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The Sustainable Hour no. 558 | Transcript | Podcast notes
In The Sustainable Hour no. 558, we navigate the interconnected struggles against corporate power – from Big Oil to Big Pharma – and hear from voices of truth and courage.
We open with a stark reminder of the stakes: the global climate emergency, driven by lies, dark money, and a refusal to act.
Mik, Tony and Colin reflect on the fossil fuel industry’s disinformation campaign and the extraordinary progress of renewable energy worldwide – now growing at a record-breaking pace, even as powerful interests try to stall change.
Colin Mockett’s Global Outlook brings news of Europe’s deadly heatwaves, Harvard research on Exxon’s tobacco-style tactics, India’s bold air conditioning reforms, and Pakistan’s grassroots solar revolution – as well as some hopeful lessons for us all.
. . .
Our first guest, Alana Mountain, campaign coordinator of Friends of the Earth Melbourne’s Forest Collective, takes us to the Victorian Alps, where the majestic snow gums are dying at alarming rates due to beetle infestations, fire regimes and climate change. Alana shares insights from the recent Snow Gum Summit, outlines practical solutions, and invites listeners to join their campaign to protect these threatened ecosystems.
Alana is also a Landcare facilitator, conservationist and herbalist dedicated to protecting and restoring nature. Through her work, she seeks to foster connection and balance between people and the Earth. Her thoughts and musings can be found on Substack.
“We’re going to inevitably see drastic changes and ecosystem transitions over time. And unless we get out there and we start observing and talking about how we connect to the landscape, not just from a scientific lens, should we be communicating about what’s happening up there? We need to talk about it from human connection space so that we can bring more people into the awareness of why we need to protect these places.”
~ Alana Mountain, campaign coordinator, Forest Collective, Friends of the Earth Melbourne
. . .
We premiere yet another new song this week, ‘Time to Wake Up’, written as a tribute to American Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and his 300 speeches exposing the lies of the fossil fuel industry and calling for action before it’s too late. We play excerpts of Whitehouse’s speech, which you can watch in full here, and read the full transcript here.
– A tribute to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s relentless fight for climate safety, calling on us all to wake up and confront the battle between truth and lies. Premiered in The Sustainable Hour no. 558
→ More songs from The Sustainable Hour
“Climate change makes this a battle with a ratchet. There’s some things you just can’t come back from. The ratchet has clicked and there’s no return. So it is urgent. It is time for us all to wake up and fight.”
~ Sheldon Whitehouse, American senator
. . .
We then turn to a deeply personal and powerful conversation with Unty Rose, a cancer patient, nurse, writer and activist. Rose describes the parallels between the fossil fuel and pharmaceutical industries – both profiting from harm, while suppressing alternative approaches – and explains the reasons for rejecting standard chemotherapy in favour of a proactive, holistic and self-educated path to health.
Rose introduces their project the Synergy Cancer Project, a community-driven, evidence-based resource connecting patients, clinicians and researchers who are challenging the medical status quo.
Rose is a queer, neuro-divergent Elder, who has been an activist in the student movement, queer liberation, environmental campaigns and walked with mob from the Aboriginal Tent Embassy. They have worked as a nurse, media producer and trainer, community arts practitioner and now – though medically retired – have turned their hand to cancer patient activism.
Unty Rose has initiated the Synergy Cancer Project to build a network of patients, supporters, carers, research scientists and professional clinicians interested furthering cutting-edge cancer treatment protocols and research that are safe, evidence-based, community driven, and can be undertaken alone or together with mainstream cancer treatments.
Unty Rose’s wiki website: www.synergycancerproject.miraheze.org
Discord: discord.com/invite/PT6RUqKMWG
Email: synergycancerproject@pm.me
Unty Rose’s advice for those newly diagnosed with cancer:
“I would say, first of all, don’t give up hope – trust yourself, listen to your heart. Try to minimise stress and educate yourself. Part of that is finding a buddy – someone who can help you understand and navigate your way through. Be proactive by educating yourself so you can negotiate with your healthcare providers. They are there to consult with you – not to dictate to you – so you can make decisions in your best interests. And check out the Synergy Cancer Protocol to learn and connect with clinicians and researchers who are on your side. Find community – there are online groups. You don’t have to do this alone.”
~ Unty Rose, cancer treatment activist
. . .
This episode is a call to courage: to wake up, face the truth, and fight – together – for a just and liveable future.
Listen now, join the conversation, and be proactive.
“The chemotherapy will only offer me 10 per cent chance of working. But it will make me sick. So I have chosen not to have chemotherapy because I believe that my best chances of survival are not having chemo. I think the chemo will do more harm than good and I’ve had some of my doctors agree with that decision, although it is my decision anyway. And so what I’ve done because of my personality is to research and I did this when I had the lymphoma too as soon as I got some strength I went online and I love learning and teaching as part of who I am.”
~ Unty Rose, cancer treatment activist
Key links
- Friends of the Earth’s Forest Collective and Snow Gum campaign: www.melbournefoe.org.au
- Sheldon Whitehouse’s 300th speech: Senator Whitehouse Delivers 300th Time to Wake Up Speech
- Synergy Cancer Protocol: www.synergycancerprotocol.org
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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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“Are we prepared for this new climate reality?”
As climate risks grow, local councils are bearing the cost. Damage in NB council alone could reach $1B a year by 2060, yet just 13% of federal disaster funds go to prevention. I’ve launched a Climate Resilience Plan calling for long-term investment to protect communities. #ClimateResilience #NetZero
— Zali Steggall (@zalisteggall.bsky.social) July 10, 2025 at 10:54 AM
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Toxic algal blooms are killing dolphins, sharks, rays and other marine life in South Australian waters, in the same week that reversal of current flows are reported for the first time in the Southern Ocean. But still our government approves massive polluting gas projects like the North West shelf.
