earlier in spring and overlapping with the end of the fire season on the west coast of North America.” That’s Dr Andreia Ribeiro, the climate scientist and lead author of this report.

His team also analysed how the seasonal overlap is likely to develop, and it found that depending on the climate model used and the level of future global warming, the increase could range from four to 29 days per year by mid-century.

So now it’s understood that the fire services on the three countries are now needing to get together and talk out just how they’re going to arrange it if there is fires going simultaneously.

Now to New York, where a group of indigenous women from around the world met last week at the United Nations Plaza to share information on the struggles that they’ve faced in fighting pollution from industries, as well as ways to employ indigenous knowledge to counter climate crises. “Our traditional knowledge systems are powerful,” said Aimee Roberson, who’s convener of the group. “We draw on the strength of our ancestors whose resistance to oppression, greed, and extractivism ensure that we are here today.”

She spoke at the event hosted by the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network. Indigenous women had come from Africa, Asia, and as far away as Siberia to describe the connection between ancestral lands and indigenous cultures and to advocate for free, prior, and informed consent. Now this is a principle enshrined in various international treaties, but often violated and it gives – it actually gives indigenous people the right to give or withhold their consent for any action that would affect their lands or rights. Globally, violence is often a feature of indigenous people’s struggle. Now that was according to Cindy Kobei, who is a member of the Ogiek people of Kenya, who described how she had been fighting through legal challenges to help her community reclaim the Mau forest.

This was despite evictions and disappearances and deaths all persisting there. Many of the speakers said that indigenous knowledge was essential for the conservation of their lands. Indigenous rights, meanwhile, are central to climate resistance and environmental protection. The Women’s Climate Action Network said in the conference’s summary.

Now to the UK, where the Starmer government has announced a plan to plant 20 million trees across the West of England by 2050. It would create at least 2,500 hectares of new woodlands by 2030. It’s going to be called the Western Forest and it will span from the Cotswolds into the Mendips. And that’s an area that serves 2.5 million residents through new and existing woodlands.

Now this includes urban areas such as Bristol and Gloucester with the hope of bringing people closer to nature, creating spaces for wildlife and preventing flooding all at the landscaping scale. The forest is a partnership led by the Forest of Avon, one of England’s community forests, and it’s supported by £7.5 million pounds worth of government funding to accelerate local tree planting and habitat creation. The National Forest Company, that’s the name of the new identity, who specialises in implementing new woodlands and transforming post-industrial landscapes, will provide their expertise and support.

Now to the United States and Los Angeles, California, where the unique geographical conditions that shape the city. It’s a sunny city built for cars and ringed by pollution trapping mountains. Make it the nation’s smog capital in the 1960s. Now this prompted the state officials to pass the nation’s first car remissions and air pollution standards. The US Congress in turn recognised that California’s demonstrated compelling and extraordinary circumstances sufficiently differed from the nation as a whole, to justify standards on automobile emissions which may, from time to time, need to be more stringent than national standards. That’s their way of saying that this is a special case and they might need to bring in stronger standards when the pollution gets bad. But then came President Donald Trump, who moved to revoke that special status by executive order on the first day he was in office. And on Wednesday and Thursday of last week, the Republican-dominated House voted to pass three resolutions of his signs to revoke the waivers that underlie California’s nation-leading climate and air pollution rules. And in a blunt statement, the Californian governor Gavin Newsom said that “Trump Republicans are hell-bent on making California smoggy again.”

The argument is set to continue this week and that leads me to a couple of items that have arrived too late for me to check. So I couldn’t include them this week. The first is a group of experts who’ve released a long and detailed summary of the impact of Trump’s first 100 days in office. While the second is a report about a new small adaptable electric car that’s being developed by the US company Amazon and it’s called the Slate. It’s reputed to be a no-frills basic car, the 21st century equivalent of Henry Ford’s Model T 100 years ago. You’ll buy the model that you want and then add on extras if you want it to be a ute or a sedan or whatever you may want it to be. Anyway, I’ll check both of those reports because there’s an awful lot of AI generated misinformation out there. I need to check them both and I’ll report on those next week.

And I have no news this week from the world’s greenest sports team, Forest Green Rovers. They’ve got two matches left for the season. One is tonight, but then they move into the playoffs for promotion, which could place them in the English League Three.

But it is worth noting that Forest Green Rovers Home Stadium in Nailsworth is in the area, in the middle of the area that’s earmarked for England’s new Western Forest. And that ends my roundup for the week.

