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The Sustainable Hour no. 548 | Transcript | Podcast notes
Our guest in The Sustainable Hour no. 548 is Deborah Hart, chair and co-founder of Climarte.
Deborah Hart is a long-time climate justice advocate, artist, and chair of Climarte – a cultural organisation using art and creative practice to respond to the climate emergency. Now entering its 15th year, Climarte has worked with hundreds of artists and civil society organisations to foster emotional connection, spark dialogue, and reshape the narrative around climate.
Deb shares her vision for a regenerative future powered by “fresh fuels” like algae and mycelium – as a complement to solar, wind, batteries and other genuinely renewable and regenerative forms of energy – to deliver energy security while locking out fossil fuels. Just for things that can’t easily be electrified, and/or as a backup liquid fuel to displace gas. Deb explains how creative producers can help build distributed, community-owned alternatives to fossil fuels. She also explores the rise of AI and what it means for the creative sector and our collective humanity.

Links to projects that we discuss:
COOL: How We Dit It – set in 2035, this project features visionary artwork telling the story of how communities created Fresh Fuel to complement solar, wind and battery technologies to effectively close the energy mix loop; securing clean, reliable power that directly responds to local needs. And that’s just the beginning.
Luminous Relic – presented at the Geelong Gallery as part of Climarte’s ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2017 festival, a major collaborative painting and moving image work by the late Mandy Martin and Alexander Boynes, with a score by Tristen Parr. Based on fieldwork around industrial Geelong, this urgent politically charged work examines the ongoing and cumulative effects of industry on landscapes, fragile ecosystems and human conditions.
→ Learn more: www.climarte.org and ClimActs.
. . .
A green pope for a burning world
After Tony Gleeson’s Acknowledgement of Country, Mik Aidt opens the Hour with reflections on the newly elected Pope Leo XIV, who has already spoken about climate, dignity, burnout, and a society built on speed and greed. His vision, Mik notes, offers not just spiritual guidance but a new “architecture” for how we live and respond to the climate crisis.
Colin Mockett’s Global Outlook
Colin delivers updates from across the globe:
Vienna, Austria – At the European Geosciences Union conference, scientists raised alarm over a rise in clear-air turbulence linked to climate change. They also pledged to defend science from political suppression, especially in the United States where support for key data centres is being slashed.
Memphis, Tennessee, USA – Elon Musk’s new AI supercomputer project, XAI, is running on unregulated methane-fuelled generators. Environmental watchdogs say the company has essentially built a power plant without a permit, endangering nearby communities.
Perth, Western Australia – Energy giant Woodside faced a major shareholder revolt at its AGM over weak climate policies and expansion plans. Institutional investors and protestors alike called out the company’s failure to align with the global transition to clean energy.
Aarhus, Denmark – A major geothermal energy project in Denmark’s second-largest city is pioneering a clean, decentralised heating model. Aarhus is aiming to phase out fossil fuels from its heating grid by 2030, showing how cities like Geelong can follow suit.
Art meets action: creativity as climate infrastructure
Deb Hart discusses Climarte’s mission to bridge science and emotion through art. She outlines how the arts can help bypass ideological resistance and bring people into climate action through meaning, story, and emotional connection.
Climarte’s next project, in partnership with artists like Lichen Kelp, is focused on visualising a transition to bio-based “fresh fuels” like algae – a regenerative, low-impact energy solution with huge potential.
She also reflects on the role of community-led initiatives, cooperative business models, and the importance of rejecting fossil fuel sponsorships in the arts sector.
Upcoming exhibition:
Title: Do No Harm
When: October 2025
What: An installation imagining the world in 2035, looking back at how communities displaced fossil fuels with distributed clean energy models.
AI and the creative frontier
The conversation also turns to artificial intelligence. Deb and the team explore:
- What AI means for artists and creative expression
- The ethics of power-hungry AI infrastructure
- The risk of cultural and technological centralisation
- How imperfection and emotional resonance remain the heart of true art
Fossil fuel deception: the $15 trillion truth
An Instagram video by Earthly Education reveals that 11 fossil fuel companies have caused over $15 trillion in climate-related damage since 1988 – while actively suppressing the science and spreading disinformation. The cost is being borne by the young, the poor, and future generations.
We round off the Hour with an Instagram video by 19-year-old Anjali Sharma calling for everyone to add their name to the Duty of Care petition.
Music in the Hour

Stand Up | Lyrics
– A fierce protest anthem of resistance calling us to rise, speak out, and ignite change, inspired by a Linkedin-post by Dani Hill-Hansen

Climate Communities | Lyrics
– A poetic vision of belonging, regeneration, and purpose, reimagining climate action through care and connection

I Heard It On The Sustainable Hour | Lyrics
– Our theme song, celebrating hope, truth, emphasising the grassroots power of shared knowledge in driving change
→ More songs from The Sustainable Hour here
“It’s not just algae. There’s fungi, there’s mycelium, there’s aliginous bacteria, there’s hemp, there’s bamboo. Plant-based plant alternatives for what we’re calling fresh fuel. So for things that can’t easily be electrified and as a backup fuel, but also to say, for instance, in the case of algae: it can be grown in closed loop systems on industrially degraded land. It requires very little water. It draws down huge amounts of carbon and is producing oxygen. It’s the most nourishing food supplement for humans, for animals, for soils as a treatment. So we could basically displace fossil fuels with fresh fuels. We could displace plastic, petroleum-based plastics. We could displace chemical fertilisers.”
