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The Sustainable Hour no. 574 | Transcript | Podcast notes
In this week’s Sustainable Hour we sit with the uncomfortable truth that we are living in “consequence times” and explore how ordinary people, working together, can still make beauty, make shelter and turn the tables of power.
From the global climate summits to quiet rural roads, from poetry on a wild beach to community radio in Geelong, this episode is about what happens when people decide to stop being spectators and start shaping their own future.
We open with a reflection on the green transition that is already well under way – solar doubling, renewables racing ahead, millions of new jobs – while our federal government continues to approve new coal and gas projects without even counting their climate damage.
The conclusion is clear: we cannot wait for leaders to save us. The shift has to be people-led, community-led, connection-led.
. . .
Our guest is environmentalist and poet Georgina Woods, Head of Research and Investigations at Lock the Gate Alliance. George has spent more than 25 years in the movement – from forest blockades and coal export campaigns in Newcastle to supporting farmers, traditional owners and towns across the country resisting coal, gas and fracking. She now lives on Wadawurrung Country on the Bellarine Peninsula, not far from Geelong.
With George we talk about how Lock the Gate grew into a national, bottom-up alliance of farmers, First Nations communities, conservationists and townspeople determined to protect water, land, culture and the bush from coal and gas, and we’re reminded about the Victorian “gasfield-free” victory: communities locking their gates, road by road and region by region, until fracking was banned and the ban written into the state’s constitution.
Governance and process are at the heart of sustainability, and decisions about land, water and energy must start with the people most affected, not distant ministers and corporate boards. George warns us not to get caught up in online “tribal wars”, because real power grows from door-knocking, kitchen-table meetings and neighbours working things out face to face together
George has experienced what it feels like to see people “blossom into a beautiful version of themselves” when they step into collective action, and she explains why the journey of struggle matters even before you win.
We also hear George’s concerns about the federal government’s proposed reforms to national environmental laws – reforms that risk fast-tracking new coal and gas alongside renewables, and stripping power away from local communities and environment groups. She talks about the many “clashing realities” coming to a head: a way of life built on high consumption of energy and materials, and our refusal to reckon with where it all comes from and where it ends up.
Again and again, George comes back to culture and conversation: the duty we each have to “talk to our people, talk to our tribe” about our relationship with the natural world and with each other, the need to re-centre power in communities, and the invitation to live as if every action has consequences.
“I think that the current Labor government is in a situation where they have made a bunch of commitments on climate change that they’re not really keeping. But I think that to isolate them, I suppose, is to lose sight of a bigger picture which is that there are lots of clashing realities coming to a head now. There’s a reckoning underway. The way that we live our lives in Western modernity assumes a huge amount of consumption of energy and industrial materials that has to come from somewhere. And we haven’t really reckoned with where it comes from or where it goes.”
~ Georgina Wood, Head of Research and Investigations at Lock the Gate Alliance
POETRY IN CONSEQUENCE TIMES
We devote a slice of the program to poetry as George reads two of her poems:
• “Making shelter” – written on a wild northern NSW beach, a meditation on wind-shaped vegetation, acceptance of harsh realities and living in ways that “make beauty possible, make shelter possible” for others
• “The floods” – a vivid, dream-like flood of people and water, carrying away old categories and surging through bankers’ and mining bosses’ roofs as communities reclaim power together
→ George has published a book of poetry, “The Tide Will Take It”, which is available from the publisher.
→ You can read more of George’s writing on Medium: www.georgewoods79.medium.com and subscribe to the newsletter “Handbasket on Ghost”.
George’s poems help us feel into what it means to live in a time when climate change is no longer a future threat but a present condition – and why, even if many tipping points have already been crossed, “everything that we do is of profound importance, always.”
In our sign-off, George offers a new twist on our old round-off line “Be the difference”:
“The only thing that you can be is your own difference and you should live as if everything you do, every action you take, has consequences.”
. . .
INDEPENDENT RADIO AND THE FIGHT FOR REAL DEMOCRACY
We also share a behind-the-scenes conversation about our home station 94.7 The Pulse – now fully independent and run by over 100 volunteers. As we launch a new fundraising push, we talk about why local community radio is so vital for democracy in the Geelong and Surf Coast region:
• It amplifies voices that commercial and public broadcasters ignore
• It offers space for climate truth-telling free from fossil-fuel-friendly editorial lines
• It allows programs like The Sustainable Hour to keep spotlighting community power, climate solutions and local action
We invite listeners to support The Pulse with memberships and donations so that this truly local, grassroots voice can keep cutting through the noise of corporate media spin.
. . .
CONNECTION CAFE AND COMMUNITY RESILIENCE
Mik Aidt gives an update on Connection Café – our regular gathering in central Geelong on the fourth Friday of the month. Each session brings together people hungry for meaning, climate solutions and community resilience. Mik talks about how these kinds of spaces can help people find their role in the green transition, swap ideas, feel less alone and build the relationships that make real change possible.
. . .
