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The Sustainable Hour no. 601 | Transcript | Podcast notes
THE CLIMATE BILL HAS ARRIVED. SO WHAT DO WE DO?
Keep turning up.
An Hour about climate coding, community power and the practical work of changing politics
The warnings have become lived reality. Heatwaves are shutting down workplaces, fires are forcing mass evacuations, crops are failing and climate disasters are draining billions from economies.
The climate bill has arrived. Yet governments are weakening climate policies, fossil fuel expansion continues and global media coverage of the climate crisis is declining.
In The Sustainable Hour no. 601, we examine this dangerous contradiction – and meet one of the people helping community movements build the digital power needed to respond.
Our guest is Rhys Forsyth, managing director of Code Nation, an Australian digital agency working with environmental organisations, political campaigns, community independents and progressive movements.
Code Nation works behind the scenes, providing the websites, databases, campaign tools, volunteer systems and digital infrastructure that help movements grow from good intentions into organised action.
Rhys’ message is refreshingly practical: “Just be there. Keep turning up day after day, making incremental progress.”
. . .
THE YEAR THE CLIMATE BILL ARRIVED
Mik Aidt opens the Hour by asking whether 2026 will be remembered as the year the climate bill finally landed. Extreme heat in Europe has reduced grain forecasts by an estimated ten million tonnes. Millions of working hours have been lost. National emergencies have been declared as fires, floods and heatwaves intensify across several continents.
At the same time, governments in numerous countries are retreating from climate commitments. Regulations are being weakened, targets delayed and fossil fuel companies given more room to expand.
Media coverage is also shrinking. Climate-driven floods, fires and heatwaves are routinely reported as disconnected natural disasters – a burning home, an exhausted firefighter, an evacuation – before the news cycle moves on.
The larger story remains hidden: these events are connected to the continued burning of coal, oil and gas.
“The climate emergency is accelerating. Governments refuse to lead, corporations continue to profit from destruction, and much of the media still fails to connect the dots,” Mik says.
. . .
GLOBAL OUTLOOK
Colin Mockett reports on another severe European summer, with fires sweeping through parts of France, Spain and Italy. Thousands of people have been evacuated as temperatures rise above 40°C. Firefighters have died while battling the flames, and the area burned across the European Union is already among the largest recorded by this point in the year.
Back in Australia, rapidly growing electric vehicle sales are beginning to reduce petrol demand and protect drivers from volatile international oil markets.
The transition, however, will require far more charging infrastructure – particularly along regional highways. Many existing charging stations remain hidden in shopping centre car parks while major service stations continue to rely on petrol and diesel sales.
Colin’s outlook highlights the wider international shift:
• Electric vehicles are taking an increasing share of new vehicle sales.
• Electric trucks are growing rapidly in China.
• Electric three-wheelers and two-wheelers are transforming transport in India and Kenya.
• Oil insecurity is making electrification an economic and national security issue.
Every electric vehicle placed on the road reduces oil dependence and weakens the grip of the fossil fuel industry.
. . .
THE TECHNOLOGY BEHIND SOCIAL CHANGE
“Code Nation” began when campaigners realised that political strategy alone was no longer enough. Modern movements also needed people who understood websites, databases, supporter communications and digital organising. The company now provides:
• Campaign websites and digital design • Database and NationBuilder support • Volunteer organising systems • Petitions and targeted supporter communications • Analytics and campaign performance measurement • Digital coaching and capacity building • Automation and AI-assisted campaign tools.
Its SupporterBase platform helps local volunteer leaders organise events, communicate with supporters, distribute campaign material and coordinate election activities while protecting personal information.
Code Nation has supported major environmental campaigns, conservation organisations and community independent candidates, including campaigns connected with Stop Adani, Senator David Pocock, the protection of the Blue Mountains and the movement against fracking in the Kimberley.
Much of this work remains invisible to the public. Behind every successful petition, volunteer roster or community mobilisation sits an infrastructure of databases, communications systems and people keeping the machinery running.
AI – powerful, useful and dangerous
Rhys describes artificial intelligence as both promising and fraught. AI can dramatically reduce the time and money required to analyse databases, create campaign tools and respond to fast-moving political events. Work that once took several days may now be completed within hours. For small organisations with limited budgets, this can release valuable resources for campaigning and community organising.
The risks remain significant: Growing energy demand from data centres, copyright and ownership concerns, privacy and data security issues, organisations surrendering responsibility to automated systems, and poor-quality information produced without human scrutiny. Rhys argues that human oversight remains essential. Organisations must take responsibility for everything they publish and protect sensitive supporter information from reckless use.
Australia speaking with two tongues
The conversation turns to Australia’s contradictory climate position. Millions of Australian homes now generate electricity from rooftop solar. Renewable energy and electrification are expanding, and Australia will play an influential role in the negotiations at the next United Nations climate conference.
Meanwhile, the Australian Government continues to approve and support expanded coal and gas production, much of it destined for export.
This contradiction makes a strong civil society and independent parliamentary crossbench essential. Governments may deserve recognition when progress occurs, but they must also be challenged when their decisions remain incompatible with climate safety.
Rhys believes the movement needs to use Australia’s international climate role to increase pressure on the government, expose inconsistencies and demand a level of ambition that matches the danger.
Beyond the environmental argument
For decades, climate campaigners hoped that scientific evidence would be enough to change public behaviour and government policy.
It was not.
Rhys suggests that the transition may now be entering a different phase. Fossil fuel dependence is increasingly understood as a threat to household budgets, economic stability, national sovereignty and energy security.
People who install rooftop solar, home batteries and electric vehicles can see the consequences directly in their power bills and petrol costs.