~ Deborah Hart, director, Climarte
→ Subscribe to The Sustainable Hour podcast via Apple Podcasts or Spotify
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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
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“Individuals can make significant impact by switching to a plant based diet and stop flying. Societies have to demand big structural and systemic change. That requires critical thinking to understand current challenges and big imagination for a better – real zero – future.”
~ Pippa Bailey, arts worker, cultural dramaturg, climate justice and green transition strategist
→ Euractiv – 12 May 2025:
European biosolutions can accelerate the green transition, but simplified regulation is needed
“Biosolutions are central to Europe’s green transition, offering scalable, nature-inspired alternatives to traditional industrial methods. This Special Report takes a closer look.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“How is this fair?”
New research provides compelling evidence pointing to the wealthiest individuals and major fossil fuel companies.
Paper in reference:
Nature 640, p. 893–901, Callahan, C.W., Mankin, J.S. – 23 April 2025:
Carbon majors and the scientific case for climate liability
“Will it ever be possible to sue anyone for damaging the climate? Twenty years after this question was first posed, we argue that the scientific case for climate liability is closed. Here we detail the scientific and legal implications of an ‘end-to-end’ attribution that links fossil fuel producers to specific damages from warming.”
→ The Guardian – 7 May 2025:
Two-thirds of global heating is caused by richest 10 per cent
“Paper in Nature Climate Change journal reveals major role wealthy emitters play in driving climate extremes.”
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Transcript of The Sustainable Hour no. 548
Antonio Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General:
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 that the Wadawurrung people have nurtured for millennia before their land was stolen. Land that was never ceded, always was and always will be First Nations land. In nurturing both their land and their community for millennia before their land was stolen, they acquired a great amount of ancient wisdom. Ancient wisdom that we could now learn so much from as we navigate the climate crisis.
Mik Aidt:
Last week we saw green smoke, a green smoke signal, from the Vatican. And on Sunday the world will be watching as Pope Leo holds his mass of inauguration. And it’s not only the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics who will be watching and who are getting a bit excited about this new pope. Because really, like someone wrote, I saw, on LinkedIn: ‘the Pope is dope’, said one climate advocate. And that’s because he has already spoken quite a bit about our relationship with nature and about climate. He wants to, as just one practical thing, to shift the Vatican into being fully powered by solar panels and using electric vehicles. And actually, he doesn’t just see climate as a scientific issue. He frames it as an issue of human dignity.
Already at his first mass, behind all the incense and the Latin language, he told the world about work. Our obsession with success and speed and productivity has become what he calls ‘a false god’. ‘We’re living’, he said, ‘through a dark night of the world’, not only spiritually, but also emotionally and systemically. What he’s talking about is the burnout, the anxiety and the loneliness that we see in society. And he says they’re not isolated symptoms. They are warnings of a deeper misalignment, the way we build our society on extraction, on speed, and greed.
So I think Pope Leo looks like someone who will be catching up where Pope Francis left, offering the world a new spiritual architecture – not just for work and for how we live but also for the climate, the climate movement. And that’s what we need, folks, that’s really what the climate movement needs at this point. We need courage, we need compassion. We need the kind of wisdom that could come from Pope Leo.
So I say welcome Pope Leo – and I say that as someone who is not Catholic. I think that white smoke that came off from the chimney last week had a very distinct green tinge.
Over to Colin Mockett who’s got the global outlook – apart from what happened in the Vatican in Rome. Colin Mockett OAM. What do you have for us today?
. . .
COLIN MOCKETT’S GLOBAL OUTLOOK:
Yes, good morning, Mik. Well, while you were concentrating on the Vatican, I was concentrating in Vienna, where last week the European Geosciences Union conference was held. It was attended by 18,000 scientists from more than 130 countries. That’s more than your cardinals, mate! And there were two significant things that I took from the result of the conference.
First, there’s a growing scientific evidence that global warming is driving a big increase in dangerous clear-air turbulence. Now that’s invisible from the cockpits of planes, but can surprise pilots and damage aircraft. Along some busy flight routes, turbulence is projected to “double or treble or quadruple over the next few decades,” according to the conference, and that was according to Paul Williams, who was the speaker. He’s a professor of atmospheric science and head of the weather research division at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom.
“What we find,” he said, “is that the jet stream regions in both the northern and southern hemispheres are affected.” As its name implies, clear air turbulence can happen when there are no visible signs of a weather disturbance, often at or near the boundary of contrasting air masses. They’re moving in different directions and at various speeds. So it’s as it’s not visible, it’s not forecast. So it can be unexpectedly tossed quite large airplanes up and down by several hundred feet, potentially damaging the airframe of the aircraft and injuring passengers and crew.
Now, the second significant outcome from the conference was good news because as its final resolution, the global science community promised that it would rally around American researchers and rise to meet a well-documented wave of anti-science propaganda and disinformation that’s swamping global media and misguiding decision-making around topics like global warming, plastic pollution, agriculture and pandemics.