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

Tony: (at 14:32)
Great to hear Colin that each week we start off with acknowledging country and the debt we have for that Indigenous wisdom and great to see it being acknowledged on the big stage, I guess.

Colin:
On the big stage of the UN, which now has an Indigenous Women’s Committee.

Tony:
Yeah, all good.

Colin:
They’ve got a Voice. Yeah. A Voice to the UN that we didn’t get last year.

Tony:
Exactly. Okay, so on with the good news, continuing. Our first guest today is Marama Grace Brownston. In the past, we’ve referred to and we’ve had Peter Andrews on looking at reading the landscape and acting according using Indigenous wisdom, I guess. So Marama, you’re on today to tell us your story. So let’s get going. What’s up front for you at the moment?

Marama (Mims) Grace Brownson:
First off, thank you all for having this platform – to have these voices heard and these stories heard. It’s really exciting to be a part of it. I feel really honoured to be here. And just even to add on just one more into that Welcome to Country, I read the most beautiful thing just saying how out of 4,000 different language groups, almost 460 different tribes that we have left, heaps more that have been lost in time, all of these different cultural implications of Australia’s vastness – I’ll talk about it a little bit later but like – Australia’s just been a hub and a safe haven for thousands of cultures for thousands of years. And that’s what the reintroduction to indigenality really has the opportunity to do on all spectrums is just a real awakening to the fact that we were all nomads once. We’ve all come from somewhere once. But right here, this precious thing that we have that somehow survives ice ages, that somehow makes it through the craziest climatic things that are happening in the Northern Hemisphere, somehow, this little island that we all get to share now and call home, this has answers.

So yes, thank you, thank you, for all past, present and future wisdoms that we can be learning from together, particularly with platforms like this and with the ability to have voices heard.

So, yeah, I’m Mims for short, or Marama Grace. Just, yeah, almost 30, which has been a real big sort of everybody’s got different opinions about what that should mean. But I still have this childlike spirit in me that’s just like, wow, outside’s so beautiful, but they’re changing outside so bad that I don’t even want to go outside anymore.

This is, yeah, it’s been this fractured perspective. A lot of my friends are popping babies out and I have a cat, and my cat travels with me across Australia and we try and fix the landscape.

So, you know, there’s all these different levels of what’s happening around me in this world. And yeah, the main, the main thing that I found, the main thing that called me back to myself and Wadzy helped introduce me to the network – you’ll hear from Wadzy later – but yeah, the main thing was wanting to know where our food, water and resources were either coming from or being held. 2018, 19, I was hearing about the Murray Darling and this Aussie, rinky dink Aussie was standing in the river, tears just streaming down his face with this huge, beautiful fish and you know, and his daughter like, little interview with his daughter. ‘I’ve never seen my dad cry and he’s cried for three months straight.’ This is why farmers are ending their lives.

And I think from that point I was like, what is going on? And then of course we had the Great Con and everything shut down. And me and my eternal rebellious spirit said, what a great opportunity to travel Australia and try and find the solution. You know, no one else is traveling so it must all be in the cities, all of the icky. I’ll just go into the countryside and let’s see if I can meet some farmers, see who I can meet.

Barraging through Bellingen 2021. And yeah, that’s when I met a beautiful woman called Sonia, who put me onto a beautiful individual called Wadzy, who sent me on this incredible journey, meeting the legend Peter Andrews and getting to know at least what Australia had to offer to that food, water and resource solution.

I was very blessed through my younger life to have had an international childhood. My mum taught English as a second language. I lived in Cyprus, the north side, the Turkish side, which was rich with history, still had the bullet holes in the walls from the Greek and Turkish disputes.

Then we moved to Oman, and that’s in the Middle East, and they had these wadis and incredible castles in what would have been jungle a couple thousand years ago, but now was completely desertified to the point where they were running sandstone wadi contours to get water to the date farms at other places in the the Wahiba sands.

These cultural experiences that I didn’t realise had such an impact until I met Peter and the sort of connected dots about the Mesopotamian Crescent and the fact that climate is connected, the whole world’s climate is connected.

So yeah, three days I spent with Peter, pretty solid, like one-on-one with his beautiful kids, Liv and Archie. They are just so epic. Archie’s the machine man, Liv’s the horse whisperer. And they just, everybody’s got their role on the farm, which is epic.

And yeah, he taught me about sugar and salt in the landscape, about the clay pans, about the cracks in the Australian landscape, which makes it different from our European landscapes.