The climate case and the economic case are beginning to converge.
A household powered by renewable electricity is less exposed to wars, disrupted oil supplies and international price shocks. This practical experience may help bring a much broader section of the community into the transition.
Witnessing recovery in Vanuatu
Rhys joins the conversation from Vanuatu, where his wife is working for Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Although his family arrived after the country’s most recent major earthquake, he has witnessed the long recovery process faced by communities following earthquakes and destructive cyclones.
Homes, sanitation systems, electricity infrastructure and entire villages can take years to rebuild. As climate-related disasters become more frequent, the time available for recovery becomes shorter. Vanuatu’s people have developed extraordinary resilience. Rhys warns that even the strongest communities can only endure so much when each rebuilding effort is followed by another disaster.
Despair changes nothing
Asked how he remains positive, Rhys gives a direct answer. Looking at the climate figures alone, despair may appear rational. Yet despair offers no practical path forward.
“We might not be able to avoid all the worst impacts of climate change, but that doesn’t stop us from working as hard as we can to minimise the impacts and improve things where we can.”
There are researchers developing solutions, communities organising, campaigners creating pressure and political leaders beginning to recognise the scale of the challenge. The only constructive option is to get up and do something.
Just keep turning up
At the end of each Sustainable Hour, guests are asked to complete the program’s traditional closing invitation: “Be the difference”. Rhys offers his own version:
Be there. Keep turning up.
One extraordinary moment of action can matter. Lasting change is more often built through thousands of people returning to the work, day after day, making steady progress.
That is how campaigns become movements.
That is how movements change politics.
That is how the future is built.
→ More about Code Nation: www.codenation.com
. . .
MUSIC IN THIS HOUR
‘Prepare for Impact’
Drawing on warnings from climate risk expert Neil Plummer, the song moves from flooding, extreme weather and systemic collapse towards purposeful action. Its message is that collapse does not have to be the final page. It can become the moment when humanity chooses a new direction – imagining, rebuilding and regenerating. Good intentions are no longer enough. Purposeful action is what matters.
‘Climate Community’
The second original song asks us to reconsider what progress and prosperity could mean. What if “more” meant more meaning, more belonging, more time, more laughter and more connection? The song imagines a society guided by regeneration, care and deep democracy – measuring success through “Gross Domestic Nurture” rather than GDP. Climate community becomes a way of living and a way of becoming the kind of humans the Earth can trust again.
Communication within planetary boundaries
The Hour also features a statement from Earth system scientist Johan Rockström about the new Planetary Communications handbook. With seven of the nine planetary boundaries now breached, Rockström calls for new ways of communicating sustainability – connecting environmental science with health, security, prosperity, resilience and fairness.
Scientific information must become understandable, culturally relevant and capable of inspiring collective action. What happens in one part of the world does not remain there. In Rockström’s words, events elsewhere on Earth eventually send their invoices across the entire planet.
The electric advantage
The Hour closes with a satirical video showing angry American motorists waiting beside empty petrol pumps. One driver remains calm. He charged his electric vehicle at home the night before. The transition away from fossil fuels is already changing who remains vulnerable when the oil system fails.
“AI can be really problematic in a lot of ways, whether it’s on copyright and security, privacy, things like that, as well as the demand for new power generation. On the flip side of that is it does have a lot potential for the campaign movement that we work with and for our clients and for ourselves. As an example, if we’re doing complex database analysis or creating new tools and new campaigns, this might have taken days previously and, you know, not an insignificant budget for organisations to manage. But that important work can now be done in a fraction of the time and a fraction of the cost, which saves on their precious resources, saves their donors’ resources, which are very obviously very important to protect, and it means we can be more responsive when it comes to campaigns as well because often we are working to some pretty tight timelines.”
~ Rhys Forsyth, Code Nation
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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. 601
Anthony Albanese, Prime Minister of Australia: (00:00)
The space to build, the sunlight to power. Affordable, reliable, renewable energy.
António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General: (00:08)
Cooperation over chaos. We are all in this together.
Jingle: (00:22)
The Sustainable Hour. For a green, clean, sustainable Geelong: The Sustainable Hour.
Tony Gleeson: (00:32)
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.
As we face up to the climate crisis, we could do well to take note of the incredible accumulation of ancient wisdom that has come from putting their country and their communities as central in all their decision making. And that lifestyle, that existence is going to be what we need as we face up to the climate crisis which is strengthening by the day.
Mik Aidt: (01:36)
The year the climate bill arrived… After more than a decade of talk about it, it seems like this is the year – with national emergencies and heat lockdowns and two million people in China evacuated from flooding and everything we can see happening around the world. I mean I can just look out of the window, my backyard. The plants and flowers out there are confused. They seem to think it’s spring already! And I know that the farmers and the winemakers can see it on their fields.
The world is warming. And the bill for all our climate pollution is arriving. Crops failure. This heat wave in Europe has cut an estimated ten million tons from European grain forecasts. That’s the same as a loss of two billion euros. The same as $3.2 billion Australian dollars.
In the United Kingdom alone, just one week of heat wave meant 24 million working hours were lost because of extreme heat. These economic losses, that’s the climate bill. And at the same time, because of what I would call the Trump effect, over the past year 45 different governments have made decisions to delay action on climate, to weaken their regulations, to abandon the targets that they have. And to give fossil fuel industries even more room to expand. At exactly the time when you would think the climate crisis is becoming impossible to ignore, we have these politicians now. They can look out their windows, outside their parliament buildings, and see see the effects that the heat has on their societies, the fires and the floods and the losses. And yet they choose to step backwards.