This is of course led by the Trump administration in the United States. Leaders of the largest earth science organisations in the U.S. and Europe voiced these concerns at the ‘Great Debate’ event during the conference in Vienna. “Generally in the Geosciences when we have a late breaking great debate it’s because there’s been a disaster somewhere like an earthquake or a tsunami,” said the EGU president Peter van der Beek. I think we can say that we are also organising this great debate because of a disaster going on and in this case it’s a suppression of science.
One of the first things needed to be addressed is the National Snow and Ice Data Center, that’s the NSIDC. It’s based at the University of Colorado Boulder, which announced on Tuesday that the government was ending its support for data products. Basically, they document the extent and thickness of sea ice, the accumulation of snow, and the retreat of the melting glaciers.
As a result of the cuts, the level of services for affected products will be reduced to basic, meaning they’ll remain accessible but maybe not be actively maintained or updated or fully supported, the centre said. Now this blindsided scientist who used the NSID sees data. “That’s incredible. Let us walk blindfolded and not gather any information about our surroundings,” said Eric Rignot, who is a glaciologist at the University of California, when he was informed of the decision. Now we will watch this one with interest and you’ll find it coming up in other global roundups.
But now we’re going to go to Perth, Western Australia, where last week one of Australia’s biggest oil and gas companies, Woodside, held its AGM only to face a shareholder’s revolt. The investors were angry about what they said was the company’s weak emissions reduction targets and a failure to plan for future beyond fossil fuels.
And it wasn’t only environmental campaigners who were behind the revolt. Some of the company’s largest investors, like superannuation funds, were angry at Woodside’s plans for a massive expansion of oil and gas production at a time of deepening worries about the impacts of climate change. At the meeting, nearly one fifth of its shareholders voted to get rid of Anne Pickard, who chairs its sustainability committee, while a contingent of protesters interrupted Chief Executive Meg O’Neill’s opening address seven times by blowing loudly on whistles. ‘No more gas!’, one protester yelled. ‘Gas is poison!’, shouted another.
The sizeable protest vote against Picard, one of the three directors up for re-election at the meeting, was partly attributed to long-held concerns that Woodside’s strategic direction is out of step with international efforts to restrain rising temperatures.
‘We believe the steps taken by Woodside so far fall short of what is needed to position it for global transition to a low carbon future,’ said Jeff Brunton. He’s the head of portfolio management at superannuation fund HESTA, which holds Woodside shares.
The $190 billion AWARE Superfund said it would vote against Picard and it reflected the dissatisfaction with Woodside’s climate strategy. Now, investor unease at Woodside has mostly centered on whether the company is setting itself adequately ambitious decarbonisation targets or relying too heavily on buying carbon offsets rather than cutting their own emissions.
Woodside chairman, Robert Richard Goida, said the company’s commitments balanced ambition with discipline and achievability. Other energy giants, including European super major Shell and BP, have recently wound back some of their emissions and green targets, he pointed out. ‘We only set targets where we have identified a pathway to meet them,’ Goida said. ‘We will, of course, continue listening to our shareholders who have diverse views and we take your feedback into account as we evolve our approach.’
But as a concrete example of the company’s course, Woodside last month gave the green light to build a $17.5 billion gas project in the United States. That’s US dollars, by the way. Marking one of its biggest bets that the demand for traditional fuels will remain strong, even as the world tackles climate change.
Now to Memphis, Tennessee, where Elon Musk’s team bought the closed factory that used to belong to Electrolux, the vacuum cleaner people. Now with typical modesty, Musk renamed his vacuum factory Colossus, and he started stuffing it with Nvidia graphics processing units or GPUs. They’re the basic building blocks of AI systems.
At the moment he has 200,000 of these GPUs in that factory and he’s headed for a million. By some estimates he’s expected to build the largest supercomputer in the world and he’s calling it XAI. Of course, everything he is called X, isn’t it? But all of that processing takes huge amount of power to run and so the XAI team moved 35 mobile methane gas powered generators onto the site to support their data centre. These are truck mounted units, many of them designed by Caterpillar, and they give off a toxic brew of pollutants, and all of which are currently operating without a permit.
“XAI has essentially built a power plant in South Memphis with no oversight, no permits and no regard for families living in nearby communities,” said the Southern Environment Law Centre in its report on the site. The SELC has called for an emergency order from the city to require XAI to cease the use of those generators with $25,000 daily fine if the company refuses.
After the SELC issued its report, the Mayor of Memphis, name’s Paul Young, he’s a supporter of the project, he explained that the company has a permit application pending. But what they’ve essentially built is a power plant that’s equal to the nearby gas-burning power plant that supplies electricity to the grid for Greater Memphis. And this is another project that we’ll be watching and reporting back in future weeks. Because what they’ve essentially done is get around the method of building a gas-fired power plant just simply for their AI factory.
But I’ve got a final feel-good item and it comes from a place that’s close to the heart of one of our team members, that’s Mik. Mik grew up in Denmark’s second largest city, Aarhus, which is currently home to a cutting-edge geothermal project. Geothermal heating stands as an exceptionally climate-friendly energy source, but one that is highly expensive to set up. But the Danish project aims to show that when combined with renewable power from solar or wind, geothermal energy becomes both cost-effective and emissions-free. Unlike other energy sources, geothermal reservoirs act as their own storage facilities, providing a stable baseload for district heating. The Earth’s core, with temperatures akin to the surface of the Sun, continuously reheats the water in its reservoirs. It’s a system that isn’t subject to the wind blowing or the Sun shining.
