Imagine my relief.

The bus was pulling out of Te Kuiti when I heard about the fire at the Sky City Convention Centre. The rooftop burned for five days, fueled by insulation materials and the rubber based sealant that appears to have ignited first.

My phone was constantly emitting Civil Defence warnings about the toxins in the air while all round K Road and Queen Street people walked in safety masks.

The next day I took a bus to the airport and walked the 5 kms to Ihumātao. I was around for much of the next four days, helping with odd jobs and chatting on the atea. I did some night shifts at the ahi – a fire that had burned for nearly 100 days.

You can really talk around a fire. I think it’s because staring in lets you stop and listen. Manaaki people. Hospitality and care. The more I think about the problems of climate change the more threads lead me back to the way we saw the world before the Project of Empire.

Qiane Matata-Sipu told me of the price paid at her whenua in the name of progress: the maunga removed to build roads, the moana used as oxidation ponds, the awa turned into a landfill. Just as the waterways were beginning to heal thousands of litres of dye were dumped, killing everything off again.

Bizarrely, the millions of litres of water used to dowse the burning rubber in town was pronounced ‘clean’ just as I was leaving town. It would soon be making its way out to Ihumātao too.

I received a letter from the campaign via Action Station, asking for submissions to Heritage New Zealand Pouhere Taonga. There’s only a few hours left so follow this link and send in your support:

https://medium.com/@actionstation/protectihumātao-we-need-your-help-to-protect-the-whenua-6a806c2090f

My additions to the submission:

The enormous destructive force of capitalism is coming to the back of the woodpile. The driest pieces are being thrown in the flames now. To the North of this island you can literally see it glowing now as Spring ignites Australia. Whatever place you have in this moment, whatever lever is yours to throw, know that the extinction rate was multiplied one thousand times by our civilisation. The book of life is closing around us and there is much to be done. 

You can also find ways to support the campaign through the website at https://www.protectihumatao.com and the Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/protectihumatao/

Apologies for the sound quality on this one – I didn’t have all my gear and we were in a portacom.

This episode was recorded at Ihumātao. Next episode is from Parihaka. I recorded them in the other order but I’m letting the story lead us back there.

Tēna koe, nau hoki mai ki taku kōnae kōrero – te taunga o te oranga ngākau.

https://www.facebook.com/lemonwoodeatery/

The arguments around livestock and plant based foods are endless. While the vegan lifestyle was traditionally about the ethics of exploiting animals for food many are now coming to a

plant based diet for other reasons. The emissions and biodiveristy loss associated with large scale livestock farming appear to have a simple solution: just don’t use it.

You can put the facts and figures in front of people all day – the fact is a very small number are swayed by this stuff and, creatures of habit that we are, we just carry on doing what we

know and hope that things will work themselves out.

There is a third way: you take people into the future with such subtlety that they didn’t even know it was happening. While in Taranaki recently my mum took me to a cafe in Oakura,

and there I met Barbera Olsen-Henderson: stealth vegan.

This episode was recorded in Oakura, Taranaki. Next episode will be with Howie Harris, recorded in Parihaka, Taranaki. In the light of the rise in non violent direct action around the

world we’ll be talking about the seeds that were by Te Whiti o Rongomai and Tohu Kåkahi in the 1880s.

The recent school strike saw 170,000 people in the streets of Aotearoa demanding action on climate change. A physics teacher in Whitianga makes the point that the current curriculum requires him to teach Nuclear Physics when it’s clear that it’s the laws of Thermodynamics that will circumscribe their lives.

From the outside you probably imagine those caught up in climate action to be a somber

lot. How could you face all of this gloom and not be.

It turns out that the reverse is true. It’s teeming with life and frequently bursting into song. I spent an hour of this inconceivable moment at the beach with the astonishing Marcus Carambola.

Spend long enough staring into this problem and we all come to the same thought: we’ve been looking at everything the wrong way. Things we never questioned growing up turn out to be not just wrong but wrong in layers.

With so little time left, how could we pause for reflection at all. And without changing massively, how could we not. Sounds like a koan.

I spent an evening in the company of Alex Litherland and Kate Martin, two buddhists who found their their path converging with ours.

Later, when I sat down to edit the sound file I saw frequent spikes in one channel. That’s Kate bursting into laughter.

One day a man gets up from his desk and goes to a hardware store. He buys paint, some sticks of wood and makes himself a sign. He takes it to parliament and holds it all day.

Next day, he and the sign return. And the next, and the next.

He’s been at it, without a single break, for two months now. When the storms come he climbs into a kind of shroud, clinging to the sign like Odysseus at the mast.

This is the story of Ollie Langridge.

So what happens when things fall apart? One group wondering this is Transition Towns. Quoting one group from Southend on Sea:

“by shifting our mind-set we can actually recognise the coming post-cheap oil era as an opportunity rather than a threat, and design the future low carbon age to be thriving, resilient and abundant — somewhere much better to live than our current alienated consumer culture based on greed, war and the myth of perpetual growth”

This episode I’m talking with Bruce Anderson of Transition Towns.