And sort of once I had all of these kind of basics down, then I was able to ask more intrinsic questions about the climate, because I’m 30, I’m almost 30, and I have been raised with this concept of climate change from the moment I could understand the television. And Peter is the first person who I ever met who said, ‘Listen, mate, the climate’s gonna change whether you’re inside the house or outside the house, whether you’re under a tree or out in a paddock.’

And I just, you know, we have to listen to more of that ancient wisdom that’s going: where you are is breeding your climate. What plants you have there, what techniques you have for slowing the flow of water, how your rivers are being managed. The way that we’re growing crops in monocultures, all of these things create these massive swells of heat, which affect the way that the climate’s supposed to be going based on, you know, the weather patterns, et cetera.

And then I started to understand that if the rain is hot, that’s very simple for my brain. I’m quite a simple black-and-white thinker. I had to get out in the paddock with a shovel to understand, and then I got it – when I sniffed in the dirt.

But there’s a way that water is so hot and it’s attracted to what’s cold. And that’s a simple way to put all of the advanced electromagnetic processes that are happening in rain clouds. But if the ocean is cooler than the land, then the rain will be attracted to the ocean. And as we have in the East Coast, we have this beautiful mountain range. So the rain gets dragged across the coast, hits this mountain range, and stirs up these incredible storms that we’ve been seeing happening.

Not to mention they’ve just been openly talking about their silver iodine projects in the sky. There’s all these different angles that have been just kind of neglected in this kind of push to focus only on carbon, for instance – which, you know, everything’s carbon. We’re a carbon-based life form. So it’s about managing the carbon.

The one simple point… I’ll ramble on about plants one more time is Australia gave birth to two thirds of the flowering plants, fish species. Singing birds all evolved in these shores. There’s dromatolites in Perth that are 3.5 billion years old. They are the oldest plant life converting oxygen that we have on this planet that I know of. Welcome to fill in gaps. Message about the others, you know, but… As far as Australia goes, it’s a phenomenal. One side’s 3.5 billion years old. This side’s about, I don’t know, 1.2 to 12 million, depending on where the heat pocket pushed up. And you can see that by midden, stretched all across the blue mountains.

It’s just waiting. It’s waiting for us. And as a young person in Australia, we’re already driving around. If you’re a young person in Oz, I know you’re driving around for doves and festivals and adventures.

Listen to your landscape, go up on a hill and read your landscape. If you see monoculture, it makes sense that when, as we had uncle talking about earlier, the bushfires sweeping through places and the government being really conscious about the next wave of bushfires, it’s going to be even hotter. And because everything’s going to be nice and fresh, we’ll see what the mitigations… It’s a really beautiful combination of using the slow the flow principles with the greening Australia, Landcare Australia, all the beautiful organisations that already exist, interacting with techniques that the indigenous and the NSF is teaching, and moving it forward in the slow the flow. Yes, so, Colin?

Colin:
Look, I’ve got a host of questions because you put so many different aspects on the board, if you like, but I’d like to start with: When you arrived at Peters, what did he think of your cat? Because cats are not exactly welcomed in the outback.

Mims:
I didn’t actually have the cat when I first met him. I got the cat about four months later. Yeah. No, no, it wasn’t even four months. It was a year later. It was 2022. It was a year later. So I had a whole year without the cat, and just traipsing around with P.A. pretty much.

Colin:
Now you’re traipsing around with the cat, you are of course aware that cats are the biggest threats to indigenous bird life.

Mims:
I know. She’s indoor with two bells on her harness. She can’t jump. She’s kind of restricted. She stays inside.

Colin:
Good.

Mims:
And I walk her, though. Amen. But we’re invasive too, uncle. That’s the other thing. And if they’re here, we’re here. It’s all this toxic thing. Anyway.

Colin:
We’re worse than cats when the truth’s known. The other point that I’d like to tease out a bit, if I can, is your reference to carbon being everything. Carbon, if you like, it’s the low-hanging fruit. It’s the one that we can approach relatively simply by changing, most of all, by changing the way we generate electricity and also the way that we travel. Once we’ve got that low hanging fruit, we’ve then got to do the things that I spoke of earlier on in the roundup where the Starmer government in the UK is planting forests. They’re not planting trees, they’re planting forests. And that’s something that we have to…

Mims:
And floodplains. They sounded like they were ponding as well. Ponds are the big thing.

Colin:
Exactly.