Now at the end of 2024, the European Commission declared that a European strategy for heating and cooling was essential and that a geothermal action plan needed to be delivered by 2026. The Commission saw it as a crucial step to speeding up the phasing out of fossil fuels. Up until now, the use of geothermal in an industrial setting has been too expensive, but the Aarhus project has demonstrated how by industrialising geothermal heat, it’s possible to drive down costs while at the same time maximising the learning effects for each stage. They’re essentially using it as a model that other communities can look at. In Aarhus, it’s part of an ambitious plan to decarbonise its heating grid by 2030.
A key component of this initiative is the transition from burning wood pellets to geothermal heat. Now when it’s complete the project will be the most extensive, coherent geothermal project in the EU. Aarhus is similar in size to Geelong. It has a little over 330,000 residents. The city is supplied with heat from an extensive district heating grid that covers almost the entire city.
Now the new projects will deliver 110 megawatt to this grid and that corresponds to the annual heating needs of approximately 36,000 households. The initial plan is to establish geothermal plants across seven sites directly supplying heat to local distribution networks. We’ll be keeping an ongoing eye on this one too. And that ends our roundup for the week, fellas.
. . .
Jingle:
Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.
Tony:
Our guest today is Deb Hart. Deb is very much a friend of The Sustainable Hour, she’s been on before. We’ve asked her to come back on today for an update on what’s happening… Deb is the current head of Climarte. So thanks for coming on, Deb, and welcome back to The Sustainable Hour!
Deborah Hart:
Thank you, Tony, Mik and Colin. It’s really, really great to be here. It’s just so fantastic that you guys do this and create such an accessible way for us to all exchange and learn and keep up with all of the vital information that we need, particularly in this landscape of just extreme disinformation.
So, Climarte, yeah, I am a co-founder. There were three of us. We co-founded Climarte in 2010, so: Guy Abrahams, Fiona Armstrong, and myself. We basically created the organisation because we really felt that there was a very missing link, which is basically a creative approach to this problem.
We know that humans aren’t great at kind of responding to things unless they feel very deeply about it, unless we have ways to connect with our emotions. And that’s where art and culture comes in. So we really, we kind of took the view that we absolutely need the science and it has to be the best available science and social research. But we also have to have ways to connect with that to help get under people’s ideological guards to help people open their minds, be open to new perspectives. So the organisation basically is very modeled on the Climate and Health Alliance, which Fiona Armstrong had set up that year.
So we basically have brought together over nearly 15 years now. We had a coffee just a couple of blocks away with Guy Abraham. This is Fiona Armstrong and myself. We think you should do this thing. Guy is a long time gallerist. He’s incredibly informed across so many things. He’s a trained lawyer and had done the climate reality project with Al Gore. He also had a master’s in environment sustainability from Melbourne University. This huge kind of career in the arts as a gallerist and having run the Christine Abraham gallery for many, many years and deeply connected into the arts. He was just such a perfect person to really establish it. And so he said, yeah, okay, I’ll do it if you guys stay involved.
So Fiona and Guy are both ambassadors still, but I am the current chair. So it’s nice to have had that, you know, long kind of history with the organisation, but we are where we are, because we have worked with hundreds of artists, creative producers, or civil society driven organisations, you government organisations. We’ve really since the very beginning had an incredibly collaborative and inclusive model. We recognise that as culturally a very healthy way to approach a problem, create ways to include as many people as we possibly could, but particularly for a cultural organisation to set that sort of standard. So yeah, here we are, 15 years in July, it’ll be.
And yes, I guess when we first started, there was a fair amount of resistance, it’s fair to say, people thought, oh, you you kind of, you guys are arty. What are you doing in the science realm? And, you know, an artist was saying, you know, we’re creating people. What are you doing? You know, like, I it was just kind of, yeah, there was a little bit of a effort to help people recognise that actually scientists and artists are very similar, very curious. They, you know, love to experiment, interrogate, you know, really new ideas and new possibilities, complex systems thinkers. Like I said, you know, not afraid to experiment and to take risks and to that’s what we have to do to advance our knowledge and advance new, better ways of doing things. So yeah, that’s probably a bit of an introduction, but yeah, here we are.
Mik:
I think that is so exciting, and really congratulations with the 15th year when it’s coming. By the way, are you going to celebrate that? But that’s not my question. I want to get one step deeper because I had a chat with my 18-year-old son the other day. You could say a deep talk about the meaning of life and many other things. And what he told me was that he felt that the most exciting about being alive is when you explore and discover something new. And then he used films, books, art, as an example where he felt excited because he discovered a new song or he had read a new book and that kind of thing. It dawned on me that it doesn’t have much carbon emissions to explore a new book or to be excited about a new song. Maybe we really need to dig deeper into what you guys are doing, you know, the arts world, because that’s where humans can get the excitement without having to blow out a lot of carbon. Or how do you see that?
