On 4 November 2020, we open The Sustainable Hour no 339 with a clip from BBC filmmaker David Attenborough‘s powerful witness statement ‘A Life on Our Planet‘ – his outstanding first-hand account of humanity’s impact on nature.

Our three guests, as we leave our Hiatus in The Tunnel to explore the wild spaces of nature, are firstly Janine Duffy, president of the Koala Clancy Foundation, with lots of good news and good spirit to share around about increasing koala habitat in the Geelong region.

Our second guest is local longboard rider and founder of ‘Surfers for Climate’ Belinda Baggs. The Fight for the Bight campaign last year against a Norwegian oil company’s plans to drill for oil in the Bight saw 10,000s of surfers rocking up on the beaches around the country, and Belinda wants to keep up that momentum. We hear why she founded the organisation, what they are doing to engage Australia’s two-three million surfers, as well as what their future plans are.

Find out more about Surfers for Climate below on this page, and at www.surfersforclimate.org.au – where you during the next seven days can support their fundraiser premiering a music video with Paul McCartney’s song ‘Wine Dark Open Sea’.

Our third guest is Craig Foster, a former Australian international soccer player, the face of soccer for many years on SBS News, and also long time advocate for refugee rights and now university lecturer in the role sport can play in helping to create a more just, inclusive and healthy world with a safe climate.

Just like the surfers are now jumping up on the climate activism wave, there are a number of sports groups who are backing up Craig Foster’s call for sports people to use their position of influence to stand up for a safe climate. We will continue to cover the rapidly increasing number of elite sports groups advocating for real action on climate over the next few weeks, so watch this space.

In acknowledging country today during this year’s National Aborigines & Islanders Day Observance Committee Week, we need to speak out against the atrocity that occurred on Djab Wurrung country near Ararat last Tuesday. Against the expressed wishes of the traditional custodians of that land, VicRoad contractors, aided by over 50 police and security guards, undertook the destruction of the Djab Wurrung’s Direction Tree, all to save a couple of minutes of driving as the highway is upgraded. Their embassy which had been there for three years was torn down, and the protectors, both First Peoples and Allies, were arrested and moved on. The following day a temporary Supreme Court injunction was granted to protect the other sacred trees in the area, expiring on Tuesday 17 November. This was yet another example of our First People feeling the wrath of the colonisers and having their wishes ignored. How can the Andrews Government be serious about negotiating a treaty when they do something like this? This treatment just has to stop. #TellTheTruth

Colin Mockett‘s Global Outlook is once again very busy. Yes the fires are still burning in the western side of the United States – this week Colorado joined in when one off its iconic National Parks was shut down because the fires there were so intense and uncontrollable. We zoom to the Arctic where the sea isn’t freezing as it would normally do at this time of the year.