— Dr Monique Ryan (@mon4kooyong.bsky.social) July 7, 2025 at 9:47 PM
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Australians could cut power bills by up to 90% but not everyone can afford the upfront cost. A new report confirms energy-efficient homes, rooftop solar and batteries can save households $1000s every year. Govt should ensure this is available to all. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne…
— David Pocock (@davidpocock.bsky.social) July 9, 2025 at 12:13 PM
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Transcript of The Sustainable Hour no. 558
António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General:
We are flirting with climate disaster.
Jingle:
The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong: The Sustainable Hour.
Tony Gleeson:
Welcome to The Sustainable Hour. As always, we’d like to acknowledge that we’re broadcasting from the land of the Wadawurrung people. We pay tribute to their elders – past, present, and those that earn that great honour in the future. We’re broadcasting from stolen land, land that was never ceded, always was and always will be First Nations land. They’ve acquired a great amount of ancient wisdom from nurturing both their land and their communities for millennia before their land was stolen. And in that, there lies so many of the lessons that we’re going to need to get through the climate emergency that we are facing right now, not next week or the week after it, right now. In Victoria, we’re heading towards a Treaty, and let’s hope that that acknowledges some of that ancient wisdom that we’re going to need to continue on this planet.
Mik Aidt:
Today on The Sustainable Hour, we’re not here to comfort you and tell you everything is gonna be alright. We’re here to wake you up.
For decades now we’ve been sold a shipload of lies. We’ve been flooded by a wave of misinformation. The fossil fuel executives have been pulling their strings and rewriting the rules in boardrooms, in courtrooms, and even in our parliaments. So that when the rivers rose and the storms came, somehow we didn’t see it coming.
But here it is: catastrophic flooding, and a food crisis following, cost of living crisis, heat waves and havoc.
Science speaks, of course, loud and clear. But as the American Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has been asking in 300 speeches: will we wake up?
Because this is no longer some talk about what’s going to happen tomorrow. The sky is already turning red in Europe and it will be coming here in summer in Australia just as well. The rivers are rising. The ice is melting.
And we’ve been quoting the American Senator Whitehouse for almost a decade here in The Sustainable Hour: “This is a battle between truth and science and power and lies.”
Sheldon Whitehouse, American Senator:
At the heart of this conflict, is a battle between truth and science and power and lies.
Mik:
So with these words, before we begin the Hour, let’s first have the global news bulletin. We have Colin Mockett OAM ready in his seat. Colin, what’s been happening around the world in the week that went?
COLIN MOCKETT’S GLOBAL OUTLOOK:
Well, you know, Mik, that I research independently for this little segment each week, but it dovetails so neatly with what you are talking about that it sounds like we’re doing this in collusion, but we both know that’s not the case.
But anyway, my roundup this week begins in Europe where it’s midsummer and absolutely baking.
Southern and Eastern Europe are experiencing temperatures higher than 40°C degrees, with records of 46°C degrees in both Portugal and Spain. In France, 16 departments are at red alert level, and more than 1,300 schools have closed because of the heat. In Greece, Turkey, Spain and Germany, forest fires are raging. On Crete, more than 1,500 people have been evacuated, and the Mediterranean Sea itself is unusually warm.
Around Italy, sea temperatures are setting new records. What was once called extreme weather now happens every summer, and it’s happening faster and worse than climate scientists expected. Now these are not random natural disasters, they’re the consequences of our dependence on fossil fuels and of environmental policies that deliberately and constantly turn blind eyes to the consequences of our actions.
And this leads us to Massachusetts in the U.S., where a remarkable paper from Harvard University’s Geoffrey Supran and Naomi Oreskes analysed 200 different sources and concluded that the oil giant Exxon was definitely using strategies straight out of the tobacco industry’s playbook.
If you remember, the tobacco industry fought very cleverly to remain an entity when it should really have closed down after it was found to have been poisoning people worldwide. Well, this system goes across all of the Exxon company’s paperwork from internal documents to press releases to advertising and social media posts. All of them, and I quote, ‘downplay the reality and the seriousness of climate change and normalise fossil fuel lock-ins.’
The authors found ‘patterns that documented strategy of shifting responsibility away from the corporations which knowingly sold the deadly product while denying its harms and onto the consumers themselves.’
That’s exactly what the tobacco companies are doing and now what the oil companies are doing on us now. They’re saying: ‘It’s not our fault, it’s your fault for using them.’
And it’s not just Exxon, because the Harvard report says it’s adapted and used across the board by fossil fuel companies, and there’s enough evidence to show that America’s Big Meat companies are now applying the same climate-denying tricks.
Now to the subcontinent where India is working with the appliance makers to standardise the cooling range of air conditioners so that they will ensure that the minimum temperature can’t be set below 20°C degrees. It’s an effort to cut the nation’s energy use. The plan, although it’s at its initial stages, reflects the government’s focus to boost energy efficiency as India’s electricity consumption is soaring. In recent years, demand has out… generation capacity, leaving parts of the country without power during the summer months. In India that’s April through to early July.
Currently thermostats of some Indian devices can be adjusted to as low as 16°C degrees. ‘Temperatures would only be set in the range of 20°C to 28°C degrees.’ That’s the power minister Manohar Lal, he told the reporters at a press conference in New Delhi last Tuesday: ‘This would be done for air-conditioners at homes, hotels and in cars.’