And the media is looking the other way too. According to the “Media and Climate Change Observatory”, global news coverage of climate change in the first five months of this year was 35 per cent lower than the same period last year. So we have a crisis that’s going more and more dangerous. We have politicians who are going the wrong way, making our laws weaker, and we have the media talking about it less. And the problem is also the quality of their reporting, because when there’s a heat wave or wildfires or floods. These news organisations, they reported as isolated in quotation mark “natural disasters”. So on the TV screens we see a burning home here and a an exhausted firefighter there. And then they move on to the next story. They continue to fail to explain the connection there is, the scientific connection there is between these disasters we’re seeing and our burning of coal, oil and gas.
And, I mean, some media outlets amplify Trump’s story that the climate science is a hoax. But the reality is that all these things are connected. We are living through an accelerating climate emergency. That is the real story. Our governments refuse to lead. And corporations continue to profit from the destruction, and media fails to connect the dots.
So who will tell the truth about what’s happening? Well… Welcome to The Sustainable Hour. That’s what we do. We’d like to begin with a global outlook which is provided by our faithful globalised journalist Colin Mocket OAM – And Colin I have a feeling that it’s not good news you have for us today, especially not from Europe?
. . .
Colin Mockett’s Global Outlook: (05:30)
Yes, yes. Thank you, Mik, and it is in Europe where I’ll begin this week, where wildfires have swept through parts of France, Spain and Italy, forcing thousands of people to escape blazes that are fanned by scorching temperatures and strong winds. Three firefighters died last week in southern Europe.
And the whole of southern Europe is enduring another spell of severe heat with temperatures topping forty degrees in several areas. The total area of land that has burned this year in European Union countries is the second largest on record and we’re only in July. Now that’s according to satellite data from the European Forest Fire Information Service.
In Sicily last week around six hundred firefighters, forest guards and civil protection officers were fighting dozens of fires, many of which are still raging. One firefighter died after falling ill while battling the flames, the interior minister said. A spokesperson for Italy’s civil protection agency said the fires were being fueled by very high temperatures and dead,very dry soil. They also said that many of them had been deliberately lit. More than 160 fires have also been recorded in the Calabria region of Italy, with a local civil population chief saying several were deliberately lit there too. In Spain, a national emergency was declared as several wildfires burned out of control.
Forcing the evacuation of ten thousand people in the Madrid region and nearby Avila. The largest fires are very close to the capital, and they prompted the Spanish Prime Minister to call for a new combined international action on climate change. He called for everybody to say this is serious, “…it’s a war, we should all join together and fight it.”
Spain has seen 32,000 hectares burned since last Thursday. Back in France around Bordeaux, more than twenty thousand people, mostly tourists and campsites and holiday people, were evacuated last Wednesday as fire ravaged a seaside pine forest. “We’re dealing with a very dense stand of closely packed pines,” the firefighter captain reported. Wilfrid Schneider said, describing the fire as of rare intensity: European droughts and wildfires are both now more severe due to the burning of fossil fuels, according to climatologists from the World Weather Attribution, which warned that another heat wave fire event is imminent in Europe, possibly as close as later this week.
Now back home, soaring electric vehicle uptake is materially reducing Australia’s petrol demand, as watchers forecast the ongoing global oil crisis could put enough clean cars on the road to leave Australian drivers much less exposed to future fuel shortages.
Now that’s good for the climate, but it has both motoring organisations and energy experts warning that Australia now needs to accelerate its program of charging rollouts. They’re warning about a fact that we all know that EV charging stations are tucked away in urban shopping centres when they really should be in service stations on major highways. But almost all of those service stations are directly or indirectly owned by fossil fuel multinational corporations.
Who are unlikely to cooperate in a push that would reduce their sales. That’s what would happen if they put in EV charges rather than selling petrol. Now that’s a problem for the federal government, which has proved in the past that it is unwilling to break its current hand in glove relationship with the fossil fuel industry. So we’re in for some interesting times ahead, especially as the problem becomes more acute with ever more EVs being sold, and at present that’s every fourth vehicle in the market. The sale of EVs in Australia exceeded the milestone of 100,000 a year new vehicle sales last year in 2025. And Electric Vehicle Council chief executive Julie Delvecchio said that this figure has already been overtaken in the first six months of this year. So we doubled what we were selling last year. Meanwhile the world figures released last week show that the top ten countries were the fastest EV growth in in June of this year.
And Australia wasn’t even in the running despite those accelerated sales figures. Top of the list was Laos with EVs comprising 100 per cent of all new passenger vehicles sold. Second was Slovenia, with sales of passenger EVs up 124.7 per cent year on year. Then comes China because of its uptake of heavy duty electric trucks. They were up 104 per cent year on year.
Fourth came Italy, where passenger vehicles are up 97.9 year on year, and then France up 91.7. Ireland was next up 88 per cent. Germany then came afterwards at 78.2 per cent, and Denmark was up 63.2 per cent year on year, but that was on a previous high, and then there’s a couple of surprise nations in India came in at ninth place by virtue of its sales of electric three wheeler vehicles up 42 per cent year on year.
And in tenth place was Kenya, with its electric two wheelers up by 38.5 per cent year on year. That’s electric two wheelers against petrol driven two wheelers, I should say there. Now every one of those nations is contributing to the decline of CO2 emissions into our atmosphere, and challenging the power of the fossil fuel industry. And that small piece of good news ends our roundup for the week.
. . .
Jingle: (12:45)
Listen to our Sustainable Hour – for the future.
. . .
Tony: (12:53)
Our guest today is Rhys Forsyth. Rhys is the founder and managing director of a group called Code Nation. He’s an experienced leader working at the intersection of politics, social change, and technology. So Rhys, welcome to The Sustainable Hour. Thanks for coming on!
