The Sustainable Hour no 323

Four guests in The Tunnel on 15 July 2020. What a packed program today!

From time to time over the last 10 weeks, Jackie Matthews has been excitedly telling us how good the ‘Nature Stewards’ course that she has been doing was. How much she has been learning and how rewarding it has been for her to do it. Today, Rustem Upton – Rusty – who facilitated that course, joins us and ends up presenting Jackie with her certificate of completion. Their subsequent chat reveals a good outline and structure of what they covered.

The course was sponsored by the City of Greater Geelong and it is hoped that this sponsorship will continue. It had to be run via zoom because of the covid-19 virus this year, but this made it no less effective according to both Jackie and Rusty. Watch this space for news of Rusty’s next Nature Stewards course in the Geelong area.

Next we zoom down to Tasmania where we meet Tasmania’s first accredited carbon farmers, Stephanie and Sam Trethaway from Tas Ag Co. This young couple are ideal ambassadors for nurturing the land as well as breaking away from the demands of “industrial farming” which to them ends up destroying the land and is in no way sustainable.

We’ve had many regenerative farmers on the show over the last 18 months. All have been explaining why they feel they are doing the right thing and wonder why more farmers aren’t going down this pathway. For Stephanie and Sam, it costs less to produce more nutritious beef for the market which pays them a premium for that. Then there’s the money they make for being paid for the invaluable role they play in storing carbon in their soil. 

We return to the YouYangs where we have Koala Clancy Foundation founder Janine Duffy telling us about the exciting plans they have to ensure our natural and national icon doesn’t become extinct. The have big plans for planting trees in the area and are looking for landowners who would like a hundred or even a thousand trees in an area of the land near a creek.

We often talk about the spark that all our guests have in their eyes – none more so than Janine. The koala numbers in our region will definitely increase on her watch.

Colin Mockett‘s Global Outlook today, as usual, is very busy. He starts out by updating the situation in Norislk in Siberia. He has been keeping a close eye on this since it first happened a month ago. Last week he told us about the army going in first to try to mop up the spilt diesel from the ocean. This week they were joined by a number of people who specialise in such clean ups. They brought fixed wing planes and helicopters to help with the operation. The fuel for these aircraft soon added to the problem. Difficult work in difficult conditions. 

Colin then takes us to the United States and gives us three examples of how their legal system is moving to overturn the Trump administration’s attempts to wind back environmental safeguards.

After this he brings us back home and talks about the increasing number of Australian companies who are announcing bold carbon reduction goals. He leaves us with a warning about looking closely at these and beware of any greenwashing in their claims.