HEALING THE EARTH - INDIGENOUS PERSPECTIVES

06/01/20 • 10 min

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HEALING THE EARTH1st June 2020Producer: Andy Britt Interviews: Vivien LangfordGuests:Greta ThunbergDr Tjanara Goreng GorengRev Glenn LoughreyBruce ShillingsworthVanessa PetrieRhys Anderson "Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced" James Baldwin Greta Thunberg spoke to the EU parliament.. The speaker said "You meet politicians who take a photo with you and then do nothing." But make no mistake, "you are not at the white house with Donald Trump, you are not in Australia where the prime minister is " climatosceptique" You are in Europe! We are making the Green deal ."But Greta tells this huge assembly how we are deluding ourselves that we are taking climate action. How we are all pretending,pretending,pretending."We notice the house is on fire yet we go inside, go to bed and do not even call the fire brigade. Our targets for 2050 are wrong. We should have targets for 2020 and each year after that until the carbon emissions are right down."It's a humbling moment and humiliating for us to hear that everybody knows what an obstacle Australia is.There was a standing ovation. For healing we then talk to Dr Tjanara Goreng Goreng. She is a clinical psychologist and Songwoman.She has insights into endurance because Aboriginal people have already been through a holocaust. She wants transformational leaders brave enough to take bold climate action. She says " If you move beyond being ego centric, you can reach a higher level of thinking. I discovered a number of things that were unique to Aboriginal culture so that a person can navigate to that higher level." Bruce Shillingsworth spoke at the Transitions Film Festival about saving the water in the Darling Barker river. Carbon emissions are behind the drought but unfair draining of the water brings preventable suffering to wildlife and communities. He makes an impassioned appeal for us to defend the river, to supply water tanks and filters to communities that feel abandoned. He invites us to the second great Corroboree tour in September October to go to Bourke and Menindee and listen to the people. The film is " When the river runs dry" by Rory Mc Leod Rev Glenn Loughrey spoke on a panel about " Sustainable Nation". As a Wiradgeri man, minister and artist he talks about reading the land. It's had enough as the drought, fires and fish kills attest. We can notice these signs but how can we demand less and start the healing?. Vanessa Petrie CEO from BZE and Rhys Anderson water business leader from Arup talk about working in communities to build water and energy solutions that will endure and not cause future damage.

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ONE MILLION JOBS/ ZERO CARBON COMMUNITIES - 25th May

ONE MILLION JOBS/ ZERO CARBON COMMUNITIES25th May 2020. Produced remotely by Vivien Langford and Andy BrittGuests: Heidi Lee - Business and Industry lead at Beyond Zero EmissionsDr Heidi Edmonds- Communities investment lead BZE Eytan Lenko- Interim CEO at Beyond Zero EmissionsImogen Jubb- National manager Zero Carbon CommunitiesUrsula Hogben - Zero Emissions Sydney NorthMichael Copsey- Banyule Clean Energy GroupMusic "Failed State" by David Rovics " Only a crisis produces real change. When that crisis occurs the actions that are taken depend on ideas that are laying around"* Post pandemic there are so many ideas laying around.Will the old ideas based on coal oil and gas receive stimulus spending? Will retrofitting buildings to require zero heating and cooling receive a boost? The French are doing that for 500,000 buildings per year.What ideas will underpin the transition to clean energy?How will heavy industry reduce its emissions to zero?Why are communities helping solar orphans? We take a look at the One Million Jobs plan which BZE launched at the Smart Energy conference. Heidi Lee tells us about Heavy Industry in Newcastle as they leapfrog gas. High energy users can actually become better citizens and make money out of balancing the grid.Dr Heidi Edmonds talks about jobs on the land and the training in fire and water management that Indigenous people are leading.We hear part of Eytan Lenko's talk at the Smart Energy Conference.He shows how one million jobs can accelerate positive trends already emerging. Behind the One Million Jobs plan are communities that BZE is assisting in the quest for zero emissions. Imogen Jubb find that COVID 19 has not slowed momentum. She tells us about the Snapshot you can find of your community's emissions. https://www.snapshotclimate.com.au/ Two of the communities on the Zero Carbon path are in Sydney's northern suburbs in NSW and Banyule in Victoria.Ursula Hogben and Michael Copsey are practical people. They talk together with Vivien on zoom about how they reduce confusion and lift confidence in making the transition.They both draw on the goodwill and expertise in their communities so that no one needs to feel that reducing emissions is just too hard. Many people have had an unhappy experience with solar power. Michael calls these the solar orphans and both groups are committed to connecting households and businesses with well regulated installers. * Naomi Klein on the Intercept uses Milton Friedman's comment to show that this i s no time to lose our nerve. As many of you would have seen, our friends at BZE released their "Million Jobs Plan" today and the detail can be seen here: https://bze.org.au/the-million-jobs-plan/ Great Guardian article here too....

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Food Security in the Time of Climate Change

We've all seen the empty supermarket shelves which are now thankfully full - we're just trying to figure out what it means. We have been assured by the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources in a report hurriedly released that we in fact have nothing to worry about. The spin in the report and the speed with which it was released is a clear indication that the federal government is worrying itself. Yet the discussion surrounding food security has skewered some basic assumptions we have about food security in this country and how this relates to climate change. The models built on the past will not longer apply which means we can not look to the future with the same confidence we did. Former Deputy Chief of the Royal Australian Air force John Blackburn AO who analyses the resilience in the Australian food supply chain as a national security issue.Writer Laura Jean McKay in NZ about how her decision to cut emissions while travelling opened up some new adventures and her new book THE ANIMALS IN THAT COUNTRY.Richard Heath the Executive Director of the Australian farm institute and co-author of Change is in the air: defining the need for an Australian agricultural climate change policy a report released in June last year about Australia's ability to confront climate change and it's predicted impact on agriculture.