Rhys: (13:18)
Thanks so much for having me.
Tony: (13:19)
A pleasure! Now tell us about your group first, the Code Nation. What’s the origin of that name and and yeah, let’s get to know you a bit.
Rhys: (13:31)
Yeah, for sure. So I should say first of all, I’ve been with Code Nation for eight years now, but I didn’t actually start the company. That was one of my business partners, Corey McCann, along with another partner at the time, Alex, who is still working in the climate movement in the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. I believe you spoke to one of his colleagues, Michael Poland, a few weeks back. So they started a company, it was about 2013 or 2014, working from Colombia at the time.
And they had some background in politics and helping with campaigns and campaign strategy, but quickly discovered that there was a real need for people with technical expertise to help support those campaigns, working with the climate movement and with climate forward political candidates. So basically Corey became a self-taught coder and developer, helping create websites and provide database support for climate campaigns.
So that was 12-13 years ago now. The company has grown and and built on that foundation.
Corey is still very much actively involved as one of the fellow directors in the company and over time have added kind of new staff members, new partners to the business. we now work across websites, database support, automations, expert coaching and capacity building for people using those technical systems, as well as creating some of our own products to help with community organising.
We’ve got a platform called SupporterBase, which helps with empowering local volunteer leaders to run campaigns in their own communities. And we also help with things like kind of analytics, metrics, helping organisations track their digital KPIs. We’re very much focused on progressive politics and campaigns in Australia and internationally. We’ve worked primarily in the climate and conservation movement. So working with groups like the Australian Conservation Foundation, other conservation bodies with big big mobilisations like Stop Adani, but then also with political candidates and groups which want to see greater action on climate change, so the independent movement most recently.
Colin: (15:40)
That’s a wide spectrum, Rhys. Have you had any notable successes?
Rhys: (15:47)
Yeah, there have been a a few successes. unfortunately not every campaign ends ends in success, but I think the independent movement has been a a good example of the success that you can have with community-driven politics. We’ve all seen that in recent years. Quite a number of independents getting elected in 2022. We worked with about five or six of the independents, including Senator Pocock and others, that were elected into parliament to put greater pressure on our major political parties to take a greater level of ambition when it comes to climate change. So I’d see that as quite a big success, being able to support those candidates in 2020, as early as 2019, actually, some of the early independent candidates, then 2022, 2025 again, a number of those MPs being re-elected and some of them on much stronger margins. But then we also see a lot of you know success at the grassroots level as well. We worked on campaigns like Give A Dam in up in New South Wales with Wilderness Australia.
At the time opposing the raising of the Warragamba Dam wall, which was going to have really negative impacts on a lot of the local ecosystem through flooding, as well as some quite important First Nations cultural sites. And through working with campaigns like that to really be able to petition government to help them mobilise their supporters and support the excellent campaigners that we work with, be able eventually that that dam was not raised in 2023 the New South Wales government abandoned those plans. We we see grassroots campaigns like that across the country having having good success. Not all the time unfortunately, depending on the government of the day and the the political climate that we’re in, but I think there are a lot of those unsung successes that do happen day in, day day out.
Colin: (17:31)
I understand that you’re in Vanuatu at the moment. Is that climate related?
Rhys: (17:36)
It’s not actually, it’s my wife, my wife is posted here, she works for the Department of Foreign Affairs, so we’ve been moving almost constantly for the last ten to twelve years. but you know, Vanuatu is very climate aware, climate forward. the climate change minister here is very active and very capable, of course, being one of the key drivers of the the recent decisions of the International Court of Justice, ICJ, on the responsibility that that states have to limit the the damage from fossil fuels. So yeah, it’s it’s quite interesting being here, being in the Pacific and seeing both the frontline impacts. you know, Vanuatu’s unfortunately prone to a lot of natural disasters, which are only getting worse with climate change. So it’s yeah, it’s an interesting time to be here in the Pacific, but I can’t say it’s through my own my own work that I’m here.
Colin: (18:23)
Mmm… You’re seeing things first hand. We’re in Victoria, which is in the run up to an election at the moment. Is your group in any way campaigning in the upcoming Victorian election?
Rhys: (18:40)
Yeah, so we’ll we’ll be supporting a number of candidates and parties that are, yeah, I guess on the progressive end of the spectrum, you might say, who would are very, very focused on climate action. We’ll support them through things like website support, database support. There are a number of organisations that are apolitical but are not for profits that campaign to try and hold politicians to account on their climate commitments. So groups like Environment Victoria, I believe you’ve spoken to recently as well. We use some of our software like supporter base to help mobilise their local groups and allow their volunteer leaders to really make their presence felt, whether that’s through things like rostering, so getting volunteers to stand at booths and hand out the how-to-vote cards, whether it’s distributing campaign material like posters or just or lobbying their local candidates, we have a role, I guess, not just in the the political end, but also the bipartisan, not-for-profit community as well that just want to see stronger commitments on climate.
Tony: (19:45)
Rhys, could you take us through the situation where a client contacts you? What’s the process from there and in getting you to do the work that they commission?
Rhys: (19:58)
Yeah, absolutely. So we often get people reach out either via our website or just through referrals. Australia’s a pretty small place at the end of the day, and it’s pretty small community in the campaign world. So we’ll get repeat clients who kind of know us and and know what we do and will come back to work with us as they move from campaign to campaign, or they might refer others that have worked with us. Usually we start with a a quick scoping or discovery call with myself, other members of the team, to really understand their needs, what they’re trying to achieve.
And then from there decide whether we’re in a good position to help. If we’re if we’re not, we’ll very happily provide free advice around how they might go about achieving their objectives, whether or not that involves working with us. And if there is a good fit, if there’s something that we think we can really help with, then we’ll outline the services, how we go about it, what the costs are gonna be, the most cost efficient way of doing it, which is of course very important when you’re working in the not-for-profit space as well.
