New relations: Language, love and the roots of our climate crisis

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The Sustainable Hour no. 566 | Transcript | Podcast notes

This week’s Sustainable Hour dives deep into the power of words, the meaning of relationships, and the root causes of the ecological crisis.

We begin with sharp warnings from the Australian Conservation Foundation’s Annika Reynolds about the government’s approval of Woodside’s North West Shelf Extension – a climate bomb stretching to 2070.

Colin Mockett’s global outlook follows, highlighting contradictions in Australia’s climate risk assessment and emissions targets, and placing them in the wider global context.

. . .

“Get to the root cause.”
~ Ramandeep Sibia, Punjabis for Climate

Our guest today is Ramandeep Sibia, co-founder of Punjabis for Climate and a certified host of the Warm Data Lab.

Ramandeep shares insights into how language shapes the climate movement – and how abstractions often confuse, create anxiety, and block action. She argues that climate change is not the cause but the consequence of extractive practices, and that the movement must focus on restoring relationships with land, water, air, nature and community.

Drawing on Punjabi traditions and wisdom, she reminds us that “love is relationships” and calls for new ways of talking, listening and acting together.

SONGS
The episode premieres a new original song inspired by our interview with Ramandeep:

New Relations | Lyrics

– A funky song about weaving fresh connections with Earth and each other, restoring love and life through new relations. Inspired by Ramandeep Sibia from Punjabis for Climate.

We also feature two of our older songs, one of which is being voted in as a listener favourite:

‘Hush Now Little One’ (Climate Lullaby) – a song of comfort and resilience in times of despair
‘Starting From Today’ – an inspiring ballad about intergenerational action, determination, and rising together for collective change

→ More songs from The Sustainable Hour: www.climatesafety.info/music

. . .

Towards the end of the Hour, we hear from Simon Clark on global public support for stronger climate action, and economist Richard Denniss from the Australia Institute, who was speaking at the Senate Environment Committee, exposing how climate risk is ignored in economic modelling – with devastating implications for insurance, housing and the financial system.

The program closes with a reflection on optimism: even when politics fails, communities and businesses can lead.

Listen in for a journey through language, music and vision – and an invitation to remake our relationships with each other and with Earth. Be the difference!

“We must understand and restore those relationships with community, with land, with water, with air, with nature. That’s how we see it. That’s our job: to restore the relationships. And that’s the basis of the work that we’re doing.”
~ Ramandeep Sibia, Punjabis for Climate

→ Subscribe to The Sustainable Hour podcast via Apple Podcasts or Spotify

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CONTENT OVERVIEW

Annika Reynolds challenges Woodside’s climate bomb in the Senate
Colin Mockett on Australia’s contradictory climate week and Europe’s disunity
Ramandeep Sibia on why abstractions confuse and relationships matter
Insights into Punjabi ecological wisdom and the Warm Data Lab approach
Simon Clark: 80 per cent of people worldwide want stronger climate action
Richard Denniss: climate risk makes houses uninsurable – and un-mortgageable
Original songs: Hush Now Little One, New Relations, Starting From Today

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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“Politically, the Federal Government may have judged this right in terms of its understanding of what the Australian public understands and wants to do on climate change. It’s modest in the worst possible way. It’s inadequate to the scale of the threat and does little to shift the conversation to a point where Australians might better understand what’s coming their way and how and why we must act now.”
~ David Meiklejohn, Climate News 25/21

Unlocking the green transition in Australia

Learning from Denmark: To drive climate action and solutions, we need a unifying, positive language.

“A call to rethink and reframe sustainability and climate action efforts in Australia. It is about taking stock, learning from the past, and setting a new course forward – a proactive and positive move towards change.”

Grim climate outlook

The Australian Government has capitulated to the pressure of the fossil fuel lobby, setting an astoundingly weak emissions target of 62–70% by 2035.

This target not only falls well short of the minimum 75% cut scientists say is required to avoid climate catastrophe, it injects a whopping 8% of uncertainty into the mix. The “sliding” target has been set by an unambitious and timid Prime Minister, who was elected on a climate platform but continues to betray the community that entrusted him to secure our future. 70% must be considered the floor here – and industry needs to move forward with this number in its sights.

The announcement comes in the same week that Australians were confronted by the dire predictions of the National Climate Risk Assessment – possibly the most important piece of climate research of our lifetime. Modelling outcomes across three potential scenarios – 1.5, 2 and 3 degrees of warming – the extensive report outlines a devastating future if we don’t take immediate action. The key takeaways? I think The Guardian summed it up best: “Every aspect of life in Australia is being disrupted and changed. Nothing is spared…”

The numbers are shocking. From 1.5 million Australians facing severe flooding by 2050 to a 444% increase in heat-related deaths in Sydney. Not to mention the massive destruction to our natural world, much of which would be forced to adapt or die out. Billions will need to be spent in managing fires and flooding, crushing our economy and business as we know it. This forecast comes in a year when South Australia is already enduring possibly the worst drought in its history, and NSW one of its wettest winters on record.

So what happens now? Minister for Climate Change and Energy Chris Bowen called the Climate Risk Assessment “a wake-up call for Australia”. But it clearly wasn’t for our leaders. The truth is, our eyes are wide open – and have been for some time. We now have a clear vision of what climate inaction means for Australians.

