On 28 February 2018, the Sustainable Hour enters that unprecedented territory where fear and anger meets excitement over new opportunities as a result of climate change – the issue above all issues of our time.

We listen to speeches by Canadian director of the Climate Emergency Institute, Dr Peter Carter who has co-written the new book ‘Unprecedented Crime – Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for Survival’, and by Melbourne-based climate action strategist Philip Sutton.

We talk with the editor of RenewEconomy – Australia’s leading renewable energy website – Giles Parkinson, and the Anglesea-based campaigner Mike Bodsworth. We also play a short Facebook-clip with an angry Adam Bandt from the Greens, and a song by Baba Brinkman.

Listen to The Sustainable Hour no. 205 on 94.7 The Pulse:

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“The exciting thing is the pace of technology change and the opportunities that provides, such a contrast with the idiot policies we see at national level.”

~ Giles Parkinson, editor, RenewEconomy and One Step Off The Grid

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Welcome to the era of Wacky Weather.


Sunday: Flash flooding in Canberra. A month’s worth of rain fell in one day. Roads and homes inundated.


Monday: “Unusual” thunderstorm hits Perth’s south, tearing off roofs and flooding homes.  

On the same day closer to home: Bushfire. A winery on Mornington Peninsula sees half a million dollars’ worth of produce destroyed in a bushfire there.  


Tuesday: Damaging storms lash parts of Queensland with heavy rain and damaging winds, battering communities in north and outback Queensland. About 30,000 properties lost power during the storm’s peak, roofs are ripped off and debris smashed through windows and homes. Wind gusts tears 1,000 square metres from the roof of Mount Isa Hospital.

On the same day, newspapers all over the world write about that it is now warmer at the North Pole than it is in Europe… 25°C higher temperatures than normal. “It’s never been this extreme,” a climate scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute is quoted as saying.

And it is all described in the media as this endless stream of ‘Wacky Weather’ ...