‘Air-conditioners account for about 50 gigawatts or one-fifth of the nation’s maximum load.’ That’s Pankaj Agarwal, the ministry’s top bureaucrat said. He had figures that showed that for every one degree increase in air-conditioner temperature settings, it would reduce power consumption by 6 per cent. And that would mean savings of 3 gigawatts of peak demand. ‘Now India has about 100 million air conditioners in use and it’s installing almost 15 million every year,’ he said.
Now back to the United States where a new article from Bill McKibben of the New Yorker published some astonishing data on the rollout of solar panels.
His figures show that from the invention of the photovoltaic solar cell in 1954, it took until 2022 for the world to install a terawatt of solar power. That’s 68 years to create one terawatt.
The second terawatt came just two years later, in 2024, and the third will arrive later this year, if we carry on at the rate that we’re rolling them out, because people are currently putting up a gigawatt of solar panels. That’s the equivalent of one coal-fired power plant every 15 hours at the moment.
Solar power is now growing faster than any power source in history, and it’s closely followed by wind power – which is really another form of energy from the sun, since it’s differential heating of the earth that produces winds to turn those turbines.
Last year, 96 per cent of the global demand for new electricity was met by renewables, and in the United States, 93 per cent of new generating capacity came from solar, wind, and an ever-increasing variety of batteries to store that power.
Now this is despite the best efforts of its president. In March for the first time, fossil fuels generated less than half of the electricity in the US. In California at one point on May the 25th, renewables were producing a record 158 per cent of the state’s power demand. They were of course exporting the rest.
Over the course of the entire day, they produced 82 per cent of the power in California, which this spring surpassed Japan to become the world’s fourth largest economy. So America is the first largest economy, then comes China, then came Japan, and California alone is now taking that place.
Solar panels are like computer chips, prime example of the learning curve. The more you produce, the better you got at it, making them constantly better and cheaper. Earlier this decade, power distilled from the sun and wind became cheaper to produce than the power that comes from fossil fuels. China was the first to realise this, hence its rapid conversions to renewables, and the fact that it’s producing more than 80 per cent of the world’s solar panels and exporting them worldwide cheaply and in great quantities.
Earlier this year, if you remember in my Roundup, I covered the situation in Pakistan, where the country has experienced an extraordinary solar boom. Nearly 30 gigawatts of panels have flooded into the country since 2020, and that we now know is the equivalent of 30 coal-fired plants. Most of the panels were bought by individuals and companies and erected at homes, businesses and even factories, which are now no longer connected to the Pakistani grid, and they’re avoiding the nation’s exceptionally high electricity prices.
Now those cheap Chinese solar panels have created a bottom-up energy revolution in Pakistan, which some experts are predicting could become the blueprint for energy transitions worldwide. And here’s a final positive note to illustrate that point. Today in Pakistan, it’s quite normal for multiples of Chinese solar panels to be exchanged as dowries for new brides. And that extraordinary link between past and future closes my roundup for the week.
Jingle:
Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.
Tony: (at 13:00)
Our first guest is Alana Mountain. Alana works at Friends of the Earth in Melbourne as their forest campaigner. Welcome to The Sustainable Hour and thanks for coming on.
Alana Mountain:
No worries.
Tony:
What’s up front for you in your work with FOE at the moment?
Alana:
Right now we’re working on a campaign to protect the Vic Alps. So for the last three years we’ve been raising awareness for what’s happening in the Australian Alps regarding the decline of snow gums and Vic ash and really that this ecosystem is in a state of transition from snow gum woodlands and forest dominated landscapes to what may potentially become just grasslands because the snow gums are dying and experiencing what can be likened to the mass bleaching event of the Great Barrier Reef. We’re witnessing snow gums on mass dying and becoming bleached skeletons in the landscape.
And this is, yes, significant for hydrological reasons and just the overall state of this ecosystem. So that’s what we’ve been focused on, and in the last couple of months, we’ve decided to actually take this national. So we’re going to start collaborating with groups interstate.
And we hosted a Snow Gum Summit earlier this year, and that was really successful in Dinner Plain, [near Mount Hotham]. There was a lot of different people who came together, such as ecologists, First Nations voices, artists, policy makers, people who work at DECA, different researchers to all discuss the state of decline of the snowgums. And yeah, we want to do it again. So we’re actually gearing up for a second Snowgum Summit and we’re looking to do that in the Snowy Mountains and take this campaign to Canberra.
Tony: (at 14:56)
What role do they fulfil, these snow gums?
Alana:
Well, as you can imagine with any forest, the trees are critical for the health of the soil. They have a significant effect on the hydrology in the landscape. The area of Hotham and Dinner Plain and the Vic Alps is the watershed of northeast, north central regional Victoria, feeding many rivers. It’s the stronghold of the landscape. They support the soil structure. They’re home to endangered threatened species. Yeah, I could go on, Tony, like I can’t really summarise it all, but trees are vital components of an ecosystem. They produce clean air and they produce climate and weather, and if they disappear the climate and weather is going to alter drastically including impacting snowfall.
Mik:
Do we know why the trees are dying?
Alana: (at 16:05)
Yeah, there’s a few reasons. One of them is climate change. So because of the increase in weather, warmer weather and shorter, colder seasons at this point, there’s a beetle. Well, there’s a few different beetles. One of them is the Longhorn beetle and another is a weevil and they bore into the snow gums. And because their mating season’s been extended due to them not dying off as fast in the coming colder season, they’ve got more opportunity to breed and they’re becoming quite prolific and basically they’re out of balance. There’s not enough predators to eat them off. They’re just breeding prolifically, so they require more food and that’s the trees. So that’s one reason, it’s this beetle.