Mims:
Yeah, well, listen, and I’m very excited to keep learning so much more about carbon, about all of the basic vital minerals, right? Or they’re 13 and yeah, carbon’s one of those 13 and they’re the life force and they’re the basis of everything. I’m thinking, in my thinking, all green things use carbon to grow.

So in Australia, we spend upwards of $30 billion a year on glyphosate being rolled out. And actually, they use a lot of the indigenous land corporations and Greening Australia and Landcare Australia to roll out the projects that then utilise Roundup to make sure they thwart an invasive species, such as maybe blackberry, which has been proven on multiple sites that can be progressed out using native plants, and you just plant the native plant in the blackberry and because the soil has been protected by the blackberry, it’s really fertile. And so you just slash it back, and then the blackberry no longer has a purpose to be there because it is already done its job.

So I think there are vested interests keeping us looking forward to carbon being the major solution. About three years ago I was introduced to three carbon scheme kind-of-crews and like, God bless them, I’m sure they’re doing good things, but the way they were setting up projects was that people would get returns in 25 years and they couldn’t touch that patch of land for 25 years. So that meant not even putting in better techniques to slow the flow. No, once you’ve reported a patch that you’re leaving for carbon farming, you have to leave it that way.

And it was this weird transition, and maybe it’s changed and maybe it’s got more adaptive now – and I really hope it has – where you should be able to, if you are increasing carbon on your property, look at all techniques with which to increase that carbon capacity. And that increases soil capacity, slowing the flow of water, making sure all plants are growing and that you’re progressing those plants out with other plants.

There was an amazing grant given to the Bathurst government about 10 years ago, maybe 15. John Frye was the councillor at the time. God bless his soul, he didn’t know better. They offered them $12 million to the Bathurst City Council to rip up all of the willow trees along two of the major rivers. Can you imagine that devastation? Well, get a bit of excitement because they’re invasive supposedly, even though they’d been there 210 years at that point. And they ripped them out, put them beside the bank and set them on fire. Burning habitat, releasing carbon, destroying the banks of the river. Two years later, they had some of the most devastating floods.

It’s all written in our histories that the waters opened up, and indigenous people, as you guys have said, the indigenous peoples of all the cultures over 60,000, 70,000, 120,000 years that have used this incredible island as home, that incredible capacity has even got that in the stories of Tiddalick the Frog, where the water was held and withheld. And so the women went back to the water banks, tickling the frog, planting, whispering, talking, finding, following springs, planting as they went, bringing back the banks of the river, bringing back the water. Then the waters gushed, the rains had, and the banks could be held.

Then a few thousand years later, there’s the big Murray cod opening up the river bank, and that’s the erosion that they witnessed over thousands of years that they wrapped into a story so it wouldn’t be lost.

And what happens, we got to go back and we got to plant along those riverbanks. But the big cotton farms using the Murray Darling don’t have the same love that we do, I guess. And they have to have a financial incentive. And so I think those carbon farming projects should be, that should be a crossroads where we are, we’re the army that are going, hey guys, you have a chance now to really redeem yourself. Your monoculture is your thing, whatever. But as soon as your water leaves your site, it goes through a six stage filtration pond with papyrus reeds, acacia plant, all of the water filtering plants we know. And you have to make sure that what comes out of the other side of that is pure enough to drink.

And you gotta pay indigenous people to do it.

I don’t, like, whatever form it comes in, I just want to see these projects used for practical implementation and change. I’m really sick of it faffing around and being used to chug on our heartstrings. I’m really over feelings and I want to get my hands dirty and practical and we need an army but not that’s willing to pick up guns for Trump. Those willing to pick up shovels and rakes and manure and mulch and seeds. You know, this is the time and yeah like… There’s a lot stopping us in a lot of ways, but we’ve also never been freer. We’ve never been more connected. And as an Indigenous woman, as we’ve been saying, we’ve got voices now. So let’s not get too shy. Let’s just get them out there and, yeah, see what can be done.

. . .

SONG
“This Is the Time” – audio file

[Verse 1]
This land has held stories
for longer than memory
Hands in the soil
whispers to frogs
songs carried by the riverbanks

Tiddalick drank the water dry
so the women followed springs
not with force
but with patience
planting as they went
reweaving the land
with love as method
listening as law

[Chorus]
We’ve never been freer
Never more connected
So let’s not wait for permission or perfect conditions
Let’s move – let’s grow
Let’s get our hands in it
Pick up your shovel
This is the time
Call the Elders
We’re ready to listen

Mims: “There’s a lot stopping us in a lot of ways, but we have also never been freer, we have never been more connected.”

