Madness, insanity, betrayal, treason… death. Strong words come in use in The Sustainable Hour on 30 October 2019 as we talk about the Australian government’s energy and environment policies in a week yet again disrupted by protests in the streets, this time against an international mining conference in Melbourne. Welcome to an hour about climate crime, accountability, honesty, responsibility – and regeneration.

Professor Richard Parncutt from University of New England, Australia, and Graz University in Austria has done the math of an important equation: How many tonnes of emissions from burning coal does it take to kill a human being in the future? The result of his calculations is that one future premature death is caused every time roughly 1,000 tonnes of carbon are burned.

Last year in March, Australia was responsible for 536 million tonnes of carbon emissions, and this year in March, due to the complete lack of control by the authorities in this area, the industries and citizens added another 3 million tonnes to that figure, so that Australia now is emitting 539 million tonnes of carbon annually. Which means that one year rise alone translates to 3,000 future deaths, according to Parncutt’s findings.

This country has a government which has blood on its hands, but no laws to hold it accountable. We talk with Michael Staindl about that. Together with a team of climate activists, he is taking Treasurer Josh Frydenberg to court. Michael lives in Frydenberg’s electorate and wants the minister to tell us all whether or not he is a dual citizen, and consequently whether he is allowed to represent him in parliament – a question which Michael sees as a question of Frydenberg’s integrity and his betrayal on climate action. This week Michael started a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds for a court case against the minister. More about this below.Former coal executive Ian Dunlop emphasises on the gravity of the climate emergency in Climate News by We Dont Have Time. We play a statement by the editor of The Lancet, Richard Horton, about the climate and ecological emergency, while George Monbiot calls for a revolution in Frankie Boyles’ comedy show New World Order. We also have a report from Rusty about the effect of fortnightly bin collection, we talk about The Regenerative Decade which is coming up in just two months, and we play Larry Pegg‘s song, ‘No More Carbon Crime’, and round the hour off with Artwork and Song’s ‘Her Spirit May Be Spoken’.

“The current Federal Government’s lack of action and betrayal on climate change, for me it is a treasonous behaviour. It is so serious that they are actually committing treason to Australians and the rest of the world, if that concept applies.