And I should say I’m only one of a a team of seven at the moment. I’m the least technical of the team. so I help with kind of running the business and some of the initial discovery and things like that. We’ve got a really wonderful team of technologists who work across website development, full stack development, design, and we make sure we always try and bring those people in to help kind of bring their expertise to bear in solving solving those problems.
Mik: (21:16)
Is AI empowering you?
Rhys: (21:19)
It is. Yeah, a it’s a bit of a it’s an interesting and fraught topic and be yeah, interesting to get your perspectives on this as well, because on the one hand, AI can be really problematic in a lot of ways, whether it’s on on copyright and you know, security, privacy, things like that, as well as the demand for new power generation and we’re seeing that debate at the moment with AI and data centres and of course we’d want to see that if there’s new energy demand that’s been met entirely by renewables.
But I think at the same “on the flip side of that is it does have a lot potential for the campaign movement that we work with and for our clients and for ourselves. I guess as an example, if we’re doing complex database analysis or creating new tools and new campaigns, might have taken days previously and you know, not an insignificant budget for organisations to manage. but that important work can now be done in a fraction of the time and a fraction of the cost, which saves on their precious resources, saves their donors’ resources, which are very obviously very important to protect and it means we can be more responsive when it comes to campaigns as well because often we are working to some pretty tight timelines.”
There’ll be a key political moment, somebody will want to launch a campaign, you know, the next day or several days later. They need live petitions, they need a new website, they might be sending out kind of targeted emails to all of their supporters. They want to maintain a pretty responsive kind of posture.
So AI is can be really useful for that. But of course you need to have those controls in place as well, I guess, at a societal level around the energy use that’s tied up in that, the kind of copyright protections for creatives, and at the same time at an individual level, making sure you’ve still got humans with with oversight of everything that happens and goes out and you take ultimate responsibility for anything that you produce, you’re not using it in a way which is reckless in terms of ingesting data into those systems. So yeah, there’s there’s really great opportunities, I think, for campaigns and technologists, but, you know, as with any new technology a lot of risks to think about as well.
Colin: (23:17)
A completely different subject, Rhys. I’m aware that the current motivation for people buying up electric cars in Australia is very much centered in the Middle East conflict and the shortage and the instability of the oil situation. It’s a strange, strange thing that’s happened that the – if you like – the fossil fuel industry is destroying its own business with this instability. Can you… I mean, you’re clearly across all of the different factors – can you see this being really, really good for the world that eventually future historians will look back upon the United States? Iran war as the catalyst for the world finally waking up and getting off of oil.
Rhys: (24:21)
Well I mean, I hope so! I think I should say at the outset I’m not an expert in kind of energy markets or some of these areas. but you know just as an observer and I do follow a lot of people that are, you know, people that you you’ve spoken to in your podcast, and others in the space and we’re lucky to work with a a lot of really great thinkers, think tanks, not for profits, so I’ll I’ll definitely defer to them in terms of the expertise.
But in reading a lot of their analysis and and kind of thinking myself, I think it’s just becoming increasingly clear to a lot of people that this is not an environment environmental issue, it’s not just a a climate issue, it’s an it’s an economic issue, it’s has to do with national sovereignty, with national security, and yeah, dependence on fossil fuels is not just terrible for the planet, but it’s terrible for our own kind of economic well-being, our our stability as a country, our society, and I think you know this this shock has helped awaken people perhaps from that complacency a little bit, just seeing how fragile the some of the supply chains are when we’re relying on these these fossil fuels.
So yeah, hopefully people people remember that and is a bit of a catalyst for people to continue to electrify and r reduce their dependence on on these fossil fuels. And I think you know that is is kind of broadly accepted and and seen across large sections of the political community as well.
Tony: (25:44)
Rhys, what what is it that excites you the most about what you guys are doing, what Code Nation is doing?
Rhys: (25:52)
I get really excited not just in the day-to-day in in supporting campaigns. It’s great when you support a campaign and have a big win or get a lot of prominence. So for example, we’re seeing Environs Kimberly at the moment in Western Australia really standing up to fracking in those areas and getting some record numbers of submissions. th those things are are definitely really memorable and they definitely excite and drive the team who are kind of day-to-day potentially in the code or the design. I think seeing those those impacts and those wins in the real world are are really motivating.
But I think that also over the a longer time horison, I get really excited about the ability to try and create some systems and tools which can sustain the movement over time. We are a a small Australian company, so we don’t have kind of external capital or investors or some of the resources that a big software company might. And that that poses challenges in terms of how well we’re able to service the broad section of clients, right from the really big not for profits that have the budget for really detailed support, but also the smaller grassroots organisations who can have a really big impact, but maybe don’t have the resources available immediately.
And what excites me is being able to try and work on systems which are more sustainable for all of our our clients regardless of their their budget. So examples might be initially working with groups like ACF and others to be create great new platforms which they can use for their communities, but then turning that into a model where we can reuse those systems or those subscription products or those techniques for smaller grassroots organisations to have access to as well.
I think that’s kind of it’s something we’re always working on and we haven’t perfected yet. It’s a kind of an ongoing process, but I’m excited about the ability to try and be able to do all of those things while sustaining a business that that pays our staff fairly and rewards their expertise.
Mik: (27:40)
Something big coming up in the horizon is the next UN climate summit, which usually takes place is it in the end of November. and it’s almost as if the whole climate movement has, you know, a cycle, an annual cycle where it builds up the reports begin to come out in October. You feel the the tension, and this is globally, a as a build-up towards this COP as it’s called, a conference of nations, which this year is going to be with Australia leading the negotiations. So do you feel you know the preparations are already beginning among your clients and so on for this big event?