[Verse 2]
It wasn’t policy
It wasn’t profit
It was being – being with
Being for
Belonging to

We don’t need another slogan
We need a place to stand barefoot
We need purpose with dirt under its nails
We need to build what feels like home
We’re not lacking the plan
We’re lacking the will

[Chorus]
We’ve never been freer
Never more connected
So let’s not wait for permission or perfect conditions
Let’s move – let’s grow
Let’s get our hands in it
Pick up your shovel
This is the time
Call the Elders
We’re ready to listen

Mims: “This is the time. Pick up shovels and rakes and manure and mulch and seeds. You know, this is the time.”

Don’t tell me you ‘love this country’
as long as you still poison her veins
You don’t get to farm without family
without connection, without conscience, without consequence
We watched the banks erode
and still we wrapped the truth in story
so it wouldn’t be lost
An army — not of soldiers
but of water-carriers, seed-planters
those who look at a damaged field
and see a forest of healing and hope

[Epilogue]
This is not sacrifice
it’s sacred – participation
Water clean enough to drink
That’s the promise
Pick up a shovel
This is our moment
This is the time

This is the time

Mims: “The time is right, Wadz. Like, now is the time.”

. . .

Tony: (at 35:59)
Our next guest is Wayne Wadsworth – or Wadzy as he’s known to most people who know him. Very few people have had the life journey that he’s had. At the moment he’s living in a place called Iron Knob in South Australia which I’m sure he’ll tell us about. So Wadzy, thanks for coming on. You’re someone with decades of experience in doing what Mim has just been referring to. So welcome, thanks for coming on. What’s happening in Iron Knob at the moment?

Wayne (Wadzy) Wadsworth:
Well, my journey to Iron Knob was a very long one. I never thought I’d wind up in the desert in a little town, nowhere to be, I’ll probably have to hear that out. But it’s a sort of dying little town. It was actually where iron mining started in Australia. And it’s basically how I sort of met Mims.

Mims came over, she phoned me when I was over here, I was actually looking for a desert project because I’d spent my life mainly working the subtropics and tropics and places that you put something in the ground and it grows. Well, I need a challenge before I pop off, so I’d head off to… I gave up my hemp farm in Nimbin which was going very well and financially doing quite well, and I guess I got rid of everything and gave it away, and hit the road.

And while I was getting close to Whyalla, I got a call from Mims saying she wanted to see me at the hemp farm and I said to her, ‘Well, I’m actually not there anymore, but if you want to come over here and you’ve got no money, I’ll fill you a bit of petrol money and get in your car and come over.’

So that’s how we sort of got together. And I’d met Peter quite a few years prior to that and I knew of his work because it was very much the same work that I’d been doing. And I think Peter had quite a lot of knowledge that I didn’t have. I sort of rocked up to his place for a month thinking I knew everything and realised I didn’t really know that much at all really. And I learned a lot from Peter.

So Mims sent me… about probably a month or six weeks we were together and we were trying to get some projects going here which were not looking particularly like they were going to start. And I said to her, ‘Well look, you’re a very intelligent woman and got a lot to offer. I think you could actually go to learn from Peter and stuff that could needs to be taken up by young people to be taken into the world.’

So that’s pretty much how we met. And Mims has been at it for, I don’t know… Must be three-four years since we got together, since you came over, and we camped around the places and had a look at different places. We actually made a couple of videos, and Mim did a presentation. Probably Mim is the most, how would I say, impressive and intelligent woman I’ve met with in my life. And I’ve actually worked with a lot of people. That was our getting together and Mims has since gone off and some great stuff as well. That’s how we got together.

My history is one of politics. I came into politics when I was about 18 years old, opposing the South African Springbok tour of New Zealand because I thought it was racist. So, and everyone used to call me a communist and I didn’t know what a communist was. So I sort of learned about communism, and felt that was not as bad as everyone thought it was. That was my sort of life journey to where I am now.