The Global Outlook
Colin Mockett’s Global Outlook takes us to COP30 in Belém in the Brazilian Amazon and the G20 summit in Johannesburg – a tale of two meetings. One tiptoes around the words “fossil fuel” while announcing new funds for adaptation, the other finally calls fossil fuels out as the prime cause of the crisis and re-commits to net zero by mid-century. We hear about Australia losing its COP31 hosting bid, our status as the world’s third-biggest exporter of fossil fuel pollution, and a groundbreaking court case against Shell in the United Kingdom, alongside a lighter check-in with the world’s greenest football club, Forest Green Rovers.
New original song: ‘Consequence Times’
We close this episode with a brand new, original song: ‘Consequence Times’ – inspired by George’s reflections and written especially for this Hour.
– A musical invitation to shift from frustration to shared purpose, and to make beauty and shelter possible for others.
The song picks up the key threads from our conversation: That we are living in a time of reckoning, when centuries of harm to people and ecosystems are catching up with us. That when people step into activism together, they blossom – whether they win quickly or not, they become more fully themselves. That real power flips when communities join up “part by part, road by road, community by community” and declare their own destiny. That people everywhere want “the good life” – a protected local place, time, beauty, connection – not more extraction and sacrifice zones. And that every action, in every part of your life, has consequences. The only thing you can be is your own difference.
‘Consequence Times’ is a musical invitation to live as if that’s true: to move from frustration and powerlessness into shared purpose, to make beauty and shelter possible for others, and to remember that even in harsh winds we can still put down roots together.
→ More songs on www.climatesafety.info/music
“When people step into activism together, they sort of just blossom into a beautiful version of themselves that actually is – whether they’re successful or not – really transformative. (…) I do very firmly believe that we have a duty to talk to our people, talk to our tribe about our relationship to the natural world and each other and the people around us. And what we really need to do is to reorient attention and the locus and the gravitational centre of power, to communities, to people – and we do that by joining together and making common cause. Move with people through to a process of actually taking control and declaring their own destiny for their local area. By the time you have done that, politicians are coming to you and saying, ‘What can I do to help?’”
~ Georgina Wood, Head of Research and Investigations at Lock the Gate Alliance
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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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Transcript of The Sustainable Hour no. 574
António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General: (00:00)
Climate change is here, it is terrifying and it is just the beginning.
Jingle: (00:16)
The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong: The Sustainable Hour.
Tony Gleeson:
Welcome to The Sustainable Hour. We’d like to acknowledge that we’re broadcasting from the land of the Wadawurrung people. We pay tribute to 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. Before they were invaded by the white colonisers, they nurtured both their land and their communities for millennia before that disaster befell them. In that time, they built a great wealth of and depth of ancient wisdom. And from that ancient wisdom lie so many of the answers for us as we face up to the climate crisis. We just hope that we’re wise enough to follow that path.
Mik Aidt: (01:28)
We know it. At least most of us know it. We’ve known it for years. We know that to avert the worst effects of the climate crisis, we have to reshape our society. We actually have to reshape fundamental aspects of our society – from how we eat, how we move around, how we turn on the lights, build new homes and everything…
We know that this so-called green transition of energy, of manufacturing, construction, agriculture and transport is at the same time creating millions of jobs. Solar is doubling every three years now. That means exponential growth. And that means that solar is coming in big in the coming years. And around the world… You know, all this blah, blah, blah about nuclear power. It’s game over for nuclear! First of all, because it is too expensive. Solar is getting cheaper by the day. Last year, 97 per cent of all new electricity in the US was renewable. What does that tell you? This is in Trump’s country: 97 per cent of all new electricity last year in the US was renewable. If that’s not a green transition, then I don’t know what it is… It’s a green revolution!
And here in Australia, we have a target now that we’re reducing our use of fossil fuels for electricity generation anyway from 85 per cent to 18 per cent. So we’re going down from using coal, 85 per cent of our electricity being black coal, to 18 per cent in just a few years! And solar on the roof, which four million houses and businesses now have, is becoming the cheapest energy in all of human history.
And then at the same time, we have an Albanese government here in Australia who has approved 32 fossil fuel projects without even considering their climate impacts because of our outdated environmental laws. And there’s more permission and approvals on their way. Dozens of new expanded fossil fuel proposals being lined up.
What that tells me: the bottom line is we need to step in as individuals and in groups of people, communities, and make this green transition into a people-led green transition. If we want a world in balance with nature, a climate safe future… we’ll never achieve these goals, or net zero for that matter, unless we get more connected and more educated and each of us find our role in this big green transition.
So the big word here, folks, is ‘connection’. Connection and collaboration and that’s what we talk about all the time in The Sustainable Hour. Today we’ll be talking about it maybe more than ever. Connection, connection, connection! That is the big word.
And by the way, on Friday, it’s “Connection Café” Day in Geelong. Every fourth Friday of the month, there’s a Connection Cafe in Geelong, and it’s happening in the CBD of Geelong. You can find the information about that on the website, climatesafety.info. Last time, a month ago, was an amazing event where 13 people showed up, and there was such good exchange of information and empowering ideas and things that we can all do. This thing about finding our own role in the green transition is happening big time when you come to a connection café.
Now over to the very big world and Colin Mockett OAM who has been, I’m sure, following what’s been happening in Brazil. Have you, Colin? Because that is a big one.