Another reason is fires. There’s been so many really big wildfires up in these areas and they’re not able to regenerate as quickly as the next fire comes through the landscape.
So we’re just seeing consequential fires hitting these regions over and over again. And our fire emergency services and the state’s response isn’t excluding fire from these areas because they don’t have resources, or they don’t really have the plan to do that. They really protect, you know, assets and infrastructure. They’re not really getting in there and stopping the spread of fire. So that’s another reason.
Mik:
So the Summit you talked about, when is it happening? And if people are interested in joining you in this, you know, helping, what can they do?
Alana: (at 17:45)
Well, you can become a Forest Collective member and support the campaign at Friends of the Earth. So part of my role is facilitating a collective, and I work with a bunch of different people on this campaign and there’s lots of different volunteer roles that people can take up.
The next Snow Gum Summit isn’t locked in, however, we are planning to go to Canberra in the springtime and we would really love people to join us. We want to go and meet with, you know, politicians who can champion this campaign and start speaking up for the Australian Alps and speaking to this as a really, you know, iconic landscape that is in jeopardy, like the Great Barrier Reef. We are going to lose a really beautiful gem of the Australian landscape if we don’t act now.
So we really want people to get engaged, join our newsletter, stay up to date with what we’re doing and join us in Canberra in the next Snow Gum Summit.
Tony:
Are you seeing any solutions to it? Are there any being narrowed down? Are there any ways of getting rid of the beetles?
Alana:
Yeah. So at the summit, the first day was focused on what are the issues and the second day was solutions-focused. And we had Matthew Brookhouse from ANU talking about his research on the beetle and the dieback that it’s causing. And basically they’ve found that you can confuse the beetles by using their pheromone. That stops them from mating because they’re confused and they don’t find each other, the male and the female beetle.
So that’s one quite low impact intervention to just use nature pheromones to confuse the beetle.
Another thing that we could be doing is improving the way that we’re managing fire in the landscape. And instead of putting millions of dollars every year towards back burning and fewer reduction burns, which actually don’t work. We could be investing in technology that is like early prevention technology so that we can locate where these fires are starting and then, you know, have more robust responses to the fire. You know, getting in there and like we saw with the pine forest in the Needle Pine in the Blue Mountains, they protected that ancient stand of those trees there. Like, we really can get into these these locations and stop the fire from spreading and protect those landscapes before it just spreads really quickly.
And also working with Aboriginal people and First Nations, like we don’t really see a lot of Aboriginal First Nation led land management practices taking place. And there’s so much connection to country up there. And it really is a time for decision makers and land management to to take a shift and start incorporating Aboriginal knowledge into how we can protect and care for country.
Tony:
Any take-home messages that you’d like to for our listeners and for us to take on board?
Alana:
I feel like this is a time to be going and seeing places like this and connecting to these landscapes. We’re going to inevitably see drastic changes and ecosystem transitions over time. And unless we get out there and we start observing and talking about how we connect to the landscape, not just from a scientific lens, should we be communicating about what’s happening up there?
We need to talk about it from human connection space so that we can bring more people into the awareness of why we need to protect these places and yeah, I just really encourage people to go and see the backyard of this state of Victoria, which is the Vic Alps. It’s really special and there’s something about being in the mountains. It’s quite profound and yeah, we have a lot to lose if we don’t connect in and pay attention. So I really encourage people to to go and visit and get involved with the campaign because the mountains are amazing. We need to protect them.
Jingle (music)
Sheldon Whitehouse, American Senator: (at 22:21)
We have badly let down our people. And as a result of that failure, we’ve now entered the era of consequences, when the stuff that was so predicted is now starting to actually happen in people’s lives.
ABC News Newsreader:
Fires are also raging in Turkey and Spain and Germany as Europe continues to battle through this early summer heat wave that we’re seeing here. Temperatures have soared into the 40 degrees in many parts of southern Europe and this early heat wave has already been linked to nine deaths.
Sheldon:
On climate we have to face facts. The facts are grim and the stakes are high.
ABC News Newsreader:
A massive search and rescue operation is underway in the US state of Texas after flash flooding. More than 20 young girls are missing from a summer camp and at least 24 people have died. Local authorities have called the flooding an unprecedented disaster, which came with almost no warning. More than 230 people have…
Sheldon:
Climate change is physics. Once that fossil fuel pollution unleashes natural forces that will destroy our climate safety, they are not always possible to call off. It’s too late.
. . .
SONG:
‘Time to Wake Up’
[Verse 1]
They sold the truth for a shipload of coal
Turned their lies into a platform for oil
Constructed pipelines where dark money could flow
Pulled all the strings so they could rewrite the rules
They bought the judges, and the media too
So when the rivers rose, and storms grew dangerous
We were asleep, we didn’t know what was going on
But we saw the sky turn red, and suddenly, all the fish were dead!