Mims:
Then he did permaculture under Castro in the 1960s, right? Yeah. Then he did proper exciting things. I couldn’t believe when I met this dude. And of course, because it’s just all phone calls at this point and I’m just wandering around and it’s COVID, no one’s trusting nobody. And I’m like, all right, I’m going to go 2,300 kilometres across this country to meet this random hemp fella. And I’m pretty staunch. Like, all right, I’ve got to be staunch enough. And that was just the most amazing experience. Then yeah, brought these hemp, like indestructible hemp creations, because that’s all part of what, you know, the passion for hemp is still massive. It is still a plant that you can make 70 different resources from, and it absolutely can transform the world’s resource base, but it has to be not done in monoculture. We have to minimise monoculture. Terrace farming, multiple species, mix it up. That’s how we get healthy again. Not more experimental chemicals. Your body, the planet. Woo, we got this! It’s going to be great!

So yeah, then meeting Wadzy and meeting through Wadzy meeting like, I don’t know, 25 people who all have the same soul. Like, you are beautiful soul, Wadzy, and you attract gold. That’s why you’re like, you know, yeah, she’s a good chick because you’re a good dude. And it was really easy to, yeah, just go right. We’re going to actually make this happen.

Our TikTok got 20,000 views overnight and then I just couldn’t, like, we did three other videos but I just couldn’t handle the… like, we need a team well I need a team I can’t do the talking the editing the thing I just can’t it’s just not in my brain I can barely use this for text this silly phone. So yeah you have to have a team to do this mission properly and when I met Wadzy that’s what I said we’ve got to go find Peter and make him a team and now the kids are 21 and 20, or something, his youngest kids and stuart Andrews is the older generation of kids and he’s busy doing talent park trainings across the country still. So the time is ripe. The time is ripe, Wadz. You found me four years ago for like now’s the time.

Wadzy:
And look, just on the question of carbon, I get annoyed with all this carbon stuff, not because it doesn’t have a foundation, but because particularly politicians being so dishonest when they start calling it carbon pollution. It’s absolutely nonsense, know, we can’t grow plants without carbon. We’re carbon, you know, there’s no carbon pollution.

Mims:
It’s pollution. It is multiple toxic chemicals in the air like it’s all chemicals that are pumping out We get it, but it’s not just carbon.

Wadzy:
If we want to manage… I call it manage carbon in the atmosphere, because I think actually if we’re going to green the deserts, we’re probably going to need 350 to 450 parts of carbon in the atmosphere. Because as I said, plants need carbon to grow. So if we’re looking at China as the biggest country and now greening the deserts, and I think some of that technology actually might have come from Peter Andrews. But anyway. You know, they’re doing hundreds of thousands of hectares, which is obviously taking up carbon.

And even if we planted the whole planet in trees, that would reduce carbon very quickly. But the point is, that carbon will return to the atmosphere. So in the long term, it’s actually not going to make much difference to the CO2 in the atmosphere.

What will make a difference in the atmosphere is by turning that carbon into what we call biochar. And that’s how we’ll manage carbon in the atmosphere. By, you know, if we look at the amount, even in the city, the amount of organic waste that goes to landfill, most of it actually. What a ridiculous waste of a resource. We can turn that into biogas, we can turn it into fertiliser, so it means we don’t need chemical fertilisers. And we can turn the woody waste into biochar and that can increase our agriculture.

By using systems like Peter Andrews has developed, we can not only green the desert, but we can repair our farms very, very quickly. And I almost cry sometimes when I see the work that Peter Andrews has done for 40 or 50 years – and he’s had all these politicians go visit him, say, yeah, Peter, you’re right, blah, blah, blah. And why isn’t this happening? It’s only not happening because chemical companies don’t have the slightest interest in what Peter Andrews has done. In fact, it’s a threat to them. We’re driving around in these dinosaurs we call motor cars, when over 100 years ago, they were driving electric cars in New York, in fact. We built cars from hemp. The problem isn’t the technology. It’s the people that own it which are the bankers. And that’s who my war is against, it’s the banking system because if we ran the banking system then we could actually invest in these sorts of technologies and actually repair the Earth pretty quick. You know, really we could repair the damage we’ve done in the last, particularly in last 200 years since the industrial revolution. I think it would probably take us about 10 years if we controlled the monetary system because we wouldn’t be giving money to the friggin army for a start and the warmongers. They’d be the first to go bankrupt.

Tony:
So Wadzy, okay, let’s drill down on this a little bit further. How do we do that? How do we change the banking system to allow this to happen?

Wadzy:
Well, I think I’m very much doing these things on community wealth banking. You know, how do communities run their own economies? You know, like if we… for example, let’s take Melbourne, know, suburban Melbourne, let’s say Northcote, for example, where Ceres is.

