An energetic Sustainable Hour where two friends of the wind – Friends of the Earth Melbourne’s Yes2Renewables coordinator Pat Simons and community-owned Hepburn Wind’s community manager Taryn Lane – help us bust a couple of industrial wind farm and power price myths, along with how best to respond to the various ‘visual pollution’ concerns that continue to be raised in local media, now that wind farm projects are finally beginning to materialise in our region.

Australia’s electricity sector is the nation’s biggest climate polluter. Irresponsibly, editors of local media and certain politicians refuse to acknowledge that we need to get off fossil fuels in order to deal with the existential threats of the climate change crisis – and that wind farms happen to be an important part of the solution to that crisis.

We learn how the Victorian government’s renewable energy targets create thousands of new jobs while solving terrible, painful and costly health problems related to the coal industry as well. As we have now entered the lead-up to the Victorian state election on 24 November, we extend Pat’s invitation to get actively involved in communicating about all of this to others in our community – there’s a meeting in Geelong about this next week.

We play a clip with Dr George Crisp from Doctors for the Environment Australia, as he spoke in ABC Matter of Fact on 9 August 2018, a clip with Richard Riordan MP on 4BC, and with Barnaby Joice on the ABC, a trailer for the new film ‘Our Power’, and the song ‘Get Together’ from the new – and free – ‘Radish Beet’ remix album from the absolutely Formidable Vegetable Sound System.

 

“Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.”

~ Kofi Annan, 1938-2018 – Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations over almost a decade, from 1997 to 2006

Listen to The Sustainable Hour no. 230 on 94.7 The Pulse:

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“Australians are sick of the inaction and political bickering around climate change, and we want some real answers.”

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