Deb:
Well, that’s fantastic that your son sees it that way. I certainly have always been deeply connected to the arts because for me that it’s just, I don’t know, guess it’s inherent. I love the arts and I worked in the arts professionally for 16 years before shifting into this role, you know, to become more of an activist. And I worked, yeah, basically, I worked, this is going to seem like a diversion, but I worked with sponsors, like my last formal job was at the National Gallery of Victoria. I looked after high level donors and corporate sponsors, the very people that have basically the power to have avoided the climate emergency, but doubled down to protect their own interests to increasingly tether us to lethal systems and really unjust systems. So I see the power of the arts through their eyes. For a social license to do all this really, really catastrophic stuff, you you’ve got to make some strategic approaches into the community to justify like, you know, okay, so we’re actually destroying the foundations of everything.
We’re sponsoring this beautiful exhibition. It’s like, you know, for how long are those sort of compromises going to be accepted? So I guess Fiona Guy and myself, when we were setting this up, it was with a deep awareness that yes, the arts does have a real power here. And particularly if like as Climarte has always been, we only reference the best available facts, and data and evidence.
Professor David Karoly is one of our ambassadors, so is Joëlle Gergis. It’s very, very well resourced from that sense. It’s been very, very important to be grounded in that way, but to absolutely be open to all of the creative ways in which we can communicate the scientific facts as powerfully as we possibly can, but also in ways that are hopeful. And I’d really love to talk about a project that we’ve embarked on in the last, well, late last year. Basically, as many of you would be aware, I was also aware that, for instance, algae biofuels were in development in the 1940s. I knew that there were programs in the 1970s at ExxonMobil.
And of course that they were killed when was it Lee Raymond’s, no, that really terrible thing that happened to the world was somebody with, you know, his worldview coming into power basically killed all those programs. And the excuse has always been that they’re not commercially viable. So we’re looking at… And it’s not just algae, but there’s fungi, there’s mycelium, there’s aliginous bacteria, there’s hemp, there’s bamboo, plant-based plant alternatives for what we’re calling fresh fuel. So for things that can’t easily be electrified and as a backup fuel, but also to say, for instance, in the case of algae, it can be grown in closed loop systems on industrially degraded land. It requires very little water. It draws down huge amounts of carbon and is producing oxygen. It’s the most nourishing food supplement for humans, for animals, for soils as a treatment. So we could basically displace fossil fuels with fresh fuels. We could displace plastic, petroleum-based plastics.
We could displace chemical fertilisers at the same time as creating jobs and purpose in local communities. And if we were to do this through the cooperative models that have now been created in Australia, thanks to guidance, regulatory guidance from Denmark and Germany, I know there were massive obstacles. And if we think back to Hepburn Energy, know, the obstacles they faced when they started in 2007.
And now there are more than a hundred such community driven projects. I think we could do it like this, you know, it’s not commercially viable. Well, we know what that means. That’s what they said about solar, about wind, about batteries. So this is a project we basically sat back and thought, well, gosh, you know, we’re creative producers. That’s what we do.
We bring together the elements. Say it’s an opera. Okay, well, we need this cast, need the, you know, we need the set, the props, the finance, that… you know, all of the things that go behind the scenes to produce an exhibition or an opera or whatever. you know, we have the skills and the resources to do it. When I say resources, we don’t have the funding. If anybody’s out there and would like to make a donation, we’re a tax exempt organisation.
But we have the skills, we have the capacities in terms of human resources. So I hate that word, that is such a neoliberal word, but in terms of the human skills. So that’s a project that I’m actually really excited about and we’re working with some artists who, one artist, Liken Kelp is her creative name, but her real name is Liken Kemp.
And of all things, her artwork focuses on algae and oceans. So she’s actually creating an artwork to depict an algae, a fresh fuel business model. And that’s very exciting. We have a small amount of funding from the city of Yarra to produce that artwork, but it’s a great way to kind of then hook all of this research and social research.
And, you know, we have to delve into not just the scientific, the innovative, you know, technological, but, you know, funding is a big thing. And we think that community funding is going to be, you know, we could shift this, we could shift this really quickly. So, what, and again, can I say one of the things that really drove the thinking behind it is saying, ‘Okay, what would it look like?’ Because we know industrial scale is bad, like in nature that it’s plagues, it’s bad. But what does distributed scale look like when you have systems that are actually regenerating local environments, creating jobs and purpose, but it’s happening and this information, these skills and these models have been shared everywhere at once.
What would the impact be in terms of drawing down carbon, generating oxygen, alternative food sources, resilient ecosystems because the soils would be more nutrient dense, capable of holding more water, drawing down more carbon? Yes, Colin, did you have your hand up? Because I could just go on and on and on.
Colin:
Have you got an exhibition that people can come and see, physically see at the moment?
Deb (at 30:49)
Not at the moment. So we ran a space, and Mik, I remember you coming in. It was great to see you. That was a couple of years ago. For 18 months, we ran a creative space and we put on 18 exhibitions and 25 public programs. It was really exciting. We had some funding from Creative Australia and the City of Yarra, Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation, which really enabled us to do that. And it was fantastic. we we basically ran out of money and we weren’t successful with our grant applications to continue it. And we have core principles that artists should get paid, that it’s really important work and it’s really hard work and they deserve to be paid like anybody else. So, unless we have funding to pay artists to produce the work, we don’t run a public program.
So at the moment, the answer is no. In October, we will. And I’m actually meeting with a creative producer and participating artist for that exhibition called ‘Do No Harm’, which looks at the intersection between human and planetary health and will feature an installation about the algae biofuels project that we’re talking about. The working title for that is called ‘Cool. This is how we did it.’ And it basically is like a reflection which set in 2035 reflecting back on actually how we displaced communities drove the shift to displace fossil fuels from the economy in all their manifestations.
