Sustainable earth

But first, some links to new pages added to this section dealing with sustainable earth care and management - pages not listed in the olive green menu buttons on the left. The pages also include articles on this website relating to climate and environmental refugees.

New pages:

12 July 2008: The Australia Institute: Clean coal and other greenhouse myths - This paper by George Wilkenfeld, Clive Hamilton and Hugh Saddler exposes sixteen greenhouse myths, and reiterates the basic principles of an effective greenhouse policy: no new coal-fired generation until it meets the criteria for at least half-clean use; encouragement of renewable and gas-fired generation; an increasingly stringent cap on emissions supported by a tradeable permit system; and stringent minimum energy efficiency standards for vehicles, buildings and appliances.

7 July 2008: Climate Code Red - Reviews and Comments - "Having been involved with global warming climate change as a researcher in environmental health for 25 years, I can say that this is without question by far the best book to date on this issue -- the first book to have the integrity to say how the situation really is."

5 July 2008: Climate Code Red: The case for Emergency Action - Australian climate scientists David Spratt & Philip Sutton reveal extensive scientific evidence that the global warming crisis is far worse than official reports and national governments have indicated - and that we're almost at the point of no return. According to Green's Christine Milne, they "provide a valuable and sobering contribution to the policy challenge of climate change at a pivotal moment, with their key insight that the expectation of failure has become the norm in climate policy. Climate Code Red is a significant contribution which should be read by anyone seriously contemplating how to set greenhouse emission-reduction targets."

5 July 2008: Will Ross Garnaut's verdict become Kevin's Slow Boat to China? - Professor Ross Garnaut has delivered his long awaited Climate Change Draft Report, and now it's up to the Rudd government to prepare the action and implement the policies. Will Professor Ross Garnaut force Kevin Rudd's climate change leadership, or will it be silently 'averaged out' in Canberra? This page summarizes the early impressions.

1 July 2008: Climate Change: Catastrophic Impacts and Human Rights - by HREOC President John von Doussa QC: "Australia's response to climate change must be human rights compliant. What is also clear is that the international standards and norms that these rights establish themselves provide guidance to decision makers on the substantive elements of legislative and policy responses to climate change."

20 June 2008: The Gristmill: How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic - Every now and then a remarkable online resource deals with an issue so well, that nothing more needs to be added to the topic. That was also the case with the comments provided by guest contributor to the Gristmill, Coby Beck, on the issue of How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic. Here's the table of links to all related issues.

8 May 2008: UN Human Rights Commission offers Human Rights to Climate Refugees - Three reports about the United Nations Human Rights Council resolution to recognise issues connected to climate change as having a human rights framework, as well as a picture by Reuters and the Reuters Alertnet about political manipulation of climate refugees and six FAQs about climate refugees.

22 April 2008: The 2020 Summit: Coal Industry Chiefs overheat Kevin's Climate - "I found myself in the climate stream with representatives of coal mining companies including Xstrata and Shell, yet not a single person from an environment Non-Government Organisation. No-one from Friends of the Earth, the Australian Conservation Foundation, Greenpeace, Climate Action Network Australia or any of the State Conservation Councils."

21 March 2008: The Garnaut Climate Change Review Interim Report - Hasn't Australia changed radically in just a few months: under the former government Ross Garnaut, who has just released his Interim Climate Change Review Report, would have been stonewalled, ignored, vilified and sidelined, and Canberra would have followed a lead from industry on its opinion about him. Now he receives appause from the environmental lobby while big energy producers cringe...

20 January 2008: Climate Change: voices from communities affected by climate change (Friends of the Earth International) - "Cities and towns where Australians live, generally concentrated near the coast, will be affected by sea-level rise and storms and, in the North, bymore intense cyclones. Heatrelated deaths in Australia's major urban centres are expected to become five times more frequent by 2050."

18 January 2008: Richard Flanagan - Out of Control: the tragedy of Tasmania's forests - "In a world where it seems everything can be bought, all that will remain [of the Tasmanian native forests] are ghosts briefly mocking memory: a ream of copying paper in a Japanese office and a man fern in an English garden. And then they too will be gone."

26 January 2007: And the Winning Big Issue for 2007 is... - It sounds almost like the announcement by of Juan Antonio Samaranch, who announced that Syd-e-ney had won its bid to host the 2000 Olympic Games - it's just that the "winner" of the Big Issues in 2007 is a rather more disturbing announcement.

3 December 2006: From coal and horses and shock-jocks: Forcing the coal industry on its environmental knees - The judgment against Centennial Coal's Anvil mine by the New South Wales' Land and Environment court was a blow for the coal industry, but a giant - albeit potential - win for the planet, which brought together on the same side of the table some very unlikely partners: shock-jock Alan Jones, a 26-year-old student from Newcastle, and wine growers from The Hunter.

4 November 2006: Walk Against Warming: Day of Action on Climate Change - The Government will only take real action on climate change and protect our kids' futures if you to tell them to. Join thousands of other Australians in a peaceful walk urging action on climate change on the International Day of Action on Climate Change now.

8 October 2006: An Inconvenient Truth Down-under - "The reason [Australia] has joined the US in failing to ratify Kyoto, is that it wishes to sabotage this international agreement. Australia's policy under the Howard Government has been to attempt sabotage, not just of Kyoto, but of any international climate change treaty or protocol that 'works'..."

 :::CALL TO ACTION::: Monday 18 September 2006: A Planetary Emergency: Earth on the boil - this week, of all weeks in the year, seems a most opportune week to send you Project SafeCom's 'brand-new' publication - the brochure "From Climate Change to Climate Justice".

14 August 2006: Got that sinking feeling? - Some of Australia's closest neighbours are getting 'that sinking feeling' