Welcome to our 349th Sustainable Hour.

We start today’s show with a brief clip from Sir David King, a former English Chief Scientist. The clip was taken from the National Climate Emergency Summit’s first webinar on the science of our climate emergency as part of the Sustainable Living Festival. It reinforces the strong message about how dire the situation we face is and how little time we have to address it:

“We have to move rapidly. What we do over the next two-three years, I believe, is going to determine the future of humanity.”

In The Tunnel on 10 February 2021 we have five guests:

[07:25] Bryony Edwards from Council & Community for the Climate Emergency, CACE. We learn from Bryony that although around 90 councils in Australia have declared a climate emergency so far, none have developed a serious council-wide climate emergency plan. To this end they have developed resources to guide councils to develop these plans as well to guide and support residents and ratepayers to lobby for such plans.

[21:41] Dr Jim Crosthwaite, a friend of the show and an economist, tells about his research into gas in response to the Morrison government’s ill fated ‘gas-led recovery’ plan. Jim recommends listening to the Boyer Lectures where fossil fuel tycoon Twiggy Forrest outlines what he sees as the future of energy in Australia. Jim then proceeds to explain why he disagrees on both economic and environmental grounds.

[43:09] Sal Fisher is co-founder of GasFreeGeelong – a group formed to counter Viva refinery’s proposal for a gas hub in Corio Bay and to educate Geelong and district residents about the alternatives that will help us face up to the climate emergency we face. Sal outlines what this education process will involve, including two community events which are coming up soon.

[52:45] Out in the Australian landscape, our Roving Reporter Rusty is working on a series of Regenerative Hours. But he wants to call it something else – because he wants to talk about what he likes to call “Ecological Agriculture”. He has been discovering that there’s a lot more to Regenerative Agriculture than the regenerative element of it. In his first podcast in the series, he talks with Kim Deans, a regenerative farmer from Inverell. Kim introduces Rusty – and now us, who are listening – to the concept of Syntropic Farming, which is a climate-friendly farming practice developed by a Swiss farmer over some 30 years in a logged area of the Brazilian rain forest.

[1:01:20] Carly Dober is a psychologist and yoga instructor who works in sc...