If you don’t already have a fire in your belly, let this be the moment it’s sparked. No-one is getting out of this unscathed. And we need to keep reminding those in power of that every single day.
~ WorkforClimate Weekly newsletter

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→ The Guardian – 20 September 2025:
‘Something is working’: UN climate chief optimistic about green transition
“Simon Stiell believes economic benefits will compel countries to speed up climate action.”

→ ABC News – 20 September 2025:
Climate risks report paints grim picture, but expert on societal collapse explains giving up is not the answer
“Despite some dire warnings, there is an important message: the impacts can be greatly reduced if we can limit the warming of the planet. But will we? To date, the government has heavily relied on two policies to bring emissions down. Both have flaws.”

→ The Conversation – 18 September 2025:
Cut emissions 70% by 2035? There’s only one policy that can get us there
“Far and away the best option to rapidly cut emissions is to once again price carbon.”

→ Medium, The New Climate – 17 September 2025:
Solastalgia: The Emotion Driving Community Climate Resilience
“Feeling ‘homesick’ while still being at home because of a changing environment.” “Climate change is making us re-evaluate many aspects of our lives. It has forced us to reinvent ways of looking at the world, including the language we use.”

→ The Guardian – 17 September 2025:
Human-made global warming ‘caused two in three heat deaths in Europe this summer’
“Epidemiologists and climate scientists attributed 16,500 out of 24,400 heat deaths from June to August to the extra hot weather brought on by greenhouse gases.”

→ ABC News – 11 September 2025:
Quarter of heatwaves this century ‘virtually impossible’ without climate change, study finds
“The analysis indicated that 180 major carbon emitters, including Chevron and BP, are collectively responsible for around 50 per cent of the increase in intensity of heatwaves in the 21st century.”

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Transcript of The Sustainable Hour no. 566

António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General:
“The sun is rising on a clean energy age.”

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

Tony Gleeson:
Good morning, The Sustainable Hour podcast listeners. 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 on stolen land, land that was never ceded, always was and always will be First Nations land. In nurturing their land and their communities as they have for millennia before their land was stolen. The Wadawurrung people have accumulated a great amount of ancient wisdom and it’s this ancient wisdom that we’re going to need as we work our way through the climate crisis.

Annika Reynolds, ACFs National Climate Policy Adviser, speaking in the Senate:
In the middle of a climate crisis, the Albanese Government has just approved the North West Shelf Extension to 2070, a climate bomb that will be directly and can be attributed to increasing heat waves and sea level rise. A climate bomb that Australians will pay for many times over as our homes are lost to floods and inundation and our communities impacted by extreme heat. There is a direct causal relationship that is increasingly able to be scientifically tracked between fossil fuel majors like Woodside and the cascading climate impacts that all Australians will feel in the years and decades to come. Woodside has already caused 49 heat waves. How many more will it contribute to under the three degree scenario released under the climate risk assessment that expects mortality to rise by 444 per cent in Sydney by 2090?

Mik Aidt:
Annika Reynolds, the ACF’s National Climate Policy Advisor, speaking – and I would say speaking well – in the Senate last week after this Climate Risk Assessment Report had just been released about the storms and the bushfires and the flash flooding and sea level rise that is coming our way and which will of course influence our house insurance and our economy, cost of living and the risks.

And then the day after, the government released its new 10 year target about how much we’re going to cut down on our climate pollution in the next decade. So it was a big week for climate activists and for climate in general here in Australia last week. And there’s been a lot of discussions ever since about whether the glass is half full or half empty, depending on how you look at things. Are we or are we not doing something sensible now about this escalating climate crisis?

I think, really, what the government is saying indirectly with this new target is that it’s going to be up to all of us. It’s the business community and it’s the Australian people who will have to step in if we want to show that we are going to be more ambitious. The government is still pointing out a direction. Right now, for instance, we have reached 40 per cent of green electricity in the electricity grid, which is great. And we are heading for, according to the government, more than doubling that in the next five years. So we’ll reach 80 per cent of green, clean electricity in the grid by 2030. And if we want that to go faster and further, we can of course do our bit, which four million homeowners already have done, getting solar up on their own roof and on their company’s roof and so on.

And in my opinion, that’s why the glass is half full, because we know that 80 per cent of this population here in Australia are very much on board and saying, ‘Yes we can!’, we can do more. And now the ball is beginning to start rolling. It’s all happening now. So I think from an Australian perspective, the glass is half full at the moment. But what about the rest of the world? That’s where we bring in Colin Mockett OAM, who’s got The Sustainable Hour’s global overview. Which I am assuming Colin that you are going to deliver to us as you always do, right now. And so what does in your opinion the global glass look like now, Colin? Is it full or is it empty?

COLIN MOCKETT’S GLOBAL OUTLOOK (04:46)
Well, my research this week has come up very heavily looking at the Australian perspective and it’s half empty. But it’s different experts that you speak to.

But my roundup this week begins in Geneva in Switzerland where the World Meteorological Organization released its latest set of figures. They began with a series of record-breaking global temperatures which confirmed what they’d already announced that 2024 was the hottest year on record. It beat the previous hottest year, which was 2023. But what’s more important is that their current figures and their computer modelling forecast that there is now an 80 per cent chance of future years surpassing, starting from this year.

