The RegenNarration

This is a special extra to episode 45 with Jan Owen, Ian Dunlop and Miriam Lyons. Here’s the rest of the powerful conversation between our panellists and the capacity audience of 300 people at the 2016 National Sustainable Living Festival in Melbourne, Australia.

Title slide pic: NASA, from the ABC website.

Find more:
Listen to the main episode.

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Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

Economic growth is stagnating, hitting up against a range of limits. Last week’s news that GDP growth in Australia is at its lowest since the GFC, with interest rates already at an unprecedented low of 1% (they are negative in many places around the world), emphasises what is increasingly apparent to people around the world – the old model isn’t working, and it’s not coming back. So what’s the future of the growth-based system, and how do we transition to a new model of work, business and economics, while avoiding collapse?

Around 300 people filled the Greenhouse in Melbourne, Australia, at the 2016 National Sustainable Living Festival, with a highly credentialed panel exploring these questions. While the conversation took place a few years ago, its relevance and importance only seem to heighten. You’ll hear from: 

• Jan Owen AM, CEO of the Foundation for Young Australians, the Inaugural Australian Financial Review/Westpac Woman of Influence 2012, and former director for the Australian National Development Index (ANDI).
• Miriam Lyons, a campaigns director for the prominent progressive advocacy network GetUp!, co-author of Governomics, and previously the founding CEO of the Centre for Policy Development.
• Ian Dunlop, formerly an international oil, gas and coal industry executive, chairman of the Australian Coal Association and CEO of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He is a director of Australia21 and a Member of the Club of Rome.

Each panellist speaks for 10 minutes, leading off with a little story on how they came to do what they do. Then we’re into another powerful Q&A with the capacity audience (featuring in an extra to this episode).

In the words of Ross Gittins, celebrated economics writer and Economics Editor at the Sydney Morning Herald: "The beginning of economic wisdom is to understand that the advanced economies – including ours – have stopped working the way they used to and won’t be returning to the old normal."

So what is the future of the growth-based economic system? Especially in the context of planetary limits, resource constraints, rising inequality, increased automation, increasing mental illness, and worsening extinction and climate crises. What’s an economy even for? And how can we recreate it for the better, and quickly?

Thanks to Chris Grose from Scout Films for this recording, and the team at the Understandascope who supported this event. The Understandascope builds on the legacy of the late Professor Frank Fisher..

Title slide pic: as used by the National Sustainable Living Festival for this event.

Music:
The System, by the Public Opinion Afro Orchestra,

Find more:
Listen to the extra to this episode.

Ian Dunlop.

Miriam Lyons.

Jan Owen AM.

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Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

This special extra to podcast 44 delves further into the back story to Wooleen Station and the rangelands, and those questions around meat production and consumption. From there David and Anthony talk about the at times extraordinary politics at play, why we the public are central to all this, and above all, what Major General Michael Jeffery, the former Governor-General of Australia, calls David’s master class and do-able plan.

Title slide: the Nationally Important Wooleen Lake (pic: Anthony James).

Find more:
Listen to the main episode with David.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

David Pollock is one of Australia’s most prominent regenerative pastoralists, and he’s now the author of a new book that’s been described as ‘The astonishing story of reviving the oldest land on Earth’. It’s called ‘The Wooleen Way: Renewing an Australian Resource’.

Many Aussies will have seen David and his wife Frances on ABC TV’s Australian Story. They’ve appeared four times so far, such is the way their story has captivated the country. They’ve also been guests twice on this podcast. This time, though, is the first time in extended conversation with David, book in hand and on location at Wooleen Station.

The Wooleen Way’ is hard-hitting, expertly researched, and a great tale, with a compelling and holistic outlook. On the back of Charles Massy’s book ‘Call of the Reed Warbler’, this may just prove to be the next critical milestone in the shift towards a regenerative culture of caring for country, and the communities that comprise it.

Western Australia’s Minister for Regional Development, Alannah MacTiernan, has already visited Wooleen in the wake of the book, and distributed numerous copies among departmental staff. Which is all the more fitting, given pastoral leases operate on public land, and on so much of it (nearly half of WA alone).

This is arguably our most vital renewable resource - the effective functioning of the vast majority of this country, and other regions like it. And we’re losing it. But it doesn’t have to be this way. ‘The Wooleen Way’ is, on the one hand, the story of David’s life and the remarkable regeneration happening at Wooleen Station. And it is about so much more than that. As David sees it, “If we can only get regeneration on Wooleen, then we’ll have failed.”

Join David as he shows Anthony around the Station to talk about the book, his story, and some of the how and why behind the regeneration of a country.