COLIN MOCKETT’S GLOBAL OUTLOOK:
It certainly is, and it dominates this week’s World Roundup. It is the wash-up to the COP30 in Belem, which is deep in the Brazilian Amazon forest. The talks ended quite predictably after an all-night negotiations on whether to include two words in the final statement. The two words were ‘fossil fuel’.
And that had already taken days to negotiate that statement anyway. And the biggest stumbling block was, as ever, the fossil fuel industry’s vast lobbying capacity, and that’s led by Saudi Arabia’s delegates. Now, they successfully stood in the way of most progress during the whole talkfest, including the final statement, which did not include those two words.
But there were some positives that came out of the talks. One was that with the rich countries are committed to triple the finance for poor countries to help them adapt to climate change. Now roughly $120 billion of the $300 billion US dollars, I should say, climate finance goal will now be dedicated to what was termed adaptation measures in the most vulnerable countries.
In short, the oil-rich countries that are blocking emissions progress have got plenty of money and they don’t mind spending it on small nations that are affected by climate change just so long as nobody says it’s their fault. And those use those two words. At the talk, some progress was made on tackling deforestation, including the establishment of a fund called the “Tropical Forest Forever” facility, which was started with $6.6 billion US dollars.
Again, as I say, they’ve got plenty of money, the people who don’t want to stop burning fossil fuels. For us in Australia, we also learned in Belem that our government is not very good at negotiating on the world stage. Now that was after it was announced that Australia had lost out on hosting next year’s COP31. Those talks, after three years of negotiating and despite boasting that most of the delegates were supporting our Adelaide and joint Pacific nations bid, Turkey won out and will host next year’s conference.
As a consolation, our climate minister Chris Bowen was appointed president of COP negotiations. That’s a role that nobody has ever heard of before and it could involve him sitting in an office with his name on the door wearing a big badge and a lanyard with his new title on it.
Anyways, a specific response came from Papua New Guinea’s Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko who said his nation and others were deeply disappointed by the decisions that came out of COP30. But not everyone shared that view.
Many environmentalists were pleased that the thousands of COP31 delegates will be flying much shorter distances to Turkey next year instead of the further destinations in Australia and the Pacific Islands. So the CO2 jet fuel emissions are certainly going to be considerably less because we lost out to Turkey, because we’re inept negotiators.
Also, I’m pretty sure that our Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, won’t be too upset at losing the 2026 talks because it avoids the embarrassment of disappointing our Pacific neighbours, who were all hoping that an Australia-hosted climate conference would shine a light on the need to end fossil fuel expansion, including Australia’s. Because there’s no doubt at all that burning fossil fuels is the top cause of climate change. And the climate change is fuelling the rising sea levels that are sinking their low-lying island homes. And Australia is one of the prime culprits.
This was confirmed last week by a new research that came out of the Australia Institute, which showed Australia to be the world’s third largest exporter of fossil fuel pollution. We don’t export oil, but we do export huge amounts of coal and gas. We’re third in the world with the amount of pollution behind the two big oil producers. Now when it comes to climate change, our actions say much more than our words. That’s pretty obvious from what came out.
Now I’ll leave the final word on COP30, which Brazil’s president wanted to be called the “COP of Truth”, to climate scientist Jöelle Gergis, who was there and her roundup of the conference asked: “So what have we learned from the COP of truth? Despite these decisions of well-intended climate summits, our political leaders are still allowing the fossil fuel industry to destroy our planet. The hardest truth of all is that we are doing this to ourselves.”
Now coinciding with the climate summit was the G20 Summit in Johannesburg, which should have actually more accurately be called the G19 because Donald Trump’s America were pulled out of both sets of talks. Our Prime Minister Anthony Albanese attended both sets and surprisingly the G20 talks had much better outcome for the world’s climate than the COP talks. In the G20’s 30-page summary statement that was issued at the end of their talks, the world leaders backed the Paris Climate Change agreement, endorsed net zero climate emissions by the middle of the century. They named fossil fuels as the prime cause. That’s the big one. And also praised free trade. That is tariff free trade. It would have been noticed in the White House.
In a statement that should have been issued by the COP talks, but was in fact the 19 members of the G20 leaders, they said, “… We reiterate our commitment and will intensify our efforts to achieve global net zero greenhouse gas emissions, carbon neutrality, by or around mid-century.” And you can’t really be clearer than that. And if you’re looking for a truth decision, that’s much better than what came out of the COP.
Now to the UK, where 67 Filipino nationals who were survivors of typhoon Odette, which hit their country in 2021, causing more than 1,500 deaths, are suing Shell for the company’s contribution to this catastrophic disaster. They allege that Shell has known that their fossil fuels could cause dangerous climate change since at least 1965. But instead of changing course, Shell misled the public and blocked the transition to safer energy, simply to protect their profits. Now this court case is sure to continue through the new year and we’ll keep an eye on it for you.
In the meantime, in Gloucester, the world’s greenest sports team at Forest Green Rovers, both had draws at the weekend. The men’s team drew 1-1 with Wealdstone, and that leaves them fourth on the ladder, but only one point behind the leaders, Rochdale. It’s very tight at the top. Meanwhile, the women’s team drew 2-2 versus Ark Boco Women, and they are fifth on their ladder.