This means, in brief, that the world’s temperature is continuing to rise despite the best efforts of science and some 50 years of the UN’s collective endeavours. The WMO data shows that without any doubt global warming is driven by increasing greenhouse gas levels leads to worsening extreme weather events, accelerating sea level rise and record ocean warming. And that leads us to the Australian experience where last week we saw our nation on a climate roller coaster ride.

It began with the Prime Minister returning from the Pacific Islands Leaders Forum, which was putting together its submissions for the upcoming COP30 which is coming up in Brazil next month. Now remember they represent the most endangered nations on earth because of their vulnerability to sea level rise. But on the day that Auntie Albanese returned his environmental minister approved exactly what those leaders feared most with the announcement that Mik has already told you about.

He approved Australia’s gas being exported and burned for another 45 years. That will certainly have been noticed by our neighbouring nations. And then a day later, climate and energy minister Chris Bowen belatedly released Australia’s climate risk assessment, which turned out to be a damning report forecasting high to beyond severe risks for every one of Australia’s key systems by the year 2050. Then on Thursday, the whole team came together to announce Australia’s 2035 target for domestic emissions. And this was aimed at 62 to 70 per cent emissions reduction. And it was almost certainly influenced, if not written, by Canberra’s rich and powerful fossil fuel lobby.

Like all of Australia’s governments since Julia Gillard’s, the new policy did not put a price on carbon and it didn’t stop or do anything to reduce or even tax mining or logging. But most of all, it didn’t even acknowledge that there is an elephant in the room. And that’s the sheer amount of fossil fuels that our nation cheaply exports every day to be burned by other nations and adding vast and largely unmeasured quantities to the total global emissions. Instead, behind Australia’s 62 to 70 per cent reduction target are dodgy accounting figures and greenwashing announcements like carbon capture techniques that would allow our fossil fuel and mining industries to continue pretty much as before, while the government announces wacky million-dollar schemes that don’t address any of the central issues. The response from Australia’s climate scientist from Friday onwards was immediate and savage. It’s worse than I feared, said Bill Hare. He’s a founder of the Policy Institute Climate and Analytics. He said that a 2035 target of at least 76 per cent was necessary if Australia was to align with the global goal of holding warming close to 1.5C degrees.

It’s baffling that in the same week the government could release a terrifying document warning Australians of a grim future if global warming continues and then turns around and agrees to a target that if all others followed it would lead to a warming of two degrees, he said. Australian Maritime Conservation Society Chief Paul Gamlin went on record after the announcement saying that since the large land masses heat faster than global average because of lower sea temperatures, Australia is currently warming faster than the global average. While the lower Paris target is 1.5°C degrees, Australia has already hit that level. So now, should the world warm to 2°C degrees, the Australian landmass is likely to hit three degrees, he said, unleashing the floods, fires and disasters that climate change brings. That’s why it’s so often said that Australia has more to lose from runaway climate change and considerably more to gain from ambitious climate action, he added.

But it appears that there is no voice in Canberra advising our government of this, or if there is, it’s being effectively drowned by the roaring fossil fuel lobby.

And just to add an extra level of bad news for our nation this week, and contrasting our recent programmes about tiny homes, a paper was released by Domain Real Estate, and it’s called Sustainability in Property Report. It said that Australians are currently building the biggest homes in the world. Some of these homes have only 1.1 persons in them and they are huge. We also buy the biggest cars, thanks to government tax incentives making SUVs or light commercial vehicles the top selling cars in Australia, despite them being the biggest polluters. And further to this, with our addiction to consumerism, we have the unenviable reputation of being the biggest purchasers per capital of fast fashion in the world. In this regard, we overtook the United States and the United Kingdom to take first place. We buy between 80 and 90 items per person per year, and that’s creating a waste crisis for ourselves.

Finally off to somebody else, this is Europe and for the first time in memory, Europe will be going to the COP without an organised, pre-ordained measure. That’s because there is at the moment confusion in Europe because a couple of nations with right-wing governments are refusing to sign on to a climate agreement and those nations are led by Hungary and Italy. So they’re not unified at the moment on climate change where they have been all the time since Ursula van der Leiden began leading the European community.
So there’s confusion in Europe and there’s, what can we say, there is depression in Australia thanks to our government too.

So it’s time… I’m pleased to be able to finish this week with the news that the world’s greenest sports club, Forest Green Rovers beat Woking 2-0 away at Woking at the weekend and that leaves them clear on top of England’s fifth division, and I do hope we’ve got better news for you next week, Mik.

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

Tony: (13:31)
Our guest today is Ramandeep Sibia. Ramandeep is the founder of Punjabis for Climate. She’s also a certified host for the Warm Data Lab. Okay, Ramandeep, so there’s a couple of things to look at there. Maybe tell us your story and how Punjabis for Climate came about as well as your contact with the Warm Data Laboratory.

Ramandeep Sibia:
Thank you so much for inviting me today. I would like to thank… thanks to you Tony and to your team. So Punjabi’s For Climate was started by myself and another guy from Canada. So interestingly, there was a guy from Canada who was running a radio show in Melbourne in Punjabi language and that show was called ‘A podcast on climate change’ and I found it really interesting that somebody is doing this from Canada and we don’t have a person in Australia who could do something like this for Australian Punjabi speaking audiences.