. . .
Earthly Education Instagram video clip (at 32:43)
How much money have just 11 fossil fuel corporations cost us since 1988? Researchers have added up the cost and the bill comes to 15 trillion dollars. That’s 15 trillion dollars in lost homes, scorched earth, failed crops, flooded cities and collapsed ecosystems and big oil new. These companies had the science that they buried it. They paid to delay action to confuse the public to protect their profits while the world burned.
They privatise the profits and they socialise the costs. Every dividend, every CEO bonus that they paid out has been matched by real suffering, pushed onto everyday people, onto frontline communities, onto countries who contributed the least. And so they have changed the very composition of our atmosphere. They’ve destabilised oceans, disrupted rainforests and melted glaciers. And still, the bill continues to land on the doorsteps of the poor, the young and the future. 15 trillion dollars, just 11 fossil fuel companies.
ABC News:
The impact of one of the driest years in living memory is showing in small town economies across South Australia. The town of Clare in the state’s mid-north received just over half its annual average rainfall last year, a record low. And small businesses outside the agriculture sector…
And still we hear them say, how can we afford climate solutions when we are already paying for the trillion dollar destruction?
Scott Morrison:
This is coal. Don’t be afraid.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse:
At the heart of this conflict is a battle between truth and science and power and lies.
. . .
SONG (at 34:31)
‘Stand Up’ – audio
Antonio Guterres, United Nations General-Secretary:
The longer we wait the harder it will become.
[Verse 1]
We were told to sit down, keep our voices low
Smile through the fire, act like we don’t know
“Be polite,” they said, “don’t make a scene”
But silence is violence when the air’s unclean
[Pre-Chorus]
They sold us lies wrapped in progress and pride
But you can’t grow green while the planet dies
[Chorus]
Stand up – for the ones who can’t breathe
Speak up – for the warming seas
Coal and gas barons, step aside
Shut down those mines – we don’t want your coal
No more waiting, no more fear
change starts now, it starts right here
Stand up – respond to what you see, what you learn
’cause silence is the oxygen that makes the world burn
XR UK activist:
It’s crazy times
[Verse 2]
They told us “Don’t offend,” they told us “Now be nice”
But that was only to delay their demise
We tried the facts, the reason, the plea
But nothing shakes power like fury set free
[Pre-Chorus]
Greenwash, spin, oppression in disguise
We’re not falling for any more of their lies
[Chorus]
Stand up – for the kids who dream
Stand up – for the polluted streams
Speak up – for the soil and sky
We won’t bow down, we won’t comply
We’ve moved past the grief, we’ve found our flame
We know the job and the name of the game
We stand up – we respond to what we see, what we learn
’cause silence is the oxygen that makes the world burn
[Bridge]
Squash your anger.
Remain seated.
Don’t disrupt.
Keep your voice down.
They told us these things.
To control us. To contain us.
But the world is on fire.
And we must prepare to meet the heat.
[Final Chorus]
Stand up – let your spirit roar
Stand up – this is what we’re fighting for
Speak up – feel the power inside
History’s written by those who rise
Stand up – respond to what you see, what you learn
’cause silence is the oxygen that makes the world burn
. . .
Deb:
We have worked with Geelong, with the art centre there. It was Amanda Martin and Tristan and Alexander Boynes. That stunning work, that was part of, I think, the ‘Art Plus Climate Equals Change’ 2017 festival. I can send you guys a link, but that was an absolutely stunning installation.
Colin:
Yeah, was at the Arts Centre. We’ve had a $123 million new arts centre because according to both the state and the federal government that is supporting the arts, giving us a new arts centre, not giving us art but paying tradies to build a super duper new arts centre with a complete new staff as well. New theatre, new staff, looks lovely, you would grace it. But I was thinking perhaps a smaller gallery or one of the city’s own venues would work incredibly well.
Deb:
Well, it’d be fantastic to have a chat and to connect with any of the creative organisations down there that are looking to advance these sorts of ideas. I mean, just the ways that we can see our beautiful planet and its mature state needing care, not put further poisoning. It’s like the creative, the opportunities to tie creative themes are huge, but just the whole, positive social engagement. mean, all of our projects are designed to be public facing, socially engaged. So yeah, we should absolutely chat. Mik?
Mik:
Where does AI fit in in Climarte and in the way that art looks at its future? Because it appears to me that AI is becoming, you could say, a really big competitor, similar to, for instance, the mobile phones came out and suddenly everyone could photograph. And those people who made a living from being photographers really had to be very creative in order to survive and get money for being a photographer because now everyone could photograph. And AI seems to enable everyone to do everything now. You can make paintings, you can make music, you can do all sorts of things. So how do you see that? And which discussions are you hearing about how we tackle, also mentally, how we tackle that companionship we now have with AI, which is bigger than a computer in a way, it’s like a whole new conscience.
Deb:
Yeah, think with these capacities, yeah, it does very much create lots to think about. The thing about art is the imperfection and is AI going to be very good at creating imperfection? You know, the beauty… the really, really deep kind of ways in which we engage with art, it’s not about the perfection. It’s about something nuanced that is about our humanity.