And this ends our Roundup for this week.
Jingle:
Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.
. . .
Tony: (14:33)
Our guest today is Georgina Woods, more commonly known as George. She’s an environmentalist and poet, born and raised on a Awabakal country in Newcastle. She’s had over 25 years of unpaid and professional environmental work – from street stalls and forest blockades to the halls of the United Nations Climate Talks and the decks of the Rainbow Warrior. For most of the last 12 years, she has worked for Lock the Gate Alliance, supporting communities resisting the harm of coal and unconventional gas mining. So, George, welcome to The Sustainable Hour. Thanks for coming on!
George:
Thanks so much for inviting me.
Tony:
Pleasure! Okay, let’s see if we can add a little bit to the introduction that we’ve just heard about you. And also if we can find time for you to recite one of your poems, that’d be really good. Not something that we’ve had on before. So yeah, so tell us the George Wood story!
George:
Well, as you said, I’ve been an environmentalist for my whole adult life. I’m from Newcastle, a Awabakal country, but I actually now live – not far from Geelong. I’m on Wadawurrung country in Point Lonsdale on the Bellarine Peninsula.
So yeah, I have been an environmentalist all my life. I’m passionately in love with the world, its beauty, its extraordinary diversity and its been a great privilege to work with people all over this country to defend the beautiful natural heritage of Australia. So yeah, I started in forests, but for a long time I, because I grew up in Newcastle and was living my life there, got into climate change activism via the coal export industry which is Australia’s biggest single contribution to climate change, and, in that time, quite some time ago now, there was a major expansion of the coal export industry.
So that’s really how I got into to climate change, but then for most of the last 12 years as you said, I have been working for Lock The Gate Alliance and Lock The Gate is a national network of organisations, people, traditional owners, farmers, conservationists, townspeople, local groups united in their desire to protect water resources, land, culture, the bush from the impacts of coal and unconventional gas mining. So we work in Western Australia, Northern Territory, Queensland and New South Wales. And yeah, it’s really beautiful network of people. Very unusual environmental organisation, but I really love it a great deal.
I love everyone in our network and I’m happy to talk more about the struggles of the communities that Lock The Gate supports in the Pilliga Forest, for example. Or, the fight in the Narrabri gas field or up in the Northern Territory, the onset of fracking in the Betelgeuse Basin or the Hunter where there’s a great deal of open cut coal mining done terrible damage to the land there. So yeah let me know what you want to hear about.
Mik:
I’m really interested in exploring the way that Lock The Gate has gathered so many different people, as you say, connected people and very different kinds of people out there on the countryside, because the countryside seems to be where the rebellion against renewables is going on very strongly at the moment. And as I have mentioned earlier, I really truly believe that what we have learned from COP30 over in Brazil, that sort of really weak conclusion that they came out with is that if we’re ever going to achieve anything with the climate, it must be people led net zero and climate solutions is a people led solution and net zero have to be people led just as well.
George:
Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. mean, a lot of what the communities that Look at the Gate has worked with for the last 15 years understand very well is that decisions that affect local environments and the social fabric of rural areas are very rarely made by the people who live in those areas. We have very centralised decision making in Australia and that centralisation has been intensifying in all the time that I’ve been an environmental advocate.
And so the people who decide that a patch of bush nuts needs to get ploughed down or an aquifer needs to be dewatered or a transmission line needs to smash through a local farming area are not the people who live with the consequences of those decisions. Nor do they live near the people who live with the consequences of those decisions. And so I’m firmly of the view that process in decision making and handing power over to local people to determine the future of their area would put us in a lot stronger stead for robust decisions but also decisions that are more carefully taken and more thoughtfully made and that includes for renewable energy as much as for the mining industry.
Mik:
And what does that involve then?
George:
Look, I think that once you sort of see governance and process as the actually the keys to unlocking sustainability, then it really informs everything that you do.
You essentially go to the people who are most affected by the decisions and you work with them to generate a different centre of gravity for the political process, essentially, rather than going to the minister and trying to impose decisions on the community, whether it’s a rapid rollout of renewable energy or a fast track of the gas industry. You actually go from the bottom up and put the right of local people to determine their own future and the right of nature determine its future at the center of every action that you take.
Colin:
Now look I have to ask George this is clearly Lock The Gate action from Newcastle did you bring it with you to Point Loonsdale is there a local Lock The Gate that people can contribute to?
George:
No, I’m in Point Lonsdale for personal reasons. I have a national job at Lock the Gate, so I support people all over the country. My role is called Head of Research and Investigations, so I do our legal work and research work at Smishard Writing and Law Reform. And the Lock the Gate struggle was won in Victoria quite some years ago. Communities in Western Vic and Gippsland particularly were faced with a threat of unconventional onshore gas and undertook a bottom-up grassroots campaign process similar to what I’m describing where communities make the decision for themselves to say no to a damaging industry. And that really had huge momentum and led to the Victorian government essentially ruling out and firmly forever instituting a ban on fracking in the constitution I believe of Victoria.