2:00 Worked for Auditor General on Sustainability 3:21 Professionally involved in seeing the problem: NZ making a terrible mess of its natural advantages 6:45 How do you descend from a world of fossil fuels 8:15 Peak Oil – a nice problem to have 8:50 Transition Towns: Creating alternative communities 9:20 How do we build resilience 10:40 Towns retooled 11:40 Sustainable business 12:20 Capitalism designed to channel wealth into a small number of hands 12:50 Cough Underlying narratives about the best wa to function being plugging into your phone 15:05 BBC’s Century of the Self 17:30 The experience of working at the Reserve Bank – their idea of diversity. 18:50 Communism and Christianity 19:05 Anarcho-syndicalist The view from inside the system, Rosa Luxomberg 24:00 Ursula Le Guin quote from the book 26:00 Social Calculus based on something different (26:25 – big cough) 29:00 LeGuin’s views on gender 31:00 The reality of the world is that change is a constant (32:40) big cough Change Requires Stability (quote?) 36:00 Resilience = Community 41:10 The unifying effect of technology 43:20 – long section from bruce that i missed Wikipedia Model VS Google 46:40 VW teaching us to distrust corporates Shoestring organisations Novara Media Open Source software, communal spirit 35:25 Fully Automated Luxury Communism 49:00 Downside of people being freed from work 49:30 Misleading Employment statistics 50:35 Virginia: 5% umemployment, 30% deep poverty 52:50 Loss of trust in government statistics around employment and the environment 53:25 The silencing of science, government departments becoming hostage to industry – the very long spoon 57:25 CMA – the government required to promote petroleum 1:00:00 Swift: Second book of Gulliver’s Travels 1:01:04 Pernicious Vermin 1:02:24 Ishmael – the leavers and the takers 1:04:00 Indigenous populations and alternative world views. 1:05:35 The Renaissance and it’s path to Extractivism 1:10:05 Bruce’s book

Sorry for the lateness of this episode, it’s been a busy time. Not sure where to next, but there’s an awful lot to choose from.

Bruce’s writings ‘A fence sitter’s manifesto’ and ‘A place to stand’ can be found on his blog ‘It’s time to jump’.

Dr Sea just released this video too – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FkH7qO3y9w&list=PLoZ9-YO7tGnpdohVBvbskUg-3hYCcdSF_&index=1

At 19 years of age an Austrian left home to start her life underwater.

Her name is Dr Sea. It never occurred to ask who chose that name and when. It seems more likely that it chose her.

Not sure who the next episode will be with, but I’m going to try to make these a little more often. There’s a lot going on.

Its seems like this is finally becoming real to us.

The talk with Greenpeace is well overdue. Amanda Larsson and I kept this talk a little shorter, it being skype and all, and we cracked into the wins from 2018, the campaigns ahead for 2019 (in particular the Solarise initiative) and the inspirations rising from the newer groups, 350, GenZero, and now Extinction Rebellion. Its been a long time since Greenpeace’s formation in the seventies, still much of the rules remain the same. People are stepping up and thinking about how to act, and there’s loads of movements to add some weight to when you’re ready.

Thanks to Amanda for taking the time, thanks to Greenpeace for the long, long battles they have fought, and sorry everyone for taking so long to release this episode. It was recorded a few weeks back and things are picking up speed.

04:19 Offshore Exploration Campaign

05:49 Exxon and Greenpeace in the 70s

06:49 Choosing campaigns, systemic problems

08:19 Predatory delay – seeing the tactics

10:19 Tactics to pin the blame in the wrong place – conditions for denial

13:49 Humans adaptability to rapid change

14:49 The influence of newer organisations GenZero and 350

16:09 Changes to activists’ approach after COP15

19:49 Changes to way large and small groups work together

21:49 Climate-adjacent organisations

22:49 Solarise campaign

24:49 Government departments actively discouraging solar

25:49 Injustices in the energy sector

26:19 Large power companies incented by price to use more expensive fossil fuels for energy

27:19 Costs of energy shifting from industry to domestic

28:19 Solar returning control of energy to the individual

29:04 The grid becoming more intelligent

32:09 Solarise as a phase shift – developing plans instead of opposing actions

34:04 The oil industry as a template for the corrupting influences of power

34:49 Energy businesses that love EVs but hate solar

35:49 Watching business feedback during the Crown Minerals Act submissions

38:59 Oil industry lack of just transition plan for their workers

41:09 ‘They’re misguided!’ – the rhetoric around those watching the activists

42:09 Extinction Rebellion and the school strikes

43:49 The stories that are already there, the stories still to be told in NZ

44:49 The false arguments to continue using fossil fuels

46:09 ‘What other thing concerns you’ – violence against women

47:39 People with privilege exerting power over systems that are more marginalised

49:49 Looking back on the winds from 2018

50:59 The long, long game of activism

52:19 Other groups that have inspired recently – the Pipeline battles in North America

54:19 The combination of different people from different backgrounds

50:54 The genii wish

Catarina Gutierrez arrived on our shores brimming with ideas. Her world has better urban transport; fairer, more inclusive communities; and much more fun. After delving deep into the oil and gas issue it seemed like we could all use a change in gear. We ate empanadas, traded bike puns, and shared in the strange and unexplainable joy that is riding a bicycle.

Next episode is already recorded – I had a talk with Amanda Larsson of Greenpeace about the initiatives they’re working on now. That is a shorter, skype talk that ought to come out very soon. Things are getting busy folks. But then, they need too.