“All logging is criminal in a climate emergency.” Guests in our 20th episode are Alice and Nic from the community group Protect Warburton Ranges.

Nic Fox was arrested because she locked herself onto forestry logging equipment near Warburton in Victoria, Australia. The day before, Alice, a 23-year-old law student had been removed from the area after she had been protecting the same coup for three days and nights by tying a ‘tree sit’ platform hanging 30 metres above the ground to the logging machines.

The two women both live close to where these trees are now being cut down for wood chips. Neither had done anything like this before. They are law-abiding citizens, who have tried to get the attention of authorities and politicians.

“Science shows that logging so close to our homes will put the community at a grave risk of higher intensity fires for decades to come. The area provides vital habitat to fire threatened and endangered species. They must be protected – we have lost enough,” explained the two concerned citizens. But their concerns were ignored.

“I am angry and disgusted. Waves of deep grief roll through me as I watch the forests being razed. I will not be silent. I will not stand idly by while the very trees that are integral to our survival are ripped out of the earth and increasing our fire risk.”~ Nic Fox, ‘Isolating for Nature’

Acknowledgement

We at The Sustainable Hour would like to pay our respect to the traditional custodians of the land on which we are broadcasting, the Wathaurong People, and pay our respect to their elders, past, present and future.

The traditional owners lived in harmony with the land. They nurtured it and thrived in often harsh conditions for millenia before they were invaded. Their land was then stolen from them – it wasn’t ceeded. It is becoming more and more obvious that, if we are to survive the climate emergency we are facing, we have much to learn from their land management practices.

Our battle for climate justice won’t be won until our First Nations brothers and sisters have their true justice. When we talk about the future, it means extending our respect to those children not yet born, the generations of the future – remembering the old saying that “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children.”

The decisions currently being made around Australia to ignore climate change are being made by those who won’t be around by the time the worst effects hit home. How utterly disgusting, disrespectful and unfair is that?

About this podcast series

The Regenerative Hour is a series of interviews about what it would imply to turn this new decade, the 2020s, into ‘The Regenerative Decade’. We talk ecology, deep adaptation, grief, compassion and passion, connecting with nature, resilience, revitalisation, rethinking, restoration, reform, civil disobedience, revolution… – the bigger picture, in other words. The Regenerative Hour is a ‘child’ of The Sustainable Hour and runs in the same podcast stream. This is the 20th episode.