Mik:
Yeah, that’s right. And Tony and I were very much in the centre of that. We actually started Frack Free Geelong, which grew over the years. This is, we’re talking 12-13 years ago. And it was amazing to see, in the end of that campaign we ran, which was long, I think we did it for seven years or something like that. We actually had politicians from both sides of politics with us standing, taking a photograph all together with a big banner: ‘No to fracking’. And then there were 79 similar groups all over Victoria doing the same kind of work. So that was a very, very powerful movement. And it was all, I think, inspired by a movie that, a film that was produced by Lock the Gate.
George:
Yes indeed, the ‘Fractured Country’ film, which was the one about gas and undermining Australia, was about the coal industry. And as you say, I mean you would have experience of it then, it’s a grassroots bottom-up process. And it does cross unconventional political and social divides and brings people together from really a wide variety of backgrounds and political allegiances. And that’s really because people in Australia do love the natural world.
They do value their local environment and the fabric of their own community and its interconnectedness, interdependence in the world around them. So once you sort of recognise that and get away from some of the slogans and tribalism of politics, you’re actually able to move with people through to a process of actually taking control and declaring their own destiny for their local area.
Mik:
How is this then done online? Because very much of this sort of advocacy work starts with online work, doesn’t it, in social media and so on. Or how do you see that? Because what I’m finding at the moment is that there seems to be almost a tribal war going on on the internet in social media. And it also seems to me that the naysayers, the aggression is winning.
George:
Well, I guess my answer would be it’s not done online, to be honest. I don’t, I think there’s a, it’s a little bit of a vortex to be to be drawn into a purely pixelated political argument that actually has no real bearing on on things that are happening to people in the real world and is happening in a sort of utopia or dystopia, I guess, of disconnectedness.
Whereas when you’re talking to people on the street, when you’re door knocking, when you’re leafletting, when you’re sort of very local and in real life in your activism then you know the possibility to open up new and unusual partnerships you know to work with people in a way that brings all their beauty and ingenuity to the fore is just much more available. The online experience to me is a fairly sterile one.
Tony:
What’s it been like for you personally to be part of that, just watching people grow in their power when they realise that. Just like personally, what has that done for you?
George:
It’s so beautiful, Tony. I’m very glad you asked me that question. I think a lot of us these days in the kind of society that we’re raised in, are very passive about what happens in the world around us. And there’s a lot of frustration and there’s a lot of, a feeling of not really being in control.
And then when people step into activism together, they sort of just blossom into a beautiful version of themselves that actually is, whether they’re successful or not, really transformative and that’s what’s been happening in the Lock the Gate movement for the last 12 or 15 years. And we have been alongside some communities every step of the way for all that time. So in the Piliger, for example, where Santos’s gas field still threatens that extraordinary forest, Lock the Gate has been working with farmers and Gomorray people and conservationists, local environmentalists in that campaign for a very long time, well over 10 or 12 years.
And the relationships that have been forged in that process and the sort of exceptional beauty and courage and grit of the people of that region that has been unfolding over all that time is, has certainly changed me as a person. And I do, I do believe that the process of struggle, of the struggle is, valuable in itself regardless of the outcome. I we are still fighting that gas field, it hasn’t been built yet. It’s continuous victory until it’s over. But the journey and the fight has been worth it.
. . .
Mik: (26:46)
Five days ago, the Geelong Advertiser posted the news that a Torquay environmentalist is going to or is planning to or hoping to take over a ‘safe Liberal seat’. And that’s the seat of Polworth. And what I find interesting about this post in particular, there were a thousand people who pressed like and most of them negative, know, either laughing or being angry, you know, these icons that you can choose on Facebook. And there were 600 comments. And when you scroll down, literally every single one of them was laughing, being angry, all of them negative towards the Greens. 600 comments. There’s a war going on on the internet. Where is the support of this Surf Coast climate expert, as the Geelong advertiser calls him? Where’s all the people who are in support of what he is saying? They’re certainly not on Facebook, apparently.
Colin:
No, that’s the wrong way around, Mik, surely. I mean, you’re saying that the Geelong Advertiser article got 600 people deriding the Greens. Well, that’s no surprise. The Geelong Advertiser is a Murdoch publication and it always takes the side of the opposition at the moment, the liberal nationalists.
Mik:
I’m not surprised about the fact that it happened, but I’m surprised about the numbers. That within three days there’s 600 people commenting. That to me looks like a different kind of cyber war than we have normally had on the internet, which means that there’s also, I think, the use of robots. Because how do you get to 600 comments on a little news post like that?
Colin:
Well you get 200 people to do it every day.
Tony:
Yeah, two or three times a day.
Colin:
Yeah, especially when it started with the safe seat, the safe Liberal seat of Polworth. I don’t think the Liberal Party has any safe seats at the moment. And to even describe a Liberal Party held seat as safe is, well, it’s almost an oxymoron.
Mik:
What that brings me to is that, my God, it’s good we have the pulse and it’s good that we, The Sustainable Hour, are, you could say, allowed even to publish these kind of views that we are bringing to the table in The Sustainable Hour, undisturbed and unedited.