Rhys: (28:22)
Yeah, I think a lot of our clients definitely grasp the the opportunity that’s there with Australia playing a a key role as a I guess a a point of leverage that hopefully our clients can can capitalise on to r to kind of spotlight what Australia is doing, what it isn’t doing, where it where it could be doing better, and then using its its role to ideally play a leadership position. I think, you know, Australian governments have have made progress in kind of recent years compared to maybe say ten years ago. I was at the time working for for DFAT and having to sell Australia’s climate policy around the time of the Paris Agreement, which you know is a whole nother story, but one of the reasons I’ve kind of ended up on the path I’m on.
So I think we’ve made progress since then, but there’s there’s definitely more we could be doing. It’s a good opportunity to for our our clients and and for the community more broadly to be able to push the current government to the highest level of ambition that is required and and then you know lead use that leadership position to try and bring other countries along as well because as a as a middle power I think Australia does have a reasonable amount of influence that we shouldn’t underestimate that we can can and should should use.
Mik: (29:33)
But it’s as if the government at the moment is speaking with two tongues. Because on one hand, Australians and the Australian government is quite proud of for instance how four million houses now have solar on the roof and we’re taking action and so on. This is domestically. But at the same time eighty per cent of the fossil fuels we dig out of the ground is exported. And on that side the government is subsidising the companies and it’s allowing companies to increase that production. So what’s going on there and and what’s your analysis of of this situation?
Rhys: (30:09)
Look, I think that’s a good reason why we need a strong crossbench and a strong civil society move movement to hold the government to account on those exact points that you mentioned. We can give some credit where there’s progress on electrification while still really not forgetting those those components and campaigning strongly on that. So you saw a big campaign that we helped support some of our clients with around the the gas tax and ensuring fair taxation of Australian resources. And also a number of our clients campaigning against gas expansion because the government has been giving the green light to kinda new gas pro expansion of gas projects, which is entirely inconsistent with what we need to be doing given the state of the climate. so I think it yeah, it just highlights the importance of those civil society independent groups to hold people to account.
I can at a and as much as I entirely agree with that and think the government needs to do more, I can see that the government is potentially gun-shy, a bit wary of the political backlash if they’re seen by some in the community to move too quickly against some of the the fossil fuel sector and some of our resources sector. So we’re probably treading slowly and I’d be hopeful that maybe they’d reconsider a gas tax kind of in the lead up to the next budget or stronger action in the lead up to next budget where perhaps they feel like they’ve got maybe some more political cover and it’s not right around the same time as, you know, the the Iran crisis and and negotiations with nation states around supply of those fuels, I think maybe they felt like it was the time was a little bit fraught for that.
So yeah, I would like to hope that you know the optimistic side of me hopes they’ll make some progress, but I think that’s all the more reason for everyone to still be able to hold them to account and point out where decisions are inconsistent and where as you say they ask maybe speaking with one tongue to one group and then seeing a different tune to another.
Mik: (32:06)
I’m noticing you’re smiling a lot. You seem very content with your job and the work you’re doing. we talk with a lot of people who feel very anxious and I would say close to despair about the situation, the way things are moving with the climate. A as slow as it’s going. What gets you up in the morning in terms of you know keeping that positivity that you have?
Rhys: (32:31)
I think my kids wake me up at in the morning, they’re the thing. They get me up at 6am. I’m smiling also because I’m enjoying yeah, really enjoy the conversation. Thanks again for having me on. It’s great to chat with you all. I think, you know, it’s just because there’s no other option, right? I’m not saying that despair is irrational. I mean, given the state of the climate and the direction we’re heading in number of areas of society, I can totally understand that despair it’s when you you you look at the figures and the facts alone, maybe that’s the rational response.
But I think it’s not helpful. At the end of the day you need to get up and do something about it. We might not be able to avoid all the worst impacts of of climate change and some other things that are going on, but that doesn’t stop us from working as hard as we can to minimise the impacts and to improve things where we can.
And you know I think as a as a society, kind of not just Australia but globally, we’ve faced lots of different challenges in the past and I think there there are opportunities to get better and to make improvements and we have a lot of very bright people working on these issues, whether it’s in the campaign space that we’re in or whether it’s kind of people in the scientific space making new discoveries and helping with adapt adaptation, resilience, how to suck more carbon out of the atmosphere. We have great researchers and we’ve got, you know, a new wave of politicians who are maybe increasingly more passionate about this issue. So I think there’s like there are some reasons for positivity, but also the main one is just that I think as
There’s no other alternative than to get up and just just do things.
. . .
SONG (34:00)
‘Prepare For Impact’
Verse 1:
Carbon feeds the sea
Evaporation feeds the clouds
The ocean spins slower
but hotter, and acidified
One month of rain in a single surge
Drowning our city, streets submerged
Red alert in the engine room
Mass evacuation, emergency
Chorus:
Prepare for impact
[We need to move beyond good intentions]
Prepare for impact
[to purposeful action]
Verse 2:
What we’re seeing, says scientists
has never been seen before
This is the age of the
trans-apocalyptic meta-collapse
It doesn’t look like the movies you saw
Rising prices, inequality, war
Industry holding our future at ransom
Leaders saying ‘nothing’s wrong’
Chorus:
Prepare for impact
[It is important to have these good intentions
but it is the actual purposeful actions that matter]
Prepare for impact
[to purposeful action]
Bridge:
But collapse is not the end
it’s the turning of the page
The moment we start choosing
a direction and a vision
The future’s not given, it’s ours to create
The danger’s in clinging to comfort and fate
Our task is not rescue, we nurture the new
We imagine, rebuild, and regenerate
[We do need to address this issue
It is critical and urgent]
Chorus:
Prepare for impact
[We need to move beyond good intentions]
Prepare for impact
[to purposeful action]
Verse 3:
Every choice we make
cuts a little carbon
heals a little wound
restores a little faith
Oh yes, we live on the edge
But we give birth to the new
More gratitude, more time
More laughter, more awe
Prepare for impact
. . .