I would be very, very concerned to see the creative sector adopting just tools and technologies from people who just want to own and control access to everything to maximise their profits at all costs. That’s clearly heading to a very, very, very dangerous place. And I’ve loved watching the responses to some of the US policy with boycotts and with, you know, I would never advocate violence or destruction, but certainly, you know, choosing not to use particular goods and services and to be very public in communicating that decision. I think that’s awesome.
Colin:
I’m wary of AI mainly on the subject that it sucks up so much power and uses so many resources in order to create that power. You can say it’s the equivalent of the mobile phones, but when the mobile phones came in, we didn’t need new power stations. AI is doing that.
Deb:
Absolutely. And it’s really interesting to see the alliances, I mean, right now, because of the way that our energy systems have evolved and we are tethered to the lethal fossil fuel industry. These sort of interests, they’re aligned, aren’t they? They’re a real force. And this is where I get back to, say, looking at the fresh fuel alternative.
And for consumers, I mean, most of us want better options. Even if you’re not really engaged in the climate issue. As a consumer, why don’t we have these better options that we know have been available for many decades? And why is it that we have an industry that continues to obstruct progress towards genuinely socially and ecologically sustainable energy options?
I kind of have shifted, Colin, a little bit, but I guess what it sparked in my mind when you asked that question is, yes, we have serious problems that AI uses massive amounts of energy and that energy is largely lethal. So I’m not advocating for, ‘Oh it’d all be fine if we just used fresh fuel, if we used a suite of renewables,’ because that energy could be used for so many other things that would be genuinely beneficial. But again, this is where the ethics come in and the public conversations that we have to have about it. As all technologies tend to do, they’ve rushed in with something before thinking through the impacts, the regulatory frameworks, all of the essential protection measures. And… it’s just kind of the same old story, right?
An artist, Louise Rippert – full disclosure, she’s also my brother’s partner and very, very long time friend – we were having a conversation in developing the exhibition. She was a participating artist in the exhibition that we had in July. It was at the end of the financial year, June-July 2023. And it was exploring the intersections between information and power, and money and politics. And basically we were talking about the hoarding of wealth and this extreme wealth. And Lulu said, if somebody is hoarding cats, you’re like, yeah, that person’s actually really, really unwell. And yet if you’re hoarding more wealth than you could ever spend in a millennia of lifetimes, that somehow not just okay, but aspirational. What’s going on here?
So was a really interesting exhibition and I can certainly send it to you for your notes to reference that. But yeah, you hear these stories of these people like this, just hungry ghosts. it’s just, it’s a very public display of emptiness and desperation. And I think it’s actually, I don’t know how we shift to start to recognise this as really a deep mental illness and to bring some compassion to it but at the same time recognise it’s really dangerous. This behaviour has to stop.
Mik:
I began the Hour with a talk about our new pope, Pope Leo. And he’s talked about already now, you know, that work is actually creating a lot of emptiness, and that it’s affecting us emotionally. And we need to look at the system, basically look at how we live and whether this is the right way to do things. So I think whether we are Catholics or not, we have in the new pope, the world has a new spiritual leader there that could maybe be talking about these things and putting them up.
I know he’s already in a couple of months organising his first big conference, which is both about spirit but also about environment. So there’s things happening in Rome that may be more significant than we think. Even if we are atheists and not really caring about Catholics, there’s still something there that matters to 1.4 billion people on the planet, the Catholics, and goes beyond that.
Deb:
Yeah, actually, thank you, Mik, because you’re giving me some ideas. Like, you know, the Climate Guardian Angels. I’m also one of the organisers with that group. yeah, you know, we use that act as, a, you know, it’s culture jamming. Basically, we look, we’re very white, you know, we look like the very people that we are targeting, you know, like the, the mothers, the sisters, the daughters, the friends of people in power who claim to be Christian and hold up a mirror basically. It is incredible. I mean, Pope Francis’ encyclical was a radical document. It was a radically progressive, socially, ecologically, climate justice document. And I’m so so heartened to hear that the new pope is following in that tradition.
Mik:
What are we looking at the next 15 years for Climarte? What are your aspirations for the future if you were to think big?
Deb:
Yeah, let’s hope that we can create lots of opportunities for people who do lots of different jobs to explore creativity and to engage in ways that are meaningful to them on the most critical issues of our time. And yes, really genuinely continue to support this movement, the climate justice movement. I think, sadly, the problem’s not going away in a hurry, but the people who are behind it are far more in plain sight than ever. The systems that they have defended are crumbling under the weight of all of their own contradictions, and that’s just increasingly clear. There’s just nothing about their systems that are sustainable.
And so I think we really are seeing a collapse of a worldview that has been around for a very long time and has caused so much suffering. So hopefully, Mik, we’re not just using creative practice to shift out of a terrible period in human history, but to shift towards a really, really exciting, genuinely socially and ecologically sustainable one.
. . .
SONG (at 50:39)
‘Climate Community’ – audio
[Verse 1]
Millions of years of life
washed away in two centuries
Forests fall.
Oceans rise.
And still we chase
the idea of “more”
[Bridge]
What if more
meant meaning?
What if growth
meant belonging?
[Chorus]
Climate Community.
That is the vision.
That is the call.
Climate Community.
Not as a campaign
but a way of life.
A way of being.