Colin:
Yep, it has always been the way. No, it wasn’t always the way. There was a time when we first became The Pulse – prior to The Pulse, we were called Geelong Radio. And before that, it was YYR. During that first bit of takeover, there was quite a bit of management editing. it still is, but it’s now on the part of the music that you publish and things like that. It was never on the views. But yes, there is always a hand over the top making sure that you comply with the rules that they have.
Mik:
And the thing is, we can’t continue unless we raise funds for our radio station, our local community radio station in Geelong and the surf coast. The Pulse needs funds and we do have quite a few more subscribers now because of the campaign we’ve been running here the last two weeks. But we also need donations. So we’re calling out this week, the entire station, all the 100 volunteers who are helping with different programs, getting them to air on 94.7 The Pulse. We’re all calling out to please donate to The Pulse. Give a donation and you can do that by calling 5222 5947 or you can head to the website of The Pulse, which is 947thepulse.com. There’s a tab there you can click on: ‘Get involved’.
Jingle:
For the community, 94.7 The Pulse.
Tony:
Without the necessary funds, democracy is much worse in our area. So it’s really important that a radio station run completely by volunteers and the costs associated with that is supported by the community. It makes for a much richer democracy. Now we’re often talking here about a democracy has been stolen by the dark forces and yeah, that The Pulse is very much a voice against that. It just gives voice to the people that are often unheard. And that is so, so, so important.
Colin:
The last time I donated to this radio station was in its infancy when I put in money to buy the transmitter. After that I thought, go on then, you can run by yourself. And I have been a member and paid my membership dues for each year. If it comes down to it, yes, I’m likely to donate again just to keep it on air. It is a free voice in Geelong and it’s well worth supporting.
Mik:
And it’s a new period, Colin. This is a new initial period where it’s worth again also to donate, you know, the beginning of a new wave for The Pulse. And we feel it, don’t we? Even the fact that we’re sitting here and talking so positively about The Pulse is because we actually really know that it’s important.
Colin:
The nice thing is I’m stopped in the street sometimes by people who say I heard you on the pulse, which is really very nice. And I do believe from feedback from the people that I meet at the pulse that our program, The Sustainable Hour, is very important to them and very well listened to. Support The Pulse and you’ll support The Sustainable Hour.
Mik:
And you can do that right now by calling The Pulse on 5222 5947 or head to the website www.947thepulse.com
Jingle:
From the laneways of Geelong to the world beyond, The Pulse is amplifying voices that matter. Now fully independent, we’re breaking barriers and building bridges. Your stories. Your sound. Your station. Join us in crafting a sonic landscape that reflects who we are and where we’re going. A new era has begun.
. . .
Colin:
George, what’s the thinking behind the title Lock the Gate? Because that to me is a negative thing, know, keeping people out. Basically you want people to join and be part of the movement.
George:
Yes, I mean, we have been asked that question lots of times over the years, particularly by Aboriginal people, for whom it sounds just like a classic colonial lockout. But it began really as a movement in two places, in southern Queensland and in the Hunter in New South Wales. And in Queensland, conservationists, particularly Drew Hutton, went and met with the farming communities on the Darling Downs who were facing the onslaught of the coal seam gas industry.
And it was the farmers who said to Drew, you always have to shut the gate. you you need to keep gates shut as a general rule in regional areas. But what we really need to do to the mining industry is lock the gate and not let them in. And the method of the lock the gate movement in that time, essentially because landholders don’t have in New South Wales or Queensland an official right to say no, of access for the mining industry. So locking your gate and preventing those mining companies from coming and exploring on your land is an act of civil disobedience in and of itself. And then one person sort of locking their gate and refusing, you know, leaves them somewhat isolated.
And so the movement grows to become a partnership among people within a regional area, an agreement that they will all lock their gates and not let the company on. And by doing that, joining together and forming local groups and then regional alliances, those communities are able to turn the tables of power to essentially one person up against one landholder up against a mining company has no power in the law to prevent them from accessing their land. But when it comes to an entire region, you know, part by part, road by road, community by community, declaring their resistance to the industry, it turns the tables and that’s the means by which Victoria was declared gas field free and the same for large parts of New South Wales as well.
Colin:
So it started as anti-fracking, anti-fracking to stop the gate from letting the mining companies come in and frack and it’s moved on there to become a much more wider movement. Has Lock The Gate supported any members of parliament?
George:
Well, we’re non-political officially, but certainly there have been people in parliament that have been very supportive of our movement, but they have come really from across the political spectrum. know, independent rural members who, you know, once upon a time had affiliations with the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party, for example, in New South Wales, people from the Labor Party, people from the Greens, you know, other rural independents have, you know, at various times been very supportive and participating in our movement.
And I guess when you have a groundswell of people from across the political spectrum saying that they want their region to be mining free, you tend to get a response from politicians. As I said earlier on, our sort of analysis of our situation is that going to the people in charge and pleading the case has tended to fall on deaf ears and not succeeded. And what we really need to do is to reorient attention and the locus and the gravitational centre of power to communities, to people. And we do that by joining together and making common cause. And by the time you’ve done that, politicians are coming to you and saying, what can I do to help?