Title slide: Frances and David at Wooleen Station (supplied).

Music:
The System, by the Public Opinion Afro Orchestra.

The outgoing music is by Jeremiah Johnson.

Due to licencing restrictions, our guest’s nominated music can only be played on radio or similarly licenced broadcasts of this episode.

Find more:
Listen to the special extra to this episode with David.

The new book ‘The Wooleen Way: Renewing an Australian Resource’.

Wooleen Station.

Listen to Frances in conversation with Anthony on episode 9.

And hear David and Frances in a panel conversation with Charles Massy on episode 16.

The upcoming RegenWA conference, featuring Charles Massy, Terry McCosker and more, with Anthony as MC. 

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

The sharing economy is a phenomenon. But what is it exactly? The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission says it “connects consumers to people who have products or services to sell, hire or lease via an online platform.” And “It includes services such as Airbnb and Uber.” But the folk at the heart of the sharing economy call that commerce – and in some cases, mere extensions of the current extractive economy that is driving us into multiple crises. 

Last year Anthony hosted the launch of a brilliant new book produced by Shareable. Shareable is an award-winning, non-profit, global hub of news, action and connection for the sharing transformation. It calls this transformation “a movement of movements, emerging from the grassroots, to solve today’s biggest challenges”, from poverty to global warming – the challenges that old, top-down institutions are failing to address. 

The book is called ‘Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons’, a how-to guide showcasing over 100 sharing-related case studies and model policies from more than 80 cities. “From community composting to makerspaces, repair cafés and platform co-operatives, people are coming together in cities everywhere to develop solutions for the common good. They show that sharing can lead everyone to have more, together.”

Leading off this conversation is the Australian editor of Shareable, Director of Social Surplus, and Research Fellow at the Monash Sustainable Development Institute, Darren Sharp, with a 10-minute keynote. Then we’re joined by special guests:

• Lizette Salmon, a pioneering figure in the Repair Café movement, founding coordinator of Albury-Wodonga’s popular Repair Café, and Coordinator of WATCH (Wodonga Albury Towards Climate Health). 
• Dr Jose Ramos, co-founder of the Footscray Maker Lab, Director of Action Foresight, and fellow founding board member with Darren of the growing New Economy Network Australia. 

Their 5-minute responses are followed by audience Q&A, all taking place at the 2018 National Sustainable Living Festival.

Music:
The System, by the Public Opinion Afro Orchestra.

Find more:
On Shareable and the book Sharing Cities, including how to purchase it or download a free PDF.

On Darren Sharp.

On Lizette Salmon and the Repair Café Albury Wodonga (with links to others).

On Dr Jose Ramos and Action Foresight.

On the National Sustainable Living Festival.

Oh, and the Apple proposal at Melbourne’s Federation Square has since been canned. The Victorian government is currently seeking public input on what happens next.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

The first guest we ever had on this podcast, the former Wall St executive John Fullerton, made reference again this week to “John Elkington's product recall“ on a term he coined 25 years ago – ‘triple bottom line’. It reflects, he said, “the growing consensus that sustainability in business is not working. Instead, the chorus for systemic transformation is growing.” Our guest this week is Professor Karen O’Brien, and she has spent decades exploring and assisting people in just this.

Karen is an internationally recognised thought leader on climate change impacts and social transformation. She has been heavily involved in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC), and shared in its 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. She’s also on the scientific advisory board for Project Drawdown, and is the co-founder and partner in cCHANGE, an Oslo-based company that has become a beacon in the space of social transformation.

Karen’s work focuses on the relationships between personal, cultural, and systems transformations. She calls it exploring the most powerful solution to climate change – people! And she’s decidedly positive about it, pointing out that projections of the future too often exclude the understanding that people constitute the systems and stories we live by. We are the systems. And we have the ability to transform ourselves (read, not others) – deliberately, consciously, deeply. And in everyday life, wherever we are.

Karen wrote an article a few years ago titled ‘Is it time for a quantum leap?’, on the emerging field of quantum social theory. And she sees her work on the ground with cCHANGE and cCHALLENGE bearing out the potential for just that. So how does conscious social transformation happen? How do we engage the highest leverage points? How do we take care of each other in the process? And can this really enable us to achieve the 1.5 degree Paris Agreement target?

Music:
The System, by the Public Opinion Afro Orchestra.

Due to licencing restrictions, our guest’s nominated music can only be played on radio or similarly licenced broadcasts of this episode.

Find more:
On Karen.

cChange.

Her new book, 'Climate & Society: Transforming the Future', with Robin Leichenko.