So I spoke to him over the phone. He was very generous and we actually really sounded quite close to what we wanted to do and how I could join him and initially also if he could mentor me. Because I never had run the conversation or the climate talks or anything like that in Punjabi before but he was doing this for a number of years. So we started working together, and then we thought we have a website or we call ourselves like a name so we named it Punjabis for Climate (https://punjabisforclimate.org) to start with so this is how it came into existence a group for multicultural Punjabi people living in Australia but not just here in Australia a global group and a group for Canada and India.

So that’s how it became but at that time I was also working with another environment organisation in Melbourne and I was volunteering for and in touch with a couple more organisations.

So I was going about hosting stalls and other, you know, conversations in the libraries and stuff like that. And I started noticing that there was something off and there was something missing. There was something which was not adding up. So I could not put my finger on what exactly it is.

I know four languages, so partly when I was switching my language, all of a sudden I was noticing that there is something. There is something going on, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. And when I was listening to Nora, I was wondering, I started making connections. There is something which she talks about and she knows, so I need to go and train with her. So I went to Adelaide when she was in Adelaide earlier this year to train with her and since then a lot has been unfolding for me from my own observations from switching the language and all that.

That’s the main area of my work now, that is why the climate conversations are so confusing and what it is about them, which are creating problems for the movement itself. So perhaps we can talk more about some of those things.

Mik:
Yeah, so maybe to begin with, just so we have everyone with us here, speaking about Punjabi, that’s a large language group, both in India and Pakistan, right? So maybe first explain to us what ‘Punjabi’ actually means.

Ramandeep:
Punjab was a big geographical area in India when it was colonised. When they left India, Punjab state was divided between these two countries, Pakistan and India. India has a very small portion of the state Punjab, but Pakistan has a large portion. It is a state where five rivers flow.

So that’s why it’s named Punjab, which means five rivers. So it’s a beautiful, fertile land in the north of India. And Punjabi is a 5,000 year old language, and more than that, perhaps, from what we know so far. And there it’s the fifth, it’s among the five most spoken languages in Australia itself.

So it’s Punjabis, this group aims to unite Punjabis around the globe who are concerned around climate, the climate crisis we’re facing.

Yeah, so I would say about the ecological crisis. So we see it differently. we see it to be, you know, I call it to bring back the relationships. So how can we restore the relationships with nature, with land, with air, with water and with the communities. So that’s how we see it. it doesn’t matter that we are using the word climate or not, eventually the work will be happening. And then, and the way I… it is from a very different angle, from the angle of relationships.

There has been a guy called Bhagat Kabir Ji from the 17th century in Punjab. He has written these two beautiful lines, ‘Pothi par par jag mua pandit bhaya na koi, thai akkar premita, pare je pandit hoye.’

It meant that no matter how many books or degrees you do or how much you study, you cannot revise until you understand, you feel the two and a half letters of love. Love has like four letters in English, but when we write it in Punjabi, it’s prem, it’s two and a half letters. So until you know the two and a half letters of love – what is love? Love is relationships.

We live in this entangled world which is not made up of data or individual things. It is made up of relationships.

Until we understand and restore those relationships with community, with land, with water, with air, with nature. Basically that’s how we see it. That’s our job to restore the relationships. And that’s the basis of the work that we’re doing.

Mik:
So how is that done? What do people do? – to start that journey for people?

Ramandeep:
Yeah, so for example, last week I was in Sydney with one of the other girls, Manjot, and Sukhdeep. We three people organised… A coal mine in Mularban is up for extension for another 10 years and that will mean that the next nature reserve next to it, the forest will be cleared to make that happen. And then we organised an event.

Manjot created a documentary, and I am seeing that event and Sukhdeep Singh who is a pop singer who has won a number of awards in Australia for his song ‘Mother’, which is a Mother Earth song. He was with us and he in the end sang a song for people. We had this gathering which we fully facilitated in Punjabi. We discussed that we need to… what is our collective responsibility here and we will be meeting again in a few weeks when the submissions will be open to write the submissions to our local and the federal MP over there. So that’s one of the examples we have.

Tony:
What have been the impacts in Punjab physically from the climate crisis?

Ramandeep:
Okay, so there is a little bit of a trick. When we talk about the climate conversations, try to keep this like, you know, the mainstream way of seeing the crisis is very different. When we say that CO2 in the atmosphere is a problem, I don’t see it that way, because the CO2 in the atmosphere did not come from somewhere in the space – that everything we were doing on the earth was totally fine, and then suddenly CO2 came.

CO2 came as a bi-product, as a consequence of something that we are doing. So if we go back and take the example of this coal mine, worldwide, this is the pattern: First we clear the forest to mine, and then we spoil the land, we spoil the forest, and then we kill the animals and we displace them. And then anything that is extracted from the land, either it is coal or gas or oil, we always need to clean it. And then in order to clean it, we are spoiling the rivers and then the biodiversity that lives in the rivers. And then eventually this is transported there, which is again a lot of extraction, roads are built, infrastructure is built, and then it is burnt. And then it eventually goes to the air. So we cannot just point to the air that the crisis starts there.

And so when, if people ask me… Recently we had really devastating floods in Pakistan and India in northern areas and Punjab in both the countries suffered immensely. If people tell, you know, talk in a way that climate change is causing these floods, that is very misleading to say that, because it is not that the climate change is causing it. Climate change is the consequence, it’s not the cause. It’s very important to distinguish that. Climate change is the consequence, it is not the cause. It cannot cause anything. So climate change did not go to Uttarakhand and did the deforestation in the Uttarakhand, the north of India. It’s not a thing, you know. It’s a name. A name is not a thing.