Mik:
And what’s your own personal attention right now, George?
George:
Well, this week I’m fairly occupied by the federal government’s proposals to make changes to Australia’s national environmental laws, which is reform long in the works. But I think it’s fair to say we’re pretty bitterly disappointed by the approach that’s been taken by the federal government, which is going to enable the fast-tracking, not just of renewable energy and transmission and minerals mining, but also of coal and gas.
And I think it’s really exemplary of what I’ve been saying, you know, we sort of in Australia have allow, I suppose, power to be concentrated in ministers and senior public servants and media tycoons and corporate executives. you know, concentrated power tends to become fairly disconnected from, you know, the realities of people’s lives and the nature that they love.
And people really want the good life, you know, they want their local area to be protected. When I listened to government MPs introducing that law a couple of weeks ago, and in the second reading speeches, they were all speaking very movingly of their local environment and how much they valued it and how important the local volunteers were who were in environmental efficacy groups in their local area. But the bill that they were introducing is precisely going to disempower and strip participation from those groups and allow ministers to ride roughshod from Canberra over local environments and local people.
So I think we’re very much up against it, but we’re holding on to what’s true and beautiful from our perspective.
Colin:
George, you sound to me like you’re disappointed in the Labor government, the current Labor government, which came to power with a huge majority and the understanding of the people that voted for it that it would take more climate action. Would that be fair to say that you are disappointed?
George:
Well, of course, Colin! You know, I think that the current Labor government is in a situation where they have made a bunch of commitments on climate change that they’re not really keeping. But I think that to isolate them I suppose is to lose sight of a bigger picture which is that there are lots of clashing realities coming to a head now. You know there’s a reckoning underway. The way that we live our lives in Western modernity assumes a huge amount of consumption of energy and industrial materials that has to come from somewhere. And we haven’t really reckoned with where it comes from or where it goes.
And so, yes, the Labor Party is certainly failing to come to terms with those realities, but I think a fair number of us are kind of doing the same and to expect people in government to reckon with that really deep cultural and social contradiction without the community at large doing that process I think is probably not reasonable. And that is why I mentioned my poetry to Tony and I provided links to some of my writing work in this because I do very firmly believe that we have a duty to talk to our people, talk to our tribe about our relationship to the natural world and each other and the people around us. And that’s a cultural and a social problem and we’re not going to get, we’re not going to kind of come to terms with what climate change is doing to us all now until we have that reckoning.
Colin:
Well, that’s a great segway to a poem. Ladies and gentlemen, we’re talking today to Georgina Woods from Lock the Gate movement of Australia, who is a poet as well as an activist and she’s now going to read one of her poems for us. Right, George?
George: (41:18)
I haven’t done much thought of this because it was only a short time ago that Tony and I, you know, mentioned the idea of reading so I’m just going to open my book at random. This poem is called ‘Making Shelter’.
You will walk barefoot in a wind-made place,
beside the salty grass shouting sea and beaten shrubs.
Yield or be twisted.
These are your options.
You had better pause and pull yourself together.
This wind is going to outlast your mourning.
It will outlast your youth and your life.
To stand against it is to fall or sweep away.
As she-oaks have fallen,
as cabbage moths are swept,
you had better take a fist of earth to hold.
As your bark arms flex,
you will flower
and mag shelter for herbs.
Be patient.
There will come a time when your steadiness
has gathered so much life around it
you are a dune
with fresh water pooling at your feet.
Mik:
Tell us about your interpretation of what you just read to us.
George:
Yes, well that one I wrote while I was on a sort of fairly life-changing journey in the north coast of New South Wales and I was on a very wild beach and thinking about wild weather, and I suppose a somewhat daoist reflection about the way that the vegetation shapes itself in response to the wind and the waves and you know creates little depressions where more vulnerable low herbs and flowers can grow, and I guess it’s really about accepting the realities of climate change, and then I suppose acting in every part of your life in a way that is making beauty possible, making shelter possible, and all of us will do that, I think, in different ways, but to me… – I was thinking this morning, you might like this one about a conversation that Wendell Berry had with the activist Tim DeChristopher, who people might recall was jailed for an action that he took part in quite some years ago now and they were talking about urgency and DeChristopher was sort of saying that he remembered when, in the the time before he was jailed and he knew he was going to be jailed but he didn’t quite know when it was going to happen, and he was trying to decide whether to plant garlic and he eventually said, Well, I’ll plant it, you know, because someone else will be around to harvest the garlic.
And Wendell Berry said it reminded him of the Shakers religious movement in America because they believed, you know, that the end of the world was very near and yet they made this beautiful architecture, they put a great deal of effort into living their lives with great attention and beauty and know craft and skill, and once you think that the end of the world is coming, you know, one of the reactions you might choose to make is to say, ‘Well, everything I do, it just has to be the best I can I have, to put all of my spirit and skill into living well, for the sake of others as well as in my own way in my own world.
And I think that’s something that all of us are going to be coming to terms with, for the rest of our lives now that climate change is sort of starting to spin out of control.