Audio statement by Neil Plummer in the introduction:
Climate change is putting a lot of more stress on people, including a lot of young people. This report is a scary read. It requires a national wake up call.
. . .
Colin: (36:54)
We recently celebrated 600 editions of The Sustainable Hour, Rhys, and I can recall going back to the earlier editions, our hopes were very much tied to science. We were always hopeful that the message that was coming from the scientific community was going to change things in the standard community. They didn’t. That’s why 600 editions later. I’m quite hopeful because of this current American president and this current war. And I’ll give you my reasons. Number one, you you’ve heard already my belief that it’s the instability of the petrol market that is causing Australians to shift to electric vehicles.
Another thing that’s come out of this current war is that Iran, which has always been a rogue nation, Iran now understands that the way that it can control Donald Trump and America is by reducing the amount of oil that goes along the Hormuz Strait. And given that scenario, almost certainly we’re going to be have oil shortages and oil differences in the ongoing future.
So suddenly a a world that was dependent on oil is now having no option but to move into sustainable options. And the third thing, this is just completely by the by, one of the things that’s come out of this conflict and the one in the Ukraine, is that if you want to host a war in the twenty first century, you don’t use submarines, you use drones. Cheap drones. couple of thousand bucks and you can take out an aircraft carrier. So with a bit of luck it’ll get us out of AUKUS as well. Because sooner or later the penny’s gonna drop in Canberra that billions and billions of dollars on the promise of a submarine in 20 years’ time is not good deals.
That’s why I’m saying that right now the political war situation is better for Australia and for the climate movement than all of the talking that we’ve done in the past. Now that wasn’t a question at all, that was merely me ranting off and ah… but I would like your thoughts on the same streams if I can.
Rhys: (39:50)
Yeah, I mean, on the on the war, I think Donald Trump has definitely overplayed his hand and not really knowing what he’s got himself into there and I think you you’re right it could could have a bit of a role in shocking a lot of us out of our complacency. I think it’s also tied potentially to a broader challenge and maybe now opportunity the climate movement has had. As you said, we we all wanted science and kind of a rational fear of being wiped off the planet to be a good motivator for people to make change or for the go for governments of the day to make change and that just really hasn’t worked.
Those arguments haven’t stood up, at least they haven’t stood up as soon as other challenges arose. So even if climate were at the top of people’s minds for a while, as soon as the economy were were in bad shape, it would drop back down the list of biggest concerns and and it’s just not really winning people elections, the the pure environmental argument. now of course you can discuss whether that’s that’s good or not, but I think it’s just just a fact and I think we’re seeing now though move into a new phase where it’s not not just about the environment, it’s not just about a livable planet, it’s about the economy and people have very clearly seen that the impacts in their power bills, they put rooftop solar and you know a battery in their home and realise their power bills are going down and they’ve got an electric vehicle and they’re not hostage to the same energy shocks that that everyone else is.
And I think just the economics of it at scale with everyday people and their everyday lives feeling both the negatives of fossil fuels as well as the positives of making a change toward electrification or removing themselves from that system.
I think is is ultimately what gives me a bit of hope in that there there may be a tipping point for a broader section of society, not just the section which may be very, very passionate and very very environmentally conscious, but a much broader I guess, swing group of of Australians who have seen the day to day practical impacts for their lives, not to mention the the the real life kind of physical impacts that that they’re seeing from from climate change as well.
Colin: (41:56)
Currently you’re in Vanuatu and it it’s very much in in our eyes, I guess, is climate central in terms of its its exp exposure to extreme weather events. Can you I guess this is a change of direction, but your experience of being there, what what have you seen of that?
Rhys: (42:20)
Yeah, so I I should say we’ve been fortunate not to have been here during some of the major disasters. We arrived a few weeks after the horrible earthquake that poor people of Vanuatu suffered through about eighteen months ago and then before that some major cyclones which just decimated a lot of the infrastructure on the island. but so we so we haven’t seen that the worst impacts but speaking to people here that have have been through that, that’s obviously pretty devastating, you know, entire towns, villages, the ha the housing and a lot of infrastructure wiped down.
It takes years to recover. I guess at least one thing we are we do see is the recovery. It it doesn’t happen overnight, even if those cyclones were years ago, it’s kind of years to kind of rebuild a lot of the say the sanitation or electricity or or other infrastructure and for developing countries that that takes a a big that’s a big drain on your on your resources.
A lot it requires coordination between kind of aid partners and other development partners and local governments and local communities and you see people re rebuilding, it takes several years to get to a decent place again. and then of course the problem with climate change is those disasters are only gonna get more and more frequent. So your time available to recover, to try and get the community into a good good place again only gets shorter and shorter and that, you know, that is obviously gonna be
Heartbreaking and very, very difficult, as resilient as the people are here, and you know they’re because they are a very resilient country as they’ve they’ve had to be with one of the highest rates of natural disasters. I think that communities can only take so much and I think that’s that’s something that’s gonna be a challenge going forward. Again, not being a an expert in in the Pacific, but you know, it is just something that you see in that in the day-to-day.
Jingle
. . .
