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The Sustainable Hour no. 575 | Transcript | Podcast notes
In Episode 575, we mark an extraordinary milestone. Throughout 2025, The Sustainable Hour has quietly evolved a second voice – a musical one. Week after week, inspired by the insights, emotions and stories shared by our guests, we have turned conversations into songs. 51 of them so far, with number 52 arriving next week – one for every Sustainable Hour of the year.
Mik Aidt introduces this new creative chapter: how songs became a new way of communicating the grief, the joy, the openings and the possibilities within the climate story. Music, he says, reaches where graphs and facts cannot – offering a way to breathe, to feel, and to stay connected to the heart of the work.
These tracks are now released on Spotify, Apple Music and Amazon Music under the artist name ‘The Force of Life Collective‘. They are, in Mik’s words, “a musical diary of 2025” and an echo of the hundreds of voices featured on the show.
Colin Mockett’s Global Outlook
Colin brings news from around the world, beginning with reflections from Brazil’s environment minister Marina Silva on the weak outcomes of COP30 and the urgent need to act before catastrophe strikes:
• Silva highlights the absurdity of rapid global mobilisation for crises like COVID-19, financial collapse and war – while climate and nature continue to receive only fragments of attention.
• Deadly flooding across South and Southeast Asia has claimed more than 1,250 lives, with many still missing.
• Africa’s rainforests have shifted from storing carbon to emitting it, underscoring the gravity of the global ecological breakdown.
Yet positive signals are emerging:
• The UK announces an end to all new oil and gas exploration.
• France’s public broadcaster joins Covering Climate Now to strengthen truth in climate reporting.
• San Francisco’s driverless EV fleet shows dramatic safety improvements, offering a public-health argument for autonomous transport.
• And finally, good news from the pitch: Forest Green Rovers’ men’s and women’s teams are both sitting in second place.
Our Top Ten songs of the year
This episode is dedicated to the music created throughout 2025. Each co-host selected three favourites, bringing the shortlist to ten tracks. They emerge from the stories and themes that shaped this year:
• Consequence Time – inspired by climate activist and poet George Woods
• New Relations – calling for wider networks and solidarity, a common theme all year
• What Makes Us Happy – drawn from Andy Greg’s reflections on giving and community
• Symphony of the Shift – inspired by Michael Haupt’s perspective on civilisational change
• The Periphery – based on Kasper Bjørkskov’s idea that change begins at the edges
• Return Again – born from Margie Abbott’s Earth Day speech in Eastern Park
• Learn to Listen – shaped during NAIDOC Week in conversation with Yaraan Bundle
• EV Smile – a light-hearted celebration of electric mobility and Colin’s great-granddaughter Evie
• Let the Plants Move In – echoing Peter Andrews’ insights into land, water and ancient wisdom
• Stand Up – the top-scoring song of the year, calling for courage, truth-telling and ignition of change – another common theme referred to over and over all year.
• We end with the track Time to Wake Up, carrying us toward the final episode of 2025.
All 51 current songs can be found at climatesafety.info/music and on streaming platforms under ‘The Force of Life Collective’.
“Working with these songs has become like an opening to a whole new world of communication where sometimes difficult topics, sometimes really joyful topics were blended with a different way of communicating. You know, we can talk about climate statistics and you can look at a graph, but a song, a song has a potential to reach and speak to us in places where the words and the graphs and the numbers really can’t touch us.”
~ Mik Aidt, in explaining the difference having the music on our show has made for him
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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. 575
António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General: (00:00)
We are in the dawn of a new energy era. It’s time to wake up and step up.
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 on 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.
As we rapidly approach the end of yet another year, another calendar year, we’d like to reiterate that it’s the importance of listening to and learning from the ancient wisdom that the Wadawurrung people have developed. They’ve developed it from nurturing their land and their communities for millennia before their land was stolen. The declared treaty in Victoria gives us great hope for the future.
Mik Aidt:
This year, 2025, something unexpected has been happening behind the scenes of The Sustainable Hour. Between the interviews and the talks about climate science and community and the hard truths, there’s been another voice quietly growing: a musical one!
Week after week, after each episode and after listening to the insights and the emotions that our guests brought into our studio, we’ve been going to the digital music studio, turning those moments into songs – 51 songs so far. And before this year is over, there’ll be 52. So one for every week of the year. As sort of a musical diary of our journey, The Sustainable Hour’s journey through 2025, grounded in these conversations that we’ve had and the futures that we’re trying to imagine together.