[Chorus]
Time to wake up — let the reckoning begin
Time to wake up — there’s a storm breaking in our skies
Time to wake up — this is a battle we need to win
The battle between truth and science — and power and lies
[Verse 2]
They dressed up greed in a righteous disguise
They built their fortunes on a thousand lies
Bought the silence of elected leaders
Wrote the rules that protected their business
But hey! Science speaks, and our children know
We can’t buy back that world we let go
There’s no hiding, no place to run
The ice is melting, the damage is done
[Chorus]
Time to wake up — let the reckoning begin
Time to wake up — there’s a storm breaking in our skies
Time to wake up — this is a battle we need to win
The battle between truth and science — and power and lies
[Bridge]
Time to wake… time to wake…
Time to rise, we’re under attack
Time to wake… time to wake…
We see the danger, we’re fighting back
[Final Chorus]
Time to wake up — let the reckoning begin
Time to wake up — there’s a storm breaking in our skies
Time to wake up — this is a battle we need to win
The battle between truth and science — and power and lies
. . .
Voices and statements in the song:
Sheldon Whitehouse, American Senator:
This conflict is a battle between truth and science and power and lies.
On climate we have to face facts. The facts are grim and the stakes are high.
An economic storm is coming, driven by climate upheaval.
We are sailing toward economic catastrophe.
We’ve now entered the year of consequences that was so predicted is now starting to actually .
We’re heading into that storm unprepared while being lied to at industrial scale.
. . .
Mik: (at 27:27.5)
‘An industrial level of lies’ is what Senator Whitehouse has talked about for more than a decade. He’s been holding 300 speeches like the one he just held last week. And we have been following it. I think our listeners would notice that we have been hearing him saying the statement about ‘truth and science and power and lies’ for almost a decade. That’s not true. Maybe half a decade. Whenever we play this statement, we usually put it together with Scott Morrison talking about, ‘This is coal, don’t be afraid…’
Jingle
Scott Morrison:
This is coal. Don’t be afraid, don’t be scared.
Senator Whitehouse:
This is a battle between truth and science – and power and lies.
Mik: (at 28:23)
So thanks to Sheldon Whitehouse. And we’re now in touch with Sheldon because when I had produced the song as a tribute to him, because of his 300th speech, which I thought was excellent. Then I sent it to them and asked, ‘Are you okay with that we publish this?’ And they were excited and said ‘wow’, and his staff and everyone was like, arms up – and they want to promote it as much as they can.
So after that, I have started working now on a video, a music video so that we can spread it in social media on its own. That is, of course, with the purpose of letting people know it’s time to wake up and understand how you have been deceived by the fossil fuel industry all along.
And that’s really what we are up against, isn’t it, Colin? We heard you talk about there is so much happening with the renewables. are now up to half of the world’s energy is provided by renewables. And yet we have people like Barnaby Joyce claiming that the reason our power prices are going up is because of renewables:
Barnaby Joice, speaking at a hearing in New South Wales:
Even intermittent power – we will call it [renewables] ‘intermittent power’ from now on – you get to level of around 30 per cent, and then physics wins the argument, because it just doesn’t work. [Note: This is an outright lie. Countries now run on 100 per cent renewables in their electricity grid, read about it here].
Since that time, what have we seen happen to our power bills? Have they gone down or up? They have gone up. In fact, they have been going through the roof. In fact, now they laud themselves, they say: ‘We have gone up to 42 per cent intermittent power’, but our bills, since the period of time when this started, they have more than doubled. [The truth is quite the opposite. Renewables are making our energy bills lower. Read about the reason energy prices have gone up here]
Mik: (at 29:54)
Which is an outright lie, it’s just wrong!
Colin:
It’s not just Barnaby either, it’s the President of the U.S.. He was doing his utmost to try and drive the Americans back to the 1950s and leave the future to China. It’s a ridiculous situation. And you also heard how these people that’s lump Donald Trump and Barnaby Joyce and the fossil fuel industry together.
You heard earlier that the academics at Harvard University have proved now that they are using the tactics that Big Tobacco used to stay in business when it was obvious to the entire world that they were killing people and they’re still there killing people. So those tactics work.
And that’s what we’re all up against now. It’s not just, hey, look, we’ve all got to mobilise and try and save the greenhouse effect affecting the planet. We’re now up against an opposition from our own species, if you like. Our own people are saying, no, no, no, no, don’t believe that. And it’s just a tissue of lies that everybody’s following now.
Tony:
Yeah. It’s about prolonging their demise. They’re absolute experts at it. It’s just every day, they know they’re on the way out, but every day is worth billions of dollars probably. And it’s just all about keeping, just pushing that day down the road. There’s no concern at all.
Colin:
Against that, Tony, we’ve got the figure last week that one gigawatt of power of solar panels is being erected worldwide every 15 hours. What we are, the planet is working for, it’s healing. It’s the… unfortunately the opposition, they’ve got so much money, basically their pockets were lined by everybody driving cars and using electricity for the last 60 years. They’ve got all of that profit and money that they are now mobilising against the efforts to try and save the planet.
Mik: (at 32:25)
And this is the real absurdity, Colin. This is really absurd. And Sheldon Whitehouse explains that in his 300th speech. In America, it’s like this: The fossil fuel industry is getting $700 billion every year in subsidies from the government. So it’s not just that they’re selling their products. They’re actually subsidised. Also here in Australia, I think the figure here is like $14 billion that we taxpayers are handing over to these people in the fossil fuel industry. Which is absurd. But I think let’s just hear how Sheldon Whitehouse explains this in his speech:
Sheldon Whitehouse: (at 33:09)
An economic storm is coming, driven by climate upheaval. We’re heading into that storm unprepared, while being lied to at industrial scale. The success of the fossil fuel climate denial operation had blockading solutions to the fossil fuel emissions crisis. Climate denial fraud success may have cost us our children’s futures.
When danger looms, it’s irresponsible to wait until everybody sees the danger to give warning. If it was your house on fire, would you wait around for your family to wake up and ask for your help? Of course not.