And her upcoming webinar on 8 August 2019.

Join us at our first live conversation event in Perth, on Monday the 23rd of September at The Platform.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

Douglas Rushkoff has been recognised as one of the “world’s ten most influential intellectuals” by MIT. Many of you will know him from the popular Team Human podcast, which has led to this award-winning, best-selling author writing the Team Human book. And frankly, it’s a little masterpiece. Comprehensive, readable and vital, it’s a manifesto for reclaiming our humanity in the digital age. Walter Isaacson calls it “A provocative, exciting, and important rallying cry to reassert our human spirit of community and teamwork.”

Douglas rose to public prominence in the early 1990s as he helped to shape the internet. He wrote a series of books during that time examining the intersection of technology and popular culture, in which he coined terms like ‘viral media’, ‘digital natives’, ‘screenagers’ and ‘social currency’.

But after two decades of documenting the hi-tech counterculture, Douglas began to realise the mess we were getting in. His 2009 book and documentary, Life Inc., told the story of an economic and social collapse 500 years in the making. Now he offers us the Team Human manifesto, powerfully framed as a call to a human Renaissance - restoring what we scarcely realise we’ve lost from the last one.

This, from the publisher’s blurb on the book:

‘Money, once a means of exchange, is now a means of exploitation; education, conceived as way to elevate the working class, has become another assembly line; and the internet has further divided us into increasingly atomized and radicalized groups. If we are to resist and survive these destructive forces, we must recognize that being human is a team sport. If we can find the others who understand this fundamental truth and reassert our humanity—together—we can make the world a better place to be human.’

Douglas joins Anthony online from his office in New York, for this personal exchange on his time in the theatre, his moment of personal enlightenment, how it led to his work with technology and the net, and on to the broader contexts of business, the economy, religion, the value (or otherwise) of stories, psychedelics and podcasts(!) - and ultimately, of course, how to be human in this time when it’s all hands on deck.

Title slide image with thanks to the Team Human podcast.

With thanks also to Bobbie Johnson for his 2009 piece in The Guardian on Douglas’ Life Inc. work, for some of the copy referenced here.

Music:
The System, by the Public Opinion Afro Orchestra.

Due to licencing restrictions, our guest’s nominated music can only be played on radio or similarly licenced broadcasts of this episode.

Find more:
On Douglas Rushkoff.

The Team Human podcast.

And The Team Human book.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

There are some extraordinary changes happening in Australia’s southern-most state, and Dr Emma Lee has been at the heart of it – literally and figuratively. Emma is an Indigenous trawlwulwuy woman from tebrakunna country, north-east Tasmania, and is a widely awarded scholar and community leader. The article Emma recently wrote for the ABC was titled, ‘We 'love-bombed' the Tasmanian government to win Indigenous rights.’

The list of changes achieved by Emma, her community and their government needs to be seen to be believed - from dual naming policies, to a whole of government strategy called Reset the Relationship, right through to constitutional change, and all achieved in just a few years, with a notionally conservative government in power, and in the state with perhaps the darkest history of Indigenous colonial experience.

This conversation is a fascinating exploration of how it all happened, and why family, kinship and a regional approach is central to it. With this in mind, Emma has salient things to say about the implications for reconciliation and Treaty processes, the Uluru Statement from the Heart, and how to engage most meaningfully and successfully with Aboriginal communities. Well, perhaps any community.

Emma’s is a fascinating story. She was one of the first Indigenous archaeologists in this country, but she came on hard times and ended up working at a petrol station, where her life was transformed. She went on to a PhD and this story of broader transformation. And she’s now on her way to helping establish an Indigenous cultural fisheries and food market in Tasmania, with Tasmanian and Australian Government support, as an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research Fellow at the Centre for Social Impact.

News of Emma and what’s been happening in Tasmania lobbed into our orbit last week via our friends at Common Cause. It’s a growing story too, reminiscent of the approach taken in the recent successful ‘YES’ campaign for same-sex marriage in Australia, for example, powerfully transcending the adversarialism that underpins so much of our dominant cultural story.

Emma joins Anthony online from Bilbao in Spain to talk about it.

Title slide image: Rhiannon Shine, from the ABC article below.

Music:
The System, by the Public Opinion Afro Orchestra.

Due to licencing restrictions, our guest’s nominated music can only be played on radio or similarly licenced broadcasts of this episode.

Find more:
On Dr Emma Lee.

Emma's article in the ABC that led to this podcast, We 'love-bombed' the Tasmanian government to win Indigenous rights.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

If you followed our travels last year, you will have heard a number of remarkable stories of pastoralists and farmers bringing land and people back to life. In some cases, their situations had become dire, and land turned to dust. Wherever we went, an organisation called RCS Australia came up in conversation. So we visited them late last year in Yeppoon, Queensland, and had the pleasure to meet legendary founder Terry McCosker and his team.

Charles Massy calls RCS one of the key training groups in Australia in regenerative agriculture and holistic grazing, including the business of it all, with “brilliant social learning programs and workshops, and a network of support.” When we visited, New Chair David McLean was there, and we got talking. After a number of fascinating conversations over several days, we subsequently resolved to meet up when he was next doing training in our neck of the woods.

David’s journey with RCS started as a client. He went on to become General Manager in 2012 and Chair in 2018. He is now a highly sought-after educator, consultant, facilitator and public speaker across Australia.

David’s got an invaluable over-arching view of what’s happening across Australia and the world in regenerative agriculture. His insights are extensive and instructive, on changes in the movement, on country, in families and communities, in the businesses, in impact investing, in increasingly volatile climate and other forces of change, and importantly in how the thinking about the connections between all these things is developing.

When talking about such a holistic approach, and how it relates to life in cities as well, we arrive at themes of trust and connection. Why is trust so central to building the movement? What does success look like? What do we do about the potential co-opting of the term regenerative? Why is ‘going organic’ not enough? How can the most meaningful investments and impacts be made? How do we respond to at times diabolical drought, fire and flood? And how do we loosen the hold our cultural stories have on us, to stop riding the unicorn, as David puts it, and operate in a way that’s more aligned with the realities of how the living world works?

When in Perth recently, David dropped by Anthony’s place for this conversation.

Title slide: wheat growing in Moura, Central Queensland (pic: David McLean).

Music:
By Jeremiah Johnson.

Due to licencing restrictions, our guest’s nominated music can only be played on radio or similarly licenced broadcasts of this episode.

Find more:
RCS Australia’s website, including the bio’s of David and founder Terry McCosker.

David’s recent blog post Stop Riding the Unicorn (including a link to the ABC story that might make David reconsider the unicorn metaphor).

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!

Damon Gameau has received multiple standing ovations around the world as he has accompanied the premiere screenings of his visionary documentary film ‘2040’. You might remember our first conversation on this podcast last year, as the film was being finished. This time we’re joined by a wonderfully engaged cinema audience, and special guest Julie Leslie, the impressive editor of Circular Style – a magazine about sustainable, conscious, and circular fashion.

What resulted was a fascinating sense of how the film is landing with people - the questions raised and inspiration felt. And some additional stories that aren’t in the film, like the instructive story behind how the board game Monopoly used to be played, Damon’s visit to the Gross National Happiness Centre in Bhutan, what regenerative fashion might look like, and what the growing movement behind 2040 is up to.

Anthony starts the conversation by asking the audience a bit about themselves. Only about half the people considered themselves very engaged with themes of sustainability or regeneration, but just about all were very concerned about the future - though interestingly, one person wasn’t concerned at all (you’ll hear him join the conversation in this episode).

Most tellingly, only a couple of people had ever thought about the sort of positive vision for the future outlined in the film. It emphasises the enormous value of this documentary. 2040, and these conversations, are envisioning new, more aspirational stories to live by, and exploring the changes we can make together that just might bring them about.

Anthony hosts Damon and Julie in conversation at the Perth premiere of 2040.

With thanks to Adriana Begovich from Anarchy PR.

Note: On Anthony’s mention of the book Empire of Things, Frank Trentmann reports one third of the items in the average British wardrobe is never worn.

Music:
'Velvet's Unicorn' and 'Future', by Bryony Marks off the 2040 Soundtrack.

Find more:
The 2040 film website, including how to see it or screen it yourself, the book release, and how to get more involved.

Circular Style Magazine (and Julie's Shopportunity Knocks tours).

Anthony & Damon in conversation last year for episode 30, 2040 Vision: Climate change, fear & loathing.

Send us a voicemail

Support the show

Please share this episode or the trailer with a friend, follow the podcast, and subscribe if you can.

The RegenNarration is independent and ad-free, with hundreds of episodes freely available, thanks to the generous support of listeners like you. If you're enjoying the podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a paid subscriber, from as little as around $1 a week, to gain access to a great community, subscriber events and giveaways, and to help keep the show going, on Patreon or Substack (where you'll find some writing, photography and tunes too).

You can also donate directly via the website (avoiding fees) or PayPal.

I hope to see you at an event soon, even the shop. Thanks so much for your support!