We’ve had listeners asking, ‘Where can we find the songs?’ So now, by the end of the year, it’s time to actually release them. And we have just released them. So they’re available on Spotify, on Apple Music, on Amazon Music, wherever you listen to music, because most people do that over their phones nowadays. And if you want to find them, you’d have to look for the artist’s name, ‘The Force of Life Collective’.
So when you search ‘The Force of Life Collective’, you’ll get the first 50 songs right there available to play.
I’d also like to explain, maybe take it one step deeper about why we’ve done this. Certainly for me personally, this I think has led to one of the biggest shifts in my life as a climate activist this whole decade of being a climate activist, because working with these songs has become like an opening to a whole new world of communication where sometimes difficult topics, sometimes really joyful topics were blended with a different way of communicating. You know, we can talk about climate statistics and you can look at a graph, but a song, a song has a potential to reach and speak to us in places where the words and the graphs and the numbers really can’t touch us.
It gives us, I think, a way to breathe and a way to deal with even emotions such as grief, sadness, and the good stories, the solutions. Sharing all of this, which is not just about protesting or policy, it’s about heart, it’s about imagination, it’s about belonging and community. Sharing. That’s what music is about, isn’t it? It’s about creating relations and sharing feelings together.
So these 52 tracks of 2025 from The Sustainable Hour, or as we call us now, ‘The Force of Life Collective’, they are a soundtrack for the next year of listening and learning and leaning in. You could say they are a musical echo of these hundreds of voices that we’ve had going through our Sustainable Hour – scientists, activists, elders, aboriginal, young people. All this is meant for sharing and now it’s being extracted into songs. Because sometimes the most important things that we can say is something that we can only express in song and poetry.
Having said that, let’s hear what’s been happening around the world. We have Colin Mockett OAM, ready as always with the latest news from around the planet. Over to you, Colin.
COLIN MOCKETT’S GLOBAL OUTLOOK
Thank you, Mik. And yes, I don’t know after that introduction, I’m not sure whether I’ve got a force of life to bring you as part of our roundup. But nevertheless, I’ll go through with it.
My roundup begins in Brazil, where the nation’s environment minister has had a chance to reflect on the COP meeting that was held in the Brazilian Amazon and expressed her disappointment in the weeks after COP finished. Given the forces that stopped all of her country’s suggestions and proposals at the summit, Minister Marina Silva asked how now could governments ever push forward progressive policies on the climate and nature at COP summits.
She compared the climate emergency with the huge worldwide efforts to preserve the economic system after the 2008 financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemics, and the immense military spending underway in Europe currently. And she said that she found it incredible how little was going into the campaigns to stabilise the climate and nature. “Something is wrong,” she said.
“Like when we move to confront the problems of COVID-19, why are we only able to do this when the harm has already been done? Why don’t we show that ability when the problem has been detected and proven and is already sending us most malevolent ambassadors in the form of fires, heat waves, ever more intense typhoons and hurricanes?”
“The visits of these ‘sinister ambassadors’ should be enough for us to make preparations in a way that the dinosaurs were unable to do. They didn’t know that a large meteor was coming towards them. We do know what is coming towards us. We know what needs to be done and we have the means to do it, yet we don’t take the necessary measures.”
She said her government was planning to do all that it could to change that. The Brazilian government would bring forward plans to halt deforestation in the nation and phase out fossil fuels. To this end, it would participate in the first international conference on a just transition away from oil, coal and gas that’s being held in Colombia next year.
And it would lead by example, she said. “I am inspired by the fact that we have reduced deforestation by 50 per cent in the Amazon and agribusiness has grown by 17 per cent in the last three years. This demonstrates it is possible to do this,” she said. “If we’re not determined to achieve, we will apparently remain in the same place. And I say apparently, because we are already heading towards an unthinkable place where the very conditions of life are diminished.”
That’s the Brazilian environment minister, her name is Marina Silva, and she’s talking on a force of life much bigger than our music, Meanwhile, the minister’s ‘sinister ambassadors’ were visiting elsewhere with two tropical cyclones and a typhoon, causing heavy rainfall, widespread flooding and landslides in South and Southeast Asia throughout last week and last weekend.
That combination resulted in the deaths of more than 1,250 people in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand alone, and there are many more still missing. Then in Africa, it was reported that the continent’s rainforests were now emitting carbon instead of storing it, contributing to climate change instead of preventing it.
That came in a report that stated since 2010, the three largest rainforest regions in the world. That’s the South American Amazon, Southeast Asia and Africa have all shifted, from being storers of carbon to emotters of it, underscoring the need for urgent action to save the world’s great natural climate stabilisers. That’s a real force of nature.