Mik:
That’s how much climate activism and climate coding we could put into one sustainable hour. Thank you very much to Rhys. And before you leave us, Rhys, just give us a tip. If people want to get in touch with you, where do they find you and what can they do? How does it work? Secondly, we’d like to hear from you what should we be? We always have been saying be the change, be the difference, as an ending of our program. What’s your ‘be’?
Rhys: (44:36)
Okay. yeah, that’s a good question. I’ll have to let one part of my brain think about that while I start with the easier part. yeah, thanks a lot to all of you having me on and providing me on. It was yeah, lots of great fun. my wife always always tells me I’ve got a monotone, so hopefully it wasn’t too monotonous. but yeah, really, really appreciate it. Had a had a great chat and happy to come on any time that is useful to you, maybe in the lead up to some coming elections we can talk about what’s what’s going on there.
At some point, congratulations again on over six hundred episodes. That’s quite a milestone. Really amazing work. I think maybe it’s not as exciting as and inspiring as you might like or as some other bigger slogans of some some bigger thinkers, but I think just to be there, just keep turning up. it’s it’s one thing to have one moment of inspiring action, but I think you’ve just got to keep just be there, keep turning up day after day, making incremental progress.
And I think across many people, organisations, governments that will make the difference in the end. So that’s that’s my suggestion.
Mik: (45:38)
Love it. But before that, just remember how do people get in touch with you?
Rhys: (45:42)
yeah, that was the easy part. CodeNation.com. So yeah, if you just look at Codenation.com or Code Nation Australia. There are a couple of code nations around the world. There’s one in the US and one in India. Some people get mixed up. We but yeah, Code Nation Australia, we’ve got contact forms on the website. They can book a call with me as well via the website there. I have a little calendar link. I’m always happy to have a chat, even if it’s not you know, for a direct project. If people just want free advice, if they’re a grassroots organisation, small not for profit. They want to talk about their digital presence, their website, how they do their community organising with tech. Happy to have a a quick chat about how all that works. Thanks so much.
Tony:
Thanks. Have a great day!
Rhys: (46:19)
Thanks. Appreciate it!
. . .
SONG (46:21)
‘Climate Community’
Verse 1:
Millions of years of life
washed away in two centuries
Forests fall.
Oceans rise.
And still we chase
the idea of “more”
Bridge:
What if more
meant meaning?
What if growth
meant belonging?
Chorus:
Climate Community.
That is the vision.
That is the call.
Climate Community.
Not as a campaign
but a way of life.
A way of being.
A way of becoming whole
Verse 2:
This is where
the head meets the heart
and moves the hands.
Where stories grow like roots
and joy is the fuel
I don’t ask,
“What will I sacrifice?”
I simply ask,
“What brings me alive?”
Bridge:
Regeneration is our compass.
Care is our culture.
Deep democracy is relationship.
We are not separate from nature.
We are nature
remembering itself.
Chorus:
Climate Community.
That is the vision.
That is the call.
Climate Community.
Not as a campaign
but a way of life.
A way of being.
A way of becoming whole
Verse 3:
More time.
Less noise.
More soul.
Less luggage.
We measure not in GDP
but in GDN – Gross Domestic Nurture.
We’re done with offsetting
What we onset – is community.
Outro:
We tell stories that make us laugh.
We choose meaning over consumption.
We practice being the kind of humans
the Earth can trust again.
We are already here.
And we welcome you
in our Climate Community.
. . .
Johan Rockström (49:22)
We need new ways of communicating global sustainability. We are fundamentally undermining the stability, the resilience and life support on Earth. This is what science shows. Seven of nine planetary boundaries have now been breached, and not only do we therefore need new ways of communicating sustainability, but also more communication of sustainability. We need to shift towards emphasising that this is about resilience, it’s about human health, it’s about security.
It’s about prosperity and equity for all of humanity. Whatever happens locally will propel itself and have impacts globally. What happens somewhere else on planet Earth sends invoices back across the entire planet. We’re totally intertwined and putting pressure on the entire planet. Inspired by this science and the planetary boundary framework, a new group of researchers, communicators, have over hundreds in one community effort come together to co-create a science-based communications handbook, The Planetary Communications.
The objective of this work is to support and connect people worldwide who want to communicate the latest sustainability science as effectively as possible, helping to secure life, security, prosperity, and equity within the safe operating space of planetary boundaries.
This means crafting new narratives that resonate across cultures, designing visuals that make complexity accessible and understandable, and developing communication strategies that inspire collective action, all of it being scientifically grounded. This requires major investments in communication development.
Time, human resources, expertise, but not only creating new narratives, but also developing this in line with the exponential development in the digital AI-driven communication highways. This is all communication for resilience, for stability.
It is sustainability communication that can enable and support better decision support, supporting social and economic development, to build more stable societies in line with the turbulent world we’re living in, to have a manageable planet for all future generations.
. . .
EV Video (51:48)
Anger and bewilderment are growing as more and more Americans cope with gasoline lines and empty pumps.
And I’m out again. Dead out.
I’m in the line two hours here and I can’t get gas! This is baloney!
Why doesn’t anybody contact the president? Why is he letting this happen to us? Some of the people in line here still don’t have a tank of gas. Except for this gentleman who’s driving an electric vehicle.
Nah, I’m fine. I charged at home last night. Good luck though.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
CALENDARS
Events we have talked about in The Sustainable Hour
Events in Victoria
The following is a collation of Victorian climate change events, activities, seminars, exhibitions, meetings and protests. Most are free, many ask for RSVP (which lets the organising group know how many to expect), some ask for donations to cover expenses, and a few require registration and fees. This calendar is provided as a free service by volunteers of the Victorian Climate Action Network. Information is as accurate as possible, but changes may occur.
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