7News newsreader on 16 January 2025:
The dangers are not over for Sydney with warnings of more wild weather in the coming hours as clean-up crews continue to work flat out. The destruction’s already widespread. Houses damaged, trees down and power blackouts that knocked out a quarter of a million homes. Our team has extensive coverage right across Sydney.
Sheldon:
Look now at the climate mess we are in. We are sailing toward economic catastrophe, kicked off by collapsing insurance markets, followed by physical catastrophe as Earth’s natural systems collapse.
Kitty van der Heijden, deputy executive director of UNICEF:
The urgency of what we’re facing right now cannot be overstated. We are seeing the implications in flooding, in droughts, in the marine ecosystem wherever you look, heat waves, every imaginable system is reaching a tipping point.
Sheldon:
The fossil fuel polluters who caused this mess aren’t penalised. They float instead on an economic subsidy in the US of $700 billion per year. That subsidy comes from getting to pollute for free, a violation of basic economic market principles.
That $700 billion annual subsidy roughly reflects the annual damage fossil fuels cause. A $700 billion negative externality, as economists would say, that should be baked into the price of the product. But Republicans in Congress desperately protect that $700 billion subsidy for their fossil fuel donors. Think of how that subsidy motivates the fossil fuel industry in politics. To protect a $700 billion annual subsidy, would you spend, $7 billion a year in politics defending the pollute for free subsidy? $7 billion a year to defend $700 billion a year? At that rate, fossil fuels’ political operation is likely the most profitable facet of the entire industry. So they have an immense well-funded, covert, purposeful operation. And we wait until the posters tell us the public is alert to it before we do battle? Ridiculous. At the heart of this conflict is a battle between truth and science and power and lies.
. . .
Tony: (at 36:36)
Our next guest is Rose. Rose is a cancer patient activist, an activist towards the fair and just treatment of cancer patients. So, Rose, thanks very much for coming on.
Unty Rose:
Thank you for inviting me.
Tony:
Our pleasure. Tell us about… I understand you’ve been an activist on a number of issues around justice. Can you tell us about your latest form of activism?
Rose:
Yeah, well that has come about basically because there are lots of parallels between what you’ve been talking about with climate and economy and it’s to do with the powerful forces which dominate medicine in this case. We’re talking about economic forces here. So I have stage 4 bowel cancer. This is the second cancer that I have had. I had stage 4 lymphoma which is an aggressive blood cancer which I got diagnosed in 2019 with and I had, by the time I finally got diagnosed because I was misdiagnosed, I was dying basically by the time I was riddled with cancer and I was admitted to Geelong Hospital coming in and out of consciousness, got given my diagnosis and straight away started with a very strong chemotherapy regime called HyperCVAD. The hyper is the word there, it’s a very intense regime but lymphoma does respond well to chemotherapy. And I did get cured of lymphoma by that very strong chemotherapy which is very toxic. But also the chemotherapy did do a lot of damage to my body as well. And then fast forward to now in recent years, while recovering from that and trying to build up my strength again and rehabilitate, I ended up getting COVID and long COVID and out of the tail end of that came this bowel cancer. This is where it comes to the power part of it.
The medical systems around… – I know about Australia, but I also know, I guess what I’ve learned about other parts of the world too – is very controlled. So we have a system called the standard of care. It’s dominated by the pharmaceutical industry, which we like to call Big Pharma. And that says to me, basically, we’ve cut out all the tumors that we can see in my body. it’s hard, because of the stage of bowel cancer that I’m at, the evidence basically from the scientific knowledge says that there’s a very high chance that there will be more tumors starting up that we can’t see and the standard of care is to receive chemotherapy. have such a bad… But the chemotherapy will only offer me 10 per cent chance of working. But it will make me sick. So I have chosen not to have chemotherapy because I believe that my best chances of survival are not having chemo. I think the chemo will do more harm than good and I’ve had some of my doctors agree with that decision, although it is my decision anyway. And so what I’ve done because of my personality is to research and I did this when I had the lymphoma too as soon as I got some strength I went online and I love learning and teaching as part of who I am.
And when I was young, I did practice as a nurse. I got out of nursing in my late 30s. So I have some kind of medical background there. And so I’ve gone out online using my research skills to find out what other cancer patients are doing, what’s at the cutting edge. Because I’m also a bit of a revolutionary. I’m not, I’m like, well, what’s out there that’s not being mentioned by the… what we call the medical is my doctor, my GP, I have a very good GP, she says, I am part of the medical establishment. What that means is that there’s a power structure, a hierarchical power structure and lots of committees and rules that constrain her practice as a health professional.
So I’ve gone looking for what’s out there that might help me rather than just thinking… In terms of the mainstream system, it would be called palliative care. means that cancer doctors aren’t going to do any more treatment and I will just be looked after for my comfort until the end comes. Although I do accept my mortality, I’ve been looking for experimental, alternative and complementary treatments. And I’ve been talking for a lot, so I might just stop there because I’ve found some interesting things and I’ve started up a new project.
I’ll just say this, okay, so to help me consolidate all this information I started writing an essay, because I also love writing, and I’ve started a new project, from there it’s now evolved into a wiki, I’ve started a new project called the Synergy Cancer Protocol, and it’s basically integrating all of this new information I’m finding out.
Colin:
First of all, I’m delighted to hear your story and I’m very, very happy that you are in the situation that you are unable to speak to us. At the beginning, you said that you were a cancer activist and you drew a parallel between Big Pharma and what we were discussing before, which was Big Oil and the fuel companies, but you didn’t elaborate on it.