If those people put together the resources and had their own bank, I mean, they’d still have to use the dollar system, but that money can then be invested in that community. As it is now, you go to the Commonwealth Bank, which is probably owned now, but you go to the Commonwealth Bank, put your money in there, they can send it to America or they can invest in bloody war-mongering somewhere half around the world. You have no idea what happens with your money.

So by having community wealth banks where the wealth is actually put into the community and by legislation, that money would have to stay in the community, couldn’t be actually put into another community. That would then start creating that community wealth where people actually have control over their own suburbs and their own towns. As it stands now, some company can come along and say: “Look, we’re going to build X Y Z there, or we’re to put a high-rise building there.” And local people really don’t have much control over it.

And I use Ceres as a good example because as you guys are probably aware, Ceres started about 40 or 50 odd years ago on a rubbish tip. And now it’s in a pretty amazing place that shows how to do sustainability, gardening. There’s markets there, there’s restaurants there, there’s a nursery there. It’s a pretty amazing place. And I think they’ve done a fantastic job. But we need to upscale those things, you know, in every city in every suburb in Australia, if we’re really serious about climate change.

And the technologies we have now, pyrolysis, turning waste into energy and carbon, biogas systems where you turn your syringe into, you know, these technologies are all there. But how come we don’t get them? Because the people that have the money aren’t going to invest in that because it’s going to put them out of a job. So unless we the people control the money, we’re all going to be dealing with this crap and we’re going to be saying the same stuff in a hundred years time, know, and the climate is going to be a lot worse than it is now.

Jingle

Mik:
The Sustainable Hour is ticking and we’ve come to that point where we are rounding off. Mims and Wadzy, thanks for sharing your insights and there’s so much more to tell. So where do people go to learn more and maybe to meet up with you guys or hear more presentations or things like that. In summary, what’s your action plan for us, the listeners?

Mims:
This is always the trickiest question because Australia is so big. Australia is so big it has multiple climatic regions. It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. If you’re a farmer or on the land is a grazier, I’d say go talk to stuart Andrews, go do a Tom Park training. Apply to the government and say, ‘I want to do this training, I want it to be subsidised’, because a lot of the times they won’t subsidise because we don’t demonise all plants.

We use all plants in the paddock because that strengthens our food. So we just use science and basic wisdom, but that is offensive sometimes to the legislation. And that’s all right. We just all have to do what’s best for our crops and our farms right now. On the flip side of that, if you’re younger person like me, it is a hard road to find a mentor that’s going to suit you. A lot of these farmers, a lot of these regenerative agriculturalists, sustainable permaculturists, they are tired, they’ve been doing this for a long time, and people are only just clicking on. So I think that’s where we can best serve our purpose is kind of like nieces and nephews to the aunties and uncles of the West Coast, particularly. Go out west, try and contact the farmers, go on a woofing websites, see who is still around because from my last reading of the statistics,

There are only about 8,000 subsistence local self-sufficient farms left in Australia. And we have 7 million hectares squared? Or something ridiculous of land? So who owns the rest? If we’ve got 8,000, they’re probably spread all around. So that would be my encouraging moment, is that there are aunties and uncles waiting with all this knowledge, with fresh fruit and vegetables, and just needing real people to go and help them do it. So yeah, let’s go. Be the difference, right?

Wadzy:
Yeah, absolutely. I’d like to ask you all, just as a question before I go, what’s your utopia? You what do you think is, you probably don’t have answer it now, but what would you like to see the world to look like? You know, as against the does now. I sort of ask everyone those questions because everyone really has quite a different concept of their utopia. You know, no utopias are two of the same, but… It’s a good question to ask in terms of, you know, we all grew up sort of thinking, oh, we need to build a sort of utopian society and all the things are here to build a utopian society, but we’re probably further away from utopia now than we were in the 1950s, in fact.

Mik:
I think it’s really simple in a way, because doctors have a principle in their work which is ‘do no harm’. And I think this is principle number one as human beings. This should be the underlying value in everything we do. ‘Do no harm’ to animals, plants or the planet, the atmosphere, whatever it is. But here’s the thing. To actually make that happen… we’re organising ourselves in societies and we have rules and laws and legislation and the rest. And our legislation at the moment does not write that into law, ‘do no harm’, because companies are allowed to do harm. And it has been like that for too long. So it’s a very simple thing that needs to happen. More and more people need to get together and then we need to begin to really look at the law and get it to the level where we do no harm.