But given all that, the news this week is not all bad. From Britain, the BBC reported that the UK has officially ended all oil and gas exploration and is looking for ways to close its North Sea oil platforms and redeploy their workforces. Then France nnounced that its state-owned radio and television stations, RTF, would be joining Covering Climate Now, a global collection of more than 500 newsrooms all committed to publishing more honest and better climate coverage in an effort to combat the misinformation and disinformation in mainstream media.
And again, both those announcements were made in the wake of COP30’s disappointing outcomes. They both began with, ‘In the wake of the COP30, we are doing this…’ So it is having an impact, if you like, but it’s in spite of how it was clearly in the hands of the fossil fuel industry and not of climate environmentalists.
Meanwhile, from California came a glimpse into the future. It’s about the autonomous vehicles that are now everywhere in San Francisco. That’s their name for driverless cars that are now widespread, in widespread use on all of the public roads in that area of California. Most common are driverless cabs that are called Waymoes, which cost around about $11 per kilometre to hire, with the average journey costing around $25. They’ve been in use for the past 25 years, and that’s long enough to compile a whole lot of comparison statistics. And what those show is quite staggering. In essence, driverless cars are much, much safer than cars driven by humans. When compared like-for-like, the figures show that autonomous vehicles are almost twice as safe as cars with drivers.
They’re half as likely to be in an accident causing injury and the likelihood of them causing death is more than 60 per cent less than human driven cars. Autonomous vehicles always obey traffic rules, you see. And yet it’s when they have an accident, that’s when they hit the headlines. When you look at the data, they’re miles safer. As a result, America’s road safety authorities are calling for a bigger and faster rollout of autonomous vehicles, saying that they may be on the path to eliminating traffic deaths as a leading cause of mortality in the United States. While widely reported as a tech or a climate initiative, for the majority of San Francisco’s autonomous vehicles are battery-powered. The San Franciscan authorities proclaimed the new figures as a public health breakthrough.
And finally, Forest Green Rovers.. This is just for Tony. Forest Green Rovers played Solihull Moors at the weekend and that resulted in a 1-1 draw. But that one point was enough to lift them into second position on their ladder. The top five teams have only got one point dividing them. It’s a very, very tight race this year. And the Forest Green Rovers women’s team played Frampton Rangers Ladies. That was away at Frampton. The result was Frampton 2, Forest Green Women 3. And that left the Green Goddesses in second place in their ladder too. So both of our teams are in second place coming towards the end of their season.
The difference is that the Forest Green Rovers women have played two fewer matches than the others in their top group because they had two matches postponed earlier in the season. So they stand a better chance of topping their ladder once we get into the new year. And that is the end of our roundup for the week.
Jingle:
Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.
Tony:
Thanks for that, Colin! There was a term in there that really hit home for me the importance of language, that ‘sinister ambassadors’, which are the actual extreme weather events and their impacts. We heard figures of 1,200 people that died in Asia during the week. Yeah, and we’ve got to remember that they’re just not numbers. They’re real people with real loved ones. And that seems to be happening week after week after week and we keep asking how many people have to die?
Now, usually at this time of the year, we have a show dedicated to music and we’re doing the same this year. The difference this year though is that all of the songs have been, yeah well there’re songs that Mik and AI and a lot of other tools have created over the course of the year. There are 50 of them. And yet today we’re going to listen to, we’ve picked out 20 and shortlisted to 10. And of those 10, we’ve chosen three each. So the three songs for me… One, the first one is ‘Consequence Time’. And that came out of our show, a recent show featuring George Woods, who is, as well as being a long time climate activist, a long time poet.
SONG: ‘Consequence Time’
Colin: (20:48)
Okay, look, this is among my favourites: It’s a funky song inspired by a Punjabi lady that we had on the show. And it’s called ‘New Relations’. And it basically says that we need wider networks. And I’ll go along with that too.