Could you let us know just what it is that Big Pharma is doing to cancer patients that annoys you enough to make you a protester?
Rose:
I think it is dominating the medical system. So it’s taking away the power of patients and health practitioners to practice freely. it’s pushing, the drug pushes. So they’re interested in profit. it’s very, to say this to, it’s very hard to say this to doctors because you don’t want to get written off as a Loony.
Is it basically that you think that Big Pharma is dominating cancer treatment here in Australia and not allowing room for other treatments? Is that the…
Yeah, I think they have too much power over the doctors. they are made, Big Pharma is motivated by profit. So profit comes first. We’ve seen that in lots of, it’s not so easy to see so much in cancer. Cancer is a very emotional written term. So as soon as you start saying it and Tony, how Tony and I met through, there was some kind of emotional thing attached to that, we met, when as soon as you say that word cancer, it triggers a lot of stuff. It’s a very heavy word, But so that, in some ways, that kind of clouds because it’s so, well, it’s like why, why after all of these years of a pharmaceutical industry, a medical industry being there, why is cancer still so incurable?
I mean, that’s a good question to ask. We’ve got all of this science, all these millions of dollars, all of these hospitals, all of these research labs, trillions and trillions of dollars spent on cancer treatment and research. And why is it so unbeatable? And I don’t think it’s necessarily just because the disease itself is unbeatable. I think there are other forces at play and that is that you can make money out of it. So if you go into a… If your primary motivation is to make money, then it kind of makes sense to keep people sick or to treat symptoms rather than treating the actual disease.
So a lot of stuff has been shut down, in my journey of like kind of navigating all of this, going back to the first cancer of the lymphoma when I first started finding out about it, how Big Pharma, how… Well, I’m going to call it the pharmaceutical medical industrial complex, to tip my hat to somebody else, because I found out that what happened in the Victorian times and the Edwardian times, there was a broad range of medical practice. I can use cannabis as an example. So I’m taking cannabis, medicinal cannabis. I make my own cannabis medicine which is helping me. And you’ll be very aware, I’m sure, that cannabis has been legalised in Australia. It took a long time to get that to happen.
But back in the day, cannabis was just one of many other herbal medicines. Queen Victoria was taking cannabis prescribed by her doctor for her menstrual pain. And then comes along, what comes along is these chemical companies, is part of the Industrial Revolution and these, you know, robber barons, these wealth of people who want to make lots of money. So they started locking down things. They started up funding things like the American Medical Association, the British Medical Association, and saying, who could practice medicine? What is medicine? And then everyone else was a quack.
The same thing is happening with climate. There’s a dominant narrative and then the other ones that are going, no, this is not the true story. They’re all just painted as loonies, know, radical left, hippies, whatever, anything. They’ll say anything to discredit that because these powerful forces that control media and stories, they set up stories. So one story is that real doctors are doctors that are approved by the basically Big Pharma. So they started sending funding, these big companies, these chemical companies, started funding medical schools and universities and then setting up these boards which said, okay, so the herbal doctors, the chiropractors, everybody else who were, it was more loose at that time, more organic, let’s say, and more community kind of based medicine and a broader, also more holistic medicine. That was all discredited and the mainstream dominant narrative was set up of these licensed people that follow science and are science in the way that it’s taught.
So doctors now who go to university and my doctor, my GP, who’s a brilliant GP, they don’t know anything about nutrition and will come, if we get around to it, nutrition is incredibly important. My oncologist who I go, they’re helping me, they’re caring people, they want to help, but all they’re concerned about is killing cancer cells. They’re not concerned about whether I’m eating properly, they don’t ask. It’s not their job. But anybody else, it’s blatantly obvious that if you’re not eating properly and getting enough rest, but they all know that as human beings, but as doctors practicing oncology in Western medicine, particularly in Australia, their only concern is to kill cancer cells.
When they see me, they’re not writing me off as a human being, but they’re not asking me about my diet or my sleep or they’re looking at a computer, printed out medical data and thinking about how they can kill cancer cells if they can.
Mik:
It strikes me when you say that they’re not interested in your diet, you know, the people who want to help you. And not only are they not interested in your diet, but they’re not looking at how our diet as a whole in the Western world has changed and is now full of these plastics and PFAS and other substances that slowly affect our body. We heard just recently here in The Sustainable Hour that our body now contains so much small microplastic pieces that if we were to be sold as meat in the supermarket, we would not be allowed to be sold as meat, because we are too poisonous. Our meat is already too poisonous. How ridiculous is that? And why is that not a focus point?
Colin:
Would we be considered animal food?
Mik:
No!
Colin:
Anyway, if we were considered as meat, we’d probably be wrapped in plastic as well.
Rose:
It’s very hard to condense it all, the answers, because it’s very complicated and this is interwoven web of everything. Exactly what you just said to me. Exactly. So I eat organic. But that’s why I’ve started this project with this wiki and this online community to leverage so that to make it easy to access, well, shall I say valuable, useful and good information about all of these things because you need, it’s called Synergy because you need to take all these different approaches to look after your health. Check out the Synergy Cancer Protocol project which is basically what I’m working on to help with all of these things, to help with education, to give you, it’s cutting edge community driven evidence based. So I’m interested in that scientific evidence that supports complementary medicine.
Check that out and that will be a good way of learning. the community driven part is about connecting with clinicians and researchers that are on your side because they’re not all happy to be dominated by the forces we’ve been talking about. And so find community, there’s online communities. Yeah.
It’s yet another example of the power imbalance between the big everything and the influence they have on us and the control they have on over us. So just so connected with climate justice and all of the injustices we see around us.
Find people, if you’re not already a gardener and you can’t garden, find people in your local community who are gardening and try and get local home-grown organic food as much as you can.
Yeah. It’s worth bearing in mind too, Charlie, that the plastics industry is dominated by the fossil fuel industry. Yeah.
Mik: (at 52:25)
That’s all we could fit in a very sort of high-flying Sustainable Hour where we talk about the big topics of what’s wrong in the world, isn’t it? Big Pharma, Big Oil. But there is a positive ending on this, I think, because, Rose, you certainly have shown us, and I think also my own personal experience with the medical system and so on, is that there is a way out. You need to really do the research and figure out whether Barnaby Joyce is right when he says that the reason that the energy prices are going up is because of what he calls ‘intermittent energy’. He doesn’t even want to use the word ‘renewables’ because solar panels end up on landfills anyway at some point. So it’s ‘intermittent energy’, not ‘renewables’. Anyway, I think the conclusion is that we need to do our own research.
Tony:
And connect with people like Rose.
Rose:
Yeah, do your own research and come together with like-minded people and build up momentum to go in a healthy direction for the planet and for individuals and the communities that live on the planet. Yeah.
Tony:
I felt it really interesting, Rose, that you said that there are researchers that are allies, practitioners that are allies. So, yeah, let’s hope that they increase in numbers because that takes incredible courage to push back against the system in their case.
Mik: (at 53:57)
If you were to condense your whole experience into one sentence of ‘be something’ – self-researched? – what would your ‘Be…’ be?
Rose:
I would say: Don’t be passive, be proactive, and listen to your heart and engage your mind.
Mik:
Be proactive.
. . .
Sheldon Whitehouse: (at 54:31)
On climate, we have to face facts. The facts are grim and the stakes are high. The corporate consulting firm Deloitte has estimated a $220 trillion difference in global GDP by 2017. Depending on whether we succeed on climate, thereby generating $40 trillion of global economic growth or continue failing, and take a global $180 trillion economic hit. The spread is $220 trillion and Deloitte’s not the lone voice. The Potsdam Institute is warned of a $38 trillion annual hit to global GDP by mid-century. Predictions of multi-trillion dollar hits abound. And the International Financial Stability Board just warned the global banking sector to buckle up.
The way out from this danger is clear and simple. It can’t continue to be free to pollute. There must be a global price or penalty on carbon emissions. Nothing else works. Not after the time we’ve wasted. We have squandered every other option. Polluter pays is not just the right thing to do morally and economically and environmentally. It’s our last lifeboat.
And it’s a lifeboat the fossil fuel industry is trying to sink. Even after pretending for years that that was the solution they wanted. Big surprise. They lied. Hydrocarbons and lies are their twin products. Our best prospect on carbon pollution right now is the European Union’s carbon border adjustment mechanism called the CBAM.
It’s a tariff on the emissions associated with carbon-intensive goods like steel and aluminum that are imported into the EU. Our scenario for success, if we still have one, is that the EU sticks to its guns and doesn’t chicken out. The UK honors its commitment to join the C-BAM. The two economies, by the way, just coordinated carbon prices, a key step. And Australia, and Canada and Mexico, and other economies follow suit.
There’s actually even a sliver of Senate Republican interest in a U.S. carbon border tariff. A price on carbon pollution in international trade at last moves things. It begins to offset fossil fuels global multi-trillion dollar free to pollute subsidy. It aligns market incentives properly and it creates a revenue proposition. A revenue proposition for pollution reduction and carbon capture technologies, boosting an innovation pathway to climate safety that presently does not exist.
Dark money corruption got us into this pickle. And the way out there is also clear and simple. Pass the damn Disclose Act. Require that donors over 10 grand into a political race show the public who they are. No more front groups and shell corporations. The dark money battle is a race against time to stop the dark money influence operation before it gets its claws so deep into all three branches of government that the whole system is too corrupted to care how badly voters want transparency.
When that disclosure bill passes into law, the public will feel immediate relief. People will notice the political class beginning to turn its attention back to voters rather than to the billionaire donors and the corporate polluter elite running the foul, dark money operation.
In political ads, the tsunami of slime will diminish as real entities would have to own political messages. Many players behind the tsunami of slime will actually back off because once voters understand who’s behind the message, sometimes they get the joke and you can’t go forward any longer.
And even if they don’t back off, at least someone can be accountable for the slime and lies that permeate our politics. Less special interest money, less slime and lies, less secrecy, voters heard again. You might call it morning in America. Fix dark money and you break the grip of fossil fuel.
It is best to think of it all as a single beast. It’s a takeover by a shadow government working for right-wing extremists and fossil fuel polluters. If we don’t see it for what it is and call it out for what it is, how can we warn people of what’s happening? And if we don’t warn people of what’s happening, how can we possibly believe we have done our duty in this moment of peril?
Climate change makes this a battle with a ratchet. There’s some things you just can’t come back from. The ratchet has clicked and there’s no return. So it is urgent. It is time for us all to wake up and fight. Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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Events we have talked about in The Sustainable Hour
Events in Victoria
The following is a collation of Victorian climate change events, activities, seminars, exhibitions, meetings and protests. Most are free, many ask for RSVP (which lets the organising group know how many to expect), some ask for donations to cover expenses, and a few require registration and fees. This calendar is provided as a free service by volunteers of the Victorian Climate Action Network. Information is as accurate as possible, but changes may occur.
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