Wadzy:
That’s a really interesting point because as you say that’s the doctor’s ethos, but in fact if you look at the amount of damage that doctors actually do through the medications and that they’re promoting They actually probably in many cases do more harm than good, which is unfortunate I mean they don’t that you know a doctor a young doctor goes to medical school because he wants to help society doesn’t go there because you know it’s gonna feed people a whole lot of chemical – bloody petrochemical medicines, which is supposedly gonna help them but they get trapped in this whole system and it’s credit. I mean, COVID was a classic example, look at COVID.

Mik:
I have some friends who are doctors and when they learn and understand from a scientific point of view that this medicine, this chemical is actually harmful. ‘We thought it was a medicine, but it turns out it’s not really doing its job.’ Then they change their mind. They do. The only thing that doesn’t change is mind is if there’s a profit to be made. If there’s money in it, then it keeps circulating and the rest. So again, it’s about putting laws together that protect us from this… the greed.

Mims:
It’s also, okay can I just cut in, it’s also about not burning the witches. Like if we can learn anything about the past, is there was a reason these women were making tinctures in cauldrons at the back during the flu season. There was a reason they were curing people and people didn’t die when they went to their house. Like this is… like, it’s just such a trip that we had to go through this again 200 years later and again it’s this persecution mentality. I think we saw the Roman Empire at its finest and for me to be able to get out of the cities and get into the country was my saving grace. Because I probably would have gone proper radical if I’d stayed in the concrete jungle. I’ve met people in Melbourne who are so psychologically scarred they can’t even talk about it, like they cannot talk about the experience and the fear in their eyes as you bring up that time of their lives. And I’m like, bro, I was hitting the deserts, going skinny dipping in glacier ponds. Whoa! It’s, know, I just made a different life out of that experience because I took the oppression as, excuse me, I will get to the bottom of this because I believe that food, water and resources, my immune system and community at its finest will get through this. And I saw that. And that’s the main thing we can take away is: we saw that demonstrated finally in my lifetime that psychological and chemical warfare won’t just work that easily if, you know, I mean… it did, but it doesn’t have to again and we’re a lot smarter I think this time around. Amen.

Colin:
That’s certainly true, but look, we haven’t got time to answer your questions, Wadzy.

Wadzy:
We’re all doing our little bit.

Mims:
Be the change, be the difference! If you see something’s wrong, be the opposite!

. . .

SONG
“Starting From Today” – audio file

[Verse 1]
Looking at your face right now
As you scroll through the headlines
I see the worry in your eyes
About the world we leave behind
And I know you’re wondering
If anyone will make it right
But baby, let me tell you something
That keeps me up at night

There’s still time to change the way
Things are going day by day
And when you feel like giving up
Remember what I say

[Chorus]
I can be that difference
I can be that change
I can be that difference
Starting from today

[Verse 2]
Dad, I’ve seen the videos
Of how things used to be
Clear skies and clean waters
It’s hard to believe
But I’m not just sitting here
Waiting for a miracle
Got my friends beside me now
We’re making it possible

Every small step counts, they say
Little changes pave the way
When it seems too much to bear
Listen close, I swear

[Chorus]
I can be that difference
I can be that change
I can be that difference
Starting from today

We rise together
Hand in hand we’ll find a way
We rise together
Every choice we make today
Shapes tomorrow’s way

I can be that difference
I can be that change
I can be that difference
Starting from today

We rise together
Starting from today

. . .

Greenpeace Denmark video: (at 57:45)
Welcome to Denmark, the perfect holiday destination where less nature and industrial agriculture exist in perfect harmony… Come along! [pigs screaming].

Denmark offers a wide variety of unique outdoor experiences and if you bring the little ones, make sure you experience the Nordic Dead Sea. Dive into the waters where the absence of marine life creates an underwater desert experience like nowhere else. An entire ocean filled with mysterious brown sludge and that eerie beauty of agricultural runoff. You should try it!

Nature lovers, rejoice! These are some of Denmark’s most highly protected sites of nature. The Danes truly cannot put a price on nature. So they don’t.

Do you smell that? That’s the smell of Denmark. Fresh wind and fertiliser. Welcome to Denmark’s silent retreat experience. Notice the complete absence of life. The perfect emptiness.

This is Denmark, the home of six million of the happiest people in the world and of more than 200 million protected and confined animals. We hope to see you soon! Excuse me? Does it smell like this everywhere? Ooh.

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

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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Podcast archive

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