A way of becoming whole
[Verse 2]
This is where
the head meets the heart
and moves the hands.
Where stories grow like roots
and joy is the fuel
I don’t ask,
“What will I sacrifice?”
I simply ask,
“What brings me alive?”
[Bridge]
Regeneration is our compass.
Care is our culture.
Deep democracy is relationship.
We are not separate from nature.
We are nature
remembering itself.
[Chorus]
Climate Community.
That is the vision.
That is the call.
Climate Community.
Not as a campaign
but a way of life.
A way of being.
A way of becoming whole
[Verse 3]
More time.
Less noise.
More soul.
Less luggage.
We measure not in GDP
but in GDN – Gross Domestic Nurture.
We’re done with offsetting
What we onset – is community.
[Outro – Spoken]
We tell stories that make us laugh.
We choose meaning over consumption.
We practice being the kind of humans
the Earth can trust again.
We are already here.
And we welcome you
in our Climate Community.
Audio clips in the song:
Alex Steffen:
There’s nothing more central than the planetary crisis because it is life and death itself.
Alex Steffen:
There’s nobody on earth who isn’t being impacted. There’s nobody on earth whose career isn’t being altered, whose family’s prospects aren’t being changed, whose community isn’t being threatened.
Alex Steffen (at 53:27)
Once you’ve centred the reality of planetary crisis in your decision making, you realise that the tempo, your idea of tempo of change, what is possible in what sort of period of time, completely changed.
. . .
Jingle (at 53:45)
Mik:
That’s how much art we could put into one Sustainable Hour today. Thank you very much to Deb Hart from Climarte. Any last comments to the listeners? Where they should go, what they should do if they were inspired by you, Deb? Why do you think art is important?
Well, art is a universal language. It is a language to help us understand the world, our relationship to one another and to everything. It is a foundational means of communicating and grappling with existential questions about life and humanity’s place in this incredible web of life that we are a part of.
Yes, climarte.org. You can check out our projects and yes, please get in touch if you’ve got any questions. We’d love to hear from your listeners.
Mik:
What should we ‘be’?
Deb:
Bees. We should be bees. Very industrious, very essential to the planet, to planetary health. Peace.
Mik:
That’s probably the most creative ‘Be… something’ that we have had. ‘Be bees’.
Deb:
Be bees, because we can also sting when we need to.
. . .
SONG
‘I Heard It on The Sustainable Hour’
[Verse 1]
I woke up feeling like the world’s on fire,
Storms are rising, rivers running drier.
But then I tuned in, turned the dial,
And found a reason to stay inspired.
[Pre-Chorus]
They said, “The greatest threat is thinking someone else will do it.”
But I can feel the change – I know we’re moving through it.
[Chorus]
I heard it on The Sustainable Hour
Hope’s alive, and the time is now.
Stand up, speak out, let’s build our power,
Be the difference – we know how.
[Verse 2]
They talk of profits, pipelines, and delay,
But we’ve got voices that won’t fade away.
From city streets to the coastal sand,
We’re backing leaders who take a stand.
[Pre-Chorus]
They said, “A society grows great when we plant trees in whose shade we may never sit.”
So let’s rise up, this is it.
[Chorus]
I heard it on The Sustainable Hour
Hope’s alive, and the time is now.
Stand up, speak out, let’s build our power,
Be the difference – we know how.
[Bridge – “I” to “We”]
We are the voices, we are the wave,
Lifting each other, brave and unafraid.
It’s not too late, don’t wait for someday,
Together we’ll light the way.
[Final Chorus – Empowerment Mode]
We heard it on The Sustainable Hour
Hope’s alive, and the time is now.
Rise up, reach out, this is our power,
Be the difference – we know how!
. . .
Quote (58:09.29)
Unite in a national effort to save from destruction all that makes life itself worth living.
Duty of Care Campaign video on Instagram (at 58:27)
Labor might not have approved any coal mines last year, but they did approve 32 coal and gas projects, extensions to already existing mines. Now, as voters were being told that there’s an energy supply shortage and that we need to be expanding our supply to power our homes. That’s not completely true though. Australia has enough gas in the system to power our homes until we’re able to switch to clean energy. The problem is that we’re exporting it all overseas. So the coal and gas that’s going to come out of these 32 projects, that’s not actually for your lights and for your heaters.
That’s going to places like Japan, China and South Korea. Last year Australia was the world’s third largest exporter of fossil fuels. So we’re racking up carbon emissions, we’re breaching our duty of care to current and future generations and we don’t even benefit from the energy at the end of it. We know that mining and burning fossil fuels is the leading cause of the climate crisis. But our current government is saying that gas will remain a key part of their energy and exports sector until 2050 and even beyond. Every coal and gas expansion worsens our future outlook.
And this is why current and future generations deserve a duty of care to protect our health and wellbeing in the face of the climate crisis. Sign the petition.
Jingle (59:43)
Scott Morrison:
This is coal. Don’t be afraid.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse:
At the heart of this conflict is a battle between truth and science and power and lies.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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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The Sustainable Hour is streamed live on the Internet and broadcasted on FM airwaves in the Geelong region every Wednesday from 11am to 12pm (Melbourne time).
→ To listen to the program on your computer or phone, click here – or go to www.947thepulse.com where you then click on ‘Listen Live’ on the right.
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Podcast archive
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