IMAGINATION IS THE NEW NORMAL. CARING IS THE NEW NORMAL

Last week, one of our guests, Damien Cole, left us with a very powerful hashtag: #normalisingthefactthatyoucareabouttheplanet. The definition of what ‘big change’ means has been completely rewritten by the pandemic. Here in #TheTunnel, our ‘new normal’ is that everyone’s imagining big change embracing a better, cleaner and greener future! 

Colin Mockett‘s Global Outlook looks at the Petersberg Climate Dialogue which took place in Europe on 23 April 2020 − this is is considered as a preparatory meeting for the UN Climate Change Conference and focuses on countries’ official response to the climate emergency we face. Colin talks about their carbon reduction targets as well as their post Covid19 economic ‘spring back’ being very much based on building a safer, more just and healthy planet.

Meanwhile in Oz…

David Spear, Michael Bayliss and Ainsley Halbmeijer in The Sustainable Hor no 312

Green light at the end of #TheTunnel

Our guests in The Sustainable Hour no 312 on 6 May 2020 are: David Spear from GreenLight − an exciting Geelong Sustainability social enterprise. He tells us about this initiative which has a number of branches, all of which aim at helping people to reduce their emissions − both for residential or business premises. He also mentions the master class online series that will start soon.

Melbourne musician Michael Bayliss from the band Shock Octopus tells us the history of his band and his influences. We hear his band sing ‘On the Pier’, a song Michael wrote about his concerns around sea level rise. What is particularly interesting about Shock Octopus is that their music is produced with musicians in three different places: Melbourne, Darwin and Tokyo. The wonders of modern technology leading to saved flight emissions.

Ainsley Halbmeijer, filmmaker and masters student at the Victorian College of the Arts, works with a group of students on a film about people’s responses to covid19. They are calling it ‘The New Normal’ − and they are doing it quite differently: They have set up a hotline for people to leave voice messages on − they have suggested questions on their website: www.newnormalhotline.org. They will pick a variety of these, use the voices and create images to go with them to make their film.