The Sustainable Hour no 399 on 16 February 2022.

Our first guests today are Elly Tucker, Joe Barnes-Hill and David Maher from AusRegen. They have come back to excitedly tell us about their latest project. Much has happened since we last heard from them. They now have a professional structure around which they are building. Today they tell us about an exciting weekend initiative they have coming up from 18 to 20 March 2022. They have called it RegenFest 2022 – a weekend of “walking their talk” where around 50 people will be coming together to undertake regenerative practices on an actual site near Kynton in Victoria.

We plan that The Sustainable Hour will attend the ecofestival and report back on it as we sweat it out during the day by building water flow slowing objects in and around the creek and listening to their music on Friday and Saturday nights.

Next follows Olympic Games 52-kilometre walker Rhydian Cowley. (Yes thats right: 52 kilometres all at once). Along with his elite status in this sport, Rhydian feels comes a responsibility to use that platform to talk publicly about his climate concerns and actively promote solutions that are job rich and aren’t going to cost us the earth literally. We talk about the impact that sponsorship by fossil fuel companies and the banks that help fund them have on sporting events and liken it to sponsorship by tobacco companies in the past, something that’s no longer accepted in today’s world.

Rhydian mentions a number of organisations and content, firstly the Sports Environment Alliance and their “no planet, no play” resource for sports organisations. Also Frontrunners, whose team helped get AFL Players for Climate Action and Cricket for Climate get off the ground. Most recently this was through ‘The Cooldown Letter‘ which was signed by hundreds of elite sportspeople from a variety of Aussie sports. Another group Rhydian mentions is EcoAthletes.

The Guardian article which Rhydian thought deserves more reads is titled Australian sport has been captured by carbon. The ‘sliver of light’ came from Tennis Australia dropping Santos as a sponsor. This is the same fossil fuel company that is sponsoring three Australian teams in the International Rugby Union competition. Will other sporting codes and bodies follow this bold lead and become the all important “first responders” when look...