SONG: ‘New Relations’
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. Premiered in 566
Mik: (25:14)
Relations, new relations, that’s certainly one of the big words that I take with me out of 2025, along with what maybe became the biggest word of the year in my world, which is ‘connections’. And that’s also what the next song is about, inspired by Andy Greg, who I met at the Tiny House Expo in Geelong. And he talked about how he found happiness in giving and in community: ‘What Makes Us Happy’
SONG: ‘What Makes Us Happy’
What Makes Us Happy | Lyrics
– A song of tiny homes and huge hearts, where happiness is found in giving and community. Inspired by Andy Greig from Swift Tiny Homes. Premiered in The Sustainable Hour no. 564
Tony: (28:48)
The next song I’ve chosen is “Symphony of the Shift”. Now, it came out of a program with a gentleman called Michael Haupt from South Africa. And he’s looked at collapses, various collapses that have occurred on the Earth over years. He says nothing to be scared of. It’s something that’s needed. There’s been many of them throughout history and this, it’s a blank canvas and we can paint on that whatever we want. So that comes through clearly in this song: ‘Symphony of the Shift’.
SONG: ‘Symphony of the Shift’ (29:34)
Colin:
This is one I like, it’s an upbeat piece and it’s basically inspired by the truth. What we need when it comes to the climate movement is more truth and less of the untruths and misinformation that’s swirling around the climate debate. It is of course: ‘The Periphery’.
SONG: ‘The Periphery’ (34:06)
The Periphery | Lyrics
– An anthemic call to reclaim power from the collapsing system, transforming crisis into collective action. Inspired by Kasper Benjamin Reimer Bjørkskov in Force of Life episode no. 3.
Mik:
‘The Periphery’, which is a song based on the interview I did with Kasper Bjørkskov when I was in Denmark in August, who talked about how we need to first gather the periphery and then we can move together towards the centre of power. Now, back to the 22nd of April, which every year is Earth Day, and we marked Earth Day with a special event in Eastern Park, where Margie Abbott gave a beautiful speech, and based on that speech, the song ‘Return Again’ was born.
SONG: ‘Return Again’ (38:42)
Return Again | Lyrics
– A new Earth Day anthem reflecting on our spiritual and ecological roots. Inspired by Margie Abbott’s 2025 Earth Day speech in The Sustainable Hour no. 544
Tony: (42:07)
The next song I’ve chosen is ‘Learn to Listen’. Now this was during NAIDOC week back in July and it’s on the back of an interview we did with Yaraan Bundle. Yeah, it’s very much from a First Nations’ perspective and it really brings home the idea that we need to listen to them. Each week we start the show with an exhortation to the audience to listen. So, listen to this and hopefully it inspires more people to listen to that ancient wisdom which we’re certainly going to need.
SONG: ‘Learn to Listen’ (42:54)
Learn to Listen | Lyrics
– A poetic invitation to slow down, honour Country, and embrace the truth-telling and healing that Treaty and cultural respect require. Inspired by Yaraan Bundle in The Sustainable Hour no. 555
Colin: (46:47)
My next choice is a delightful one actually. It appeals to me on so many levels. First of all, the sentiments are things that I feel all the time when I’m driving my electric vehicle. It’s lovely to sail past service stations and not have to bother to look and see how much fuel is this week, which is something that I used to do all the time. Plus, I have a great granddaughter who is a delight to me and her name’s Evie. So when you came up with a song called the ‘EV Smile’, it works on at least two levels with me. It’s the ‘EV Smile’ gets my vote.
SONG: ‘EV Smile’
Tony: (50:30)
Now, our next song, ‘Let the Plants Move In’, it’s based on an interview we did with Peter Andrews. His ideas are very much based on Indigenous First Nations, that ancient wisdom about looking at the land and listening to what it’s saying to you. This song is very much about that.
SONG: ‘Let the Plants Move In’ (51:09)
Mik:
Which leads us to the song, the 10th song, which got the highest score from your Sustainable Hour Jury here. We all three independently gave this one a 9-out-of-10 score in our little, SustainableHourVision competition here. A song that strongly calls for speaking up, rising up, and igniting change: ‘Stand Up’.
SONG: ‘Stand Up’
Stand Up | Lyrics
– A fierce protest anthem calling us to rise, speak out, and ignite change, inspired by a Linkedin-post by Dani Hill-Hansen
Mik: (58:24)
That’s as much music as we were able to stack into one Sustainable Hour, one of this year’s last Sustainable Hours. We still have one to go next week. However, if you think this music is interesting and you want to hear more of it, there are 50 songs out there on Spotify, on Amazon and on Apple Music. And of course, on our website, climatsafety.info/music.
Tony:
Feedback always welcome about which song… if there’s a particular song that stands out to you or any comments at all about the way the music has been presented this year, we always appreciate that feedback.
Colin:
That’s all good with me. What is it we’re going to be part of? We’re going to be part of the “Force of the Collective”.
Mik:
“The Force of Life Collective”.
Colin:
May the Collective be with you.
SONG: ‘Time to Wake Up’
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