Colin:
Are you hopeful, George, that climate change won’t spin out of control? Because I mean, that’s what you’re working for.
George:
Yeah, think we always need to work for the good, Colin. But, I think that the tipping points that are being reached are inviting us to see that the kind of harm that we’ve been trying to avoid has already been happening to people in ecosystems all over the world for the last two or three hundred years. And some of us have been sheltered from that for a long time and kind of in the eye of the storm, of the mentality that has been creating that harm. And so it’s never been a question, although I thought it was when I was young, but it hasn’t really been a question of yes or no, climate change or not, tipping point. There’s one that, we all have to do things now, there’ll be some future when we’re no longer having to deal with it.
We’re – as I said – dealing with the consequences of our actions or the actions of our people you know over the last two hundred and fifty three hundred years and that’s always going to be the case. So I don’t see it in a binary term of we’re going to win or lose. I think everything that we do is of profound importance always and the fact that things are reaching these incredibly high stakes you know consequence times is only making that more and more the case.
Mik:
I’m curious to hear another poem from you. I love the poem that you read to us. And certainly I totally agree with you that this is the time to really understand that quality of life is not necessarily about getting more stuff or more money. Quality of life is sometimes to have time. And to have time means to not be making money.
George:
Yep. Totally, totally. I have another one for you then Mik, at your request. So this is actually a poem I wrote quite some time ago, but the new iteration of Rising Tide, which was a group that I helped to form back in the original old days. I know I’ve floated on Newcastle Harbour alongside Tony, quite a few times in the deep past, but the new Rising Tide read this poem, I think sometimes at their planning sessions and retreats. So this one is called ‘The Floods’.
Flooding, vomiting over walls,
hurling down fences.
After years of sandbagging,
after years of retreat,
we dream we’re rushing over banks,
drowning forms, queues and categories.
We are carrying the day at last,
buoyant and inexorable.
Flooding, smothering roads and walls,
hill slopes yield to current and collapse.
Soils and trees join the tepid gravy,
urging, unrelenting past the door,
oozing loose our heavy luxury
into a mass of rubbish.
Snakes and bandits turn up with the water.
Wild teens dare each other to leap in.
Nurses follow in the ebb
searching for torn seeds
in the brown walls.
All of us are strangers now
with no water we can drink.
One day, one day, wet will cease receding.
We will pour out and reclaim.
In my dream this is the day.
In my dream we burst
like clouds to flood the mines
and catch the deluge.
Here we come, we over top the sky.
A dream we are droplets pouring down,
cascading as one.
We thunder on the roofs of bankers and mining bosses.
Friends, we’re drenched.
We cannot hold. We will spill. We will spill.
Mik:
Beautiful!
Tony:
Let’s spill! Be a spiller!
George:
Thank you.
Colin:
I think in, what is it, 1,400 episodes, you’re the first poet that we have enjoyed on The Sustainable Hour.
George:
Have you had poets on that you didn’t enjoy, Colin?
Colin:
We’re coming towards the end now, George, and we like to sign off. We used to sign off always with ‘Be the difference’, and each member would say it. And then we invited our guests to come up with their own versions of ‘Be the difference’. You are the one who is likely to come up with a poetic version. Can I invite you to sign off our program, if you like, with an endorsed Lock the Gate version of ‘Be the difference’.
George:
I guess I would say to take that extremely into the present and say the only thing that you can be is your own difference and you should live as if everything you do, every action you take has consequences.
Colin:
That’s lovely. Yes.
Mik: (49:56)
Be your own difference.
Colin:
Yeah. What do you want to be? You want to be the difference. That’s lovely. Thank you, George.
George: (50:07)
Well, thank you all so much for having me.
. . .
SONG
‘Consequence Times’
Verse 1:
Clashing realities
coming to a head now
I can feel the reckoning
in the weather
in the water
in the way people speak
The harm we tried to avoid
has already landed
on country
on ecosystems
carrying two hundred years
of someone else’s decisions
Bridge:
There’s frustration
A drifting sense
of not being in control
but that’s only until
we step in, together
and everything shifts
Chorus:
These are consequence times
Live like every choice
tilts the balance
And every breath matters
Part by part
road by road
community by community
we turn the tables of power
Verse 2:
Talk to your people
Talk to your tribe
Speak of the land
the weathering trees
the spaces between us
the ways we depend
on each other
Reorient the centre of gravity
we pull the power back
to the hands that care
We who know the names
of the creeks and the neighbours
Bridge:
Move with people
into the long work
of declaring your own destiny
for your local place
We want the good life
not the perfect life
The shelter that keeps
the wind outside
Chorus:
These are consequence times
Live like every choice
tilts the balance
And every breath matters
Part by part
road by road
community by community
we turn the tables of power
Outro:
The only thing you can be
is your own difference
Act in every part of your life
in ways that make beauty possible
Make connection
In consequence times connection is everything
Spoken words by George Wood:
There’s a lot of frustration and there’s a lot of a feeling of not really being in control.
Part by part, road by road, community by community, turn the tables of power.
Making beauty possible, making shelter possible.
The only thing that you can be is your own difference and you should live as if everything you do, every action you take, has consequences.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
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