The way we talk about this that the floods in the north India or the north India and Pakistan, that region, that devastating floods are the interplay of these shifting global conditions, the climate conditions and the deforestation in the local areas, the dams mismanagement, the mismanagement of the rivers and the urbanisation and lots of other factors. It’s an interplay.

The local vulnerabilities play a great amount of role in any sort of crisis. It’s very misleading to say that climate change is causing this, climate change is causing that. I think this language itself is logically incorrect because when we talk about this, we try to be very, very clear to portray climate change as a consequence, and the cause is actually the whole lot of exploitation that we are doing in the name of modernity and for the name of development. So we need to question that. We need to question our way of living.

And then we… I also do not use words like ‘mitigation’ or ‘adaptation’ because I feel like these words are too abstract. We again created these nouns when all the talk we could already do in the verbs, keeping it down at the base level, logical levels. So this is why we say we need to restore our relationships with the communities, land, water, air and nature and rebuild. And that’s it.

And this is exactly the thing that I was noticing because I know these four languages and then when I go to other languages these words do not exist and we are talking in words and not using these nouns and everything is simple and everything makes so much more sense, you know. And when we come back to English it’s like, holy shit! All these abstractions that we use! It’s the abstractions and nouns and these logical errors, you know.

And then we sometimes totally mess up. We don’t know what is the cause, what is the consequence, what is the symptom. This is why I have now started a series of the blogs on this topic where I’m showing this as a very, very small chunk. And that series is called ‘Two and a Half Letters of Love.’ That’s the name of it, yeah.

Mik: (26:19)
That’s really interesting, Ramandeep. We had a guest, Joseph Gelfer from the United Kingdom, in August. He runs an organisation called Our Fair Future. And he talks a lot about, just like you’re saying, changing our language. That people in the climate action movement actually should stop talking about climate and instead begin talking about what people are interested in out there. And like you say, relationships, our relationship to nature, that’s a big one. But also the fact that creating a pollution-free society is actually possible. It’s something we just need to shift our mind towards, don’t we? That if we don’t want any more damage to this planet, we will have to stop polluting it.

Ramandeep:
Yeah, I mean that’s totally possible. So even if we take the example, you know, when people say that this extra CO2 in the atmosphere is creating global warming, I would say how? You know, I would say how? Because the… If we look at that, how is Earth maintaining its temperature? It needs everything. It needs healthy rivers, healthy forests, healthy land and healthy air. So that the balance to restore the temperature comes from the relationships between the land, air and water and oceans and all of that and forests. You know, if all of a sudden today we make some big giant device that will absorb the atmospheric carbon dioxide and if we keep still doing the same thing that we are doing on the earth, will we be out of the crisis? Of course: no, because actually we are among the multiple existential crises and CO2 is the consequence again.

Yeah, this is a major part of the work that we are doing to clarifying the conversations and bring it back to the root causes. I remind myself of a punchline. So there are some punchlines in Punjabi that we keep using in our houses and villages. We call them Akhans and one of the Akhan is… It’s called, you know, chornu na fado, uddi nannina fado. Like, ‘Don’t try to catch the thief, catch its maternal grandma’. Like, get to the root cause, you know? Get to the root cause. It just reminds us that don’t get stuck on what you’re seeing. See where it’s coming from.

So, one of the things that we keep doing is keep bringing back to the root causes and talking clearly. So I want to take an example of like when I get fever, it’s not that my body’s temperature rise. So what happens is I can’t breathe properly, I can’t eat properly because I don’t feel hungry, my digestive system struggles, my heart beats faster, I can’t be happy. So a lot of stuff keep going. So whenever the planet is warming, it’s giving us lots of symptoms in the form of floods and fires and you know all of that. So those are symptoms like our body does. So yeah, so because everything is interconnected. So because when the air is warm, the ocean current changes and then the whole air current changes, the seasons change, the rain change. So everything is interconnected and that balance is somewhere in between in the liminal space between the relationships between everything that our planet is made of. So that’s how I see that.

. . .

SONG 1 (29:57)
‘Hush Now Little One’ (Climate Lullaby)

(Verse 1)
Hush now, little one, the night feels long
The world outside can seem so wrong
But here by my side, you’re safe and warm
Love still matters – yes, even more

(Chorus)
You grow your roots around the stone
You’re not meant to face this all alone
The stars shine, can you hear they sing?
Even through despair, you’ll find your wings

(Verse 2)
I feel the weight, I see the storm
I do my best to still keep us warm
The clouds are dark, the water’s cold
I carry you both – the young and the old

(Chorus)
I grow my roots around the stone
I’m not meant to face this all alone
The stars shine, I can hear them sing
Even through despair, I’ll find my wings

(Bridge)
It’s okay to cry, to feel afraid
This hurt we feel means we’ve still awake
But don’t build your home in the pain you find
Let love and awe hold your mind

(Chorus)
We’ll grow our roots around the stone
We’re not meant to face this all alone
The stars shine, we can hear them sing
Even through despair, we’ll find our wings

(Outro)
So close your eyes, my precious one
The fight’s not over, and we’re not done
It’s a broken system, but we still belong
And only love will keep us strong

. . .

Inspired by Atmos’ Dear Climate Therapist

ABC News speaker:
Authorities are warning Australians to stay out of the heat today as temperatures climb yet again after heat records were broken yesterday. Australia’s ongoing heatwave has been pushing temperatures to almost 50 degrees Celsius.

. . .

Mik: (33:45)
Last week since the government released first this risk assessment plan and then a plan for how much pollution it’s going to reduce the target of 62 to 70 per cent reduction in the next 10 years. Ever since there’s been so many figures flying in the air between people, some are upset about the net zero and some are on the barricades both for and against this net zero idea.

And it’s all, as you say, a bit abstract, I think, to most people who don’t really understand what is the net when we talk about zero carbon. Why isn’t it just zero carbon? Why is it net zero carbon and so on? And we don’t really talk about the consequences of not reaching the zero carbon, of not drawing down carbon from the atmosphere, which is that there are plants and animals and people dying, literally dying as a consequence of us not stopping this madness and allowing big companies to do all sorts of damage to, as you say, not just to the air, but also to our land. And we’ve been doing this, if we’re honest, for more than a century now.

So I think you’re right, Ramandeep, that we are not talking about the real thing. We only talk about some very abstract figures and numbers and so on. And I think really we missed the point. What is this all about? It’s about protecting life, our safety, our security, and these kinds of things.

Ramandeep: (35:20)
Yeah. Because of a lot of these abstractions and the way we are using the language, we don’t do this in lots of indigenous languages. And I can move between four languages. I can see that very, very clearly. then this thing, actually your body pushes you. And it’s not just me, lots of other people who know other languages, their body just pushes them. And I start connecting the dots that this is connected to, that the movement has become a lot like a meeting, you know, it’s like a lot and you go to another climate event and it’s the same number, same faces, same people coming back next time, you know, the new people are not showing up, the general anxiety among the public is growing.

So that’s the point of that anxiety that’s growing because these abstract singular cause level statements are exactly the same, similar structured statements that the mental health patients are usually stuck with, because I’m also a neuro-linguistic programming master practitioner. And the way I explored in that field, lots of people who are struggling with mental health issues, they are not struggling with something, the real ground stuff.

A lot of times they are stuck in the abstractions. They feel like something, you know, XYZ abstraction is holding me to act in life, you know, stuff like that. And similar statements if we are giving to people and their climate change is harming you, climate change is causing blah, blah. We are giving them the structures of anxiety. We are serving them that. And as people who work in the movement, it becomes our responsibility to pause and reflect, to see what we are saying. And then if we just stop using a lot of abstractions, then a lot of people will start joining the movement because it will feel like it includes them.

Right now it feels like too heavy, too abstract, doesn’t make any sense. What is my role in that? And it’s not just the climate change movement. The same story applies to the cost of living crisis. When I came to Australia 10 years ago, nobody talked about what is the root cause of the cost of living crisis.

They keep using up the abstractions. And then how do migrants know what is the problem with the system and they fight for the system’s change? Because nobody is talking about that. They’re just talking about some really high level, abstract words. And then recently somebody said democracy is dying. I was like, okay, this is another one. Keep joining this, you know, this way of talking about everything, you know, it is so abstract.

Can we talk about the root level stuff, the very, very basics, and then a lot of people will start joining in. Perhaps I think that’s where we need to pause and reflect. And then we also need to start looking at the relationships, not just the numbers, because they can’t tell us the whole story.

Mik:
We are talking to Ramandeep Sibia from Punjabis for Climate. And Ramandeep, what would then be your advice to our listeners? The listener out there who has heard your story and actually agrees with you, what would then be the next step for this person? What should we do, for instance, here in Geelong? Should we start up a similar minded organisation here or should we join yours? And should it be around language? Like, should I focus on my Danish language background and try to open conversations with Danish people here in Geelong? Or what would you recommend? How do we do it?

Ramandeep: (39:18)
So it’s, I think we need to first be ready to pause for a little bit and be ready to explore what we doing and what is happening because that’s very related and in terms of language it’s possible to talk in plain language using the verbs and not going up in the abstractions so I’m writing a whole blog series to that we can put the link and if people want to subscribe but I’m even happy to form like small groups and we sit down together and we learn from each other and discuss that could be one way the other way could be the Warm Data Labs so if we sit down and do these warm data labs together, the question and the context in a Warm Data Lab are created in a way that it will build up for us.

That is another really beautiful structured way that Nora has created that will help us see the interconnectedness of relationships, and notice the stuff with the abstractions and all of that and multiple descriptions and all of that. I think what we need is a lot of warm data labs and sit down and learn with each other.

Mik:
What’s in that name? Warm Data Lab – why warm?

Ramandeep:
So because the cold data is only about the data that usually, so basically the word abstraction itself if we see, so there is some reality, there is some reality that we see in the world. If we don’t put any words to it, it is what it is, yeah? As soon as we put the first word to it, that what is happening or what it is. That is the first level of abstraction that we have created because if I think of a pig in my head, the pig in my head is not the same pig on the ground, you know, because it’s the abstraction, yeah. So that’s the first instant of creating abstraction. So cold data is one which removes all the relationships.

For example, mango. Mango is the story of my grandmother. We had a tree, we used to sit, eat together, had so many memories and all of that. But if I say mango is only 50 calories and this much sugar and this much carbs, that is not warm data. That’s cold data. That’s just the numbers. So that’s just the obsession with the data only and splitting all relationships away. But the warm data is keeping this data but also bringing in the relationships.

And that’s a keyword, isn’t it? Relationships. You started saying that and we are ending on that note as well. What does relationship mean in this context?

So if we see, we usually say the animals depend upon the plants. We often say that. But if we look at the way birds, they poop the seeds and then the new trees grows and the butterflies and bees and you know, all these different insects and even the birds itself, they pollinate and then we can clearly see that these insects and birds and bees, are the part of the reproductive system of the plants. And then the mycelium is part of the digestive system of the plants. And then we can clearly see that the plants itself depend upon the creatures, the animals. As much as the horse depends upon the grass, the grass also depends upon the horse. So there are no one-way relationships.

(42:53) We live in an entangled world and until we realise that, that different relationships, we can’t respect those relationships and we can’t even restore them. So it’s, I think, very, very important. I would like to say that there are trillions of microbiome who live in and on my body and without them, I cannot be me.

And the part that makes me human, is that those cells are maybe only 10 per cent of my body. And rest all, my air comes from the environment, my food comes from the environment. And the unit of survival can never be a creator on its own. It’s always a creator and its environment, because all the food, all the breath, all the water comes from the environment. So that’s the interconnectedness and the relationships, the way I see them.

. . .

SONG 2 (43:50)
‘New Relations’ – audio mp3

Prologue – choir:
Mother Earth is Alive

Verse 1:
They always ran the numbers
They said it was the carbon
but the roots of our problem
lie so much deeper in our system
Not the ‘Celsius’, or ‘Per cent’
not the scary rising charts
it’s the rivers, it’s the forests
it’s the lives – of everyone of us

Chorus:
Making new relations
(Refresh the air)
Making new relations
(New words to share)
Making new relations
(Weave the threads)
Making new relations
to the threads of life…

Verse 2:
Abstractions confuse
And they close our eyes
to plain word stories
about butterflies
the horse and the grass
both depend for their life
on a birds gentle flight
and the seed’s change of site

Chorus:
Making new relations
(Refresh the air)
Making new relations
(New words to share)
Making new relations
(Weave the threads)
Making new relations
…to the threads of life…

[Instrumental intermission]

Recital/chant:
They’re chasing symptoms
They’re chasing the flame.
They resist to call
the cause by its name

Bridge:
Warm data reminds us
it’s love we must restore
Every breath, every meal
comes from something more

Final Chorus:
Make new relations
(Under the sun, interconnected)
Make new relations
(We live in this entangled world)
Make new relations
(Mother Earth is alive)
Make new relations
…and she’s living in you…

Outro:
I’m weaving gently
into those threads of life
with awe and admiration
Making new relations

. . .

Audio statements by Ramandeep:
There are trillions of microbiomes in and on my body. And without them, I cannot be me.

All the food, all the breath, all the water comes from the environment. So that’s the interconnectedness and the relationships, the way I see them.

. . .

Simon Clark, instagram video clip: (47:55)
More people support climate action than you probably think. There’s this perception that climate activists are in the minority. But this is so not the case. According to data from the People’s Climate Vote, which is carried out in association with the University of Oxford, 80 per cent of people worldwide want their country to do more about climate change. That includes 80 per cent of Americans believing that countries should work together to combat change in spite of their other differences.

In the UK, per cent of people believe that. Perhaps because 69 per cent of people around the world say that climate change already impacts their big life decisions, like where they’re going to move or what they buy. And this isn’t something wishy washy. People know what they want. 72 per cent of people worldwide want their country to move to clean energy quickly. This isn’t a fringe movement. The majority of people around the world know that climate change is real, know that it is a threat and know that their country needs to do something about it by moving away from fossil fuels. The challenge, course, is turning that sentiment into meaningful political action.

. . .

Mik:
That’s all we managed to fit into this particular climate and language focused Sustainable Hour. Very much about language. The way we maybe need to change even calling ourselves climate activists into something that’s less about climate and more about all the normal things out there such as nature and health and cost of living and so on. That’s a really important discussion that we have opened up today in The Sustainable Hour and we’ll be following up on that next week where I’m going to present to you one of the interviews I did while I was in Denmark last month.

Among others, I spoke with a Danish author. He’s very famous in Denmark, not so much here in Australia, but he’s somebody worth listening to, I think, a real thinker and a science communicator called Tor Nørretranders. And together with him, I’ll be exploring what it means to act in service to life on earth as we’ve been talking about ever since we had this interview with Joseph Gelfer back in August.

The interesting thing about Tor is that he has just turned 70 and he’s got this idea. So he published a book about it, which he calls ‘The Elder’s Revolt’ or ‘The Elder’s Reckoning’. Seeing elders as change makers and bringing, I think, some great inspiration for if there’s anyone listening out there who is in that age group from 70 and above listening again next week Wednesday 11 o’clock here on 94.7 The Pulse

What are we going to ‘be’ – Tony, Colin? I would say we’re going to ‘be optimistic’ – after you were in your gloomy mood today, Colin, a little bit? – with the news from around the world. But I still think that we can say that the glass is half full. I do believe that people and businesses here in Australia are going to take over where the politicians have failed us.

Colin:
I like the idea of your Danish author for next week and his call for a seniors revolution. I mean I’m all for that. I’m going to all for seniors walking down the middle of the street with their fists in the air and their zimmer frames saying you have nothing to lose but your pensions.

Mik:
So be the difference, be revolutionary!

Colin:
Yeah, be aware.

Tony:
Be belonging, be involved, be engaged. All of that.

Mik:
Be it all.

. . .

SONG 3 (51:54)
‘Starting From Today’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We rise together
Starting from today

. . .

Richard Denniss from Australia Institute at the Senate Environment Committee – Youtube-video:

Yesterday’s report is a breath of fresh air, but in some sense there wasn’t much that’s new in there, just a lot more detail about what’s been known for a long time. I will only focus on a few key things, but let me start by reading a very important part of the report that might have been missed. The economic impacts of climate change, including the impacts on households and the cost of living. “The emerging academic view is that the current modeling methodologies are likely to significantly underestimate, underestimate the economic impacts and do not take into account the potential cascading impacts from the physical damage from climate change to our economy, transmission of financial risk, internationally could also significantly increase the economic impact.”

So what you see in that report is the best case scenario. My PhD is in macroeconomic modelling. I know as well as anyone the limitations of economic modelling. I assure you that the economic models we use, that Treasury use, that the Reserve Bank use, were not built with this in mind. And I can’t stress enough the number of variables that are simply just not included in this model, because these models weren’t built to do this. So this is a minimum cost. This is a minimum cost.

Let me give you an example of how much worse things are than you might likely expect. lot of people talk about insurance becoming unaffordable. Just to be crystal clear, every mortgage contract in Australia obliges the holder of the mortgage to have insurance. Every mortgage contract. The reason we think bank lending is safe is that not only lending against real estate, they’re lending against insured real estate.

So the entire risk profile of the entire financial system is based on the idea that house prices don’t go down. And even if houses burst into flames, it’s actually the insurance companies risk, not the banks risk. So to be crystal clear, if a house is uninsurable, it is un-mortgageable. If a house is uninsurable, it is un-mortgageable.

The potential catastrophic impacts of whole suburbs and regions not being able to insure their houses is not included in this report, rightly, because the tools for doing so don’t exist. But again, to be crystal clear, the bank expects that if you’ve got a mortgage, your house is fully insured. If your house is not fully insured, you are in breach of your mortgage contract.

Right now in Australia today, we know there are people who are uninsured. Right now in Australia today we know there are people who are underinsured. The RBA isn’t looking, APRA isn’t looking, ASIC aren’t looking. Everybody knows that not only is there uninsurance and underinsurance today, what this has just told us is that in coming decades there will be far more of this.

This is a crucial part of the problem that our regulators are ignoring and that this report can’t have provided the answers to.

Just quickly, when this damage comes, someone will have to pay. You can only insure against unlikely events. Insurance companies do not insure against likely events. No 20-year-old in Australia can rent a Ferrari and insure it. You can’t insure against that risk. What this report says is that flooding will be so common in large parts of Australia, you will not be able to insure.

So just to be clear, individuals will not ensure their way out of this crisis. You cannot insure against likely events. So what is going to happen is we are either going to tell people you are on your own, you are stranded, your house is worthless, we’re sad for you, or we are going to say, I’m so sad that we actually want to give you large amounts of public money. But to do what? To rebuild in the place that keeps flooding? To move? To where?

These are not hypothetical. And to give everyone a sense of timing, we’re telling 20 year olds today to worry about a mortgage that they won’t pay off before 2050. We’re telling 20 year olds to worry about superannuation that they won’t get their hands on until 2065. And this report is saying there are catastrophic risks coming right now, way before you need your super, way before you’ll pay off a 25 or 30 year loan.

So the fossil fuel industry seems to me to be the obvious person to pay for this because in Australia today we’re giving half of our gas away for free. The ACTU says that if we taxed it at 25%, we could have 12 billion a year. We’re giving more than 10 billion a year in Commonwealth subsidies for fossil fuels. That’s $25 billion a year, a year, that we could actually stop encouraging climate change with and start diverting.

But to be clear, the insurance industry will not help people in 20 years’ time with their flooded houses. They can’t. That’s not insurance. And just finally, we’ve done a lot of work at the Australian Institute on climate risk. Less than 40 per cent of Australians even know what it is, what the term means. We are bombarded with information about superannuation risk. We are bombarded with information about what suburb to buy a house in to maximise capital gain. Most Australians aren’t even in this conversation yet.

Yet here we are, literally approving new gas and coal projects in the week leading up to this risk assessment coming out. No wonder the public aren’t in uproar. Hopefully they’ll read this report, but I can see why the report wasn’t released before that most recent fossil fuel project was approved. But Australians need to engage with climate risk as much, if not more, than they do about superannuation risk or the risk of missing out on a cheap house. Thank you.

. . .

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

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

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

Live-streaming on Wednesdays

The Sustainable Hour is streamed live on the Internet and broadcasted on FM airwaves in the Geelong region every Wednesday from 11am to 12pm (Melbourne time).

→ To listen to the program on your computer or phone, go to www.947thepulse.com where you then click on ‘Listen’ on the right.

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

Podcast archive

Over 570 hours of sustainable podcasts.

Listen to all of The Sustainable Hour radio shows as well as special Regenerative Hours and Climate Revolution episodes in full length.

→ Archive on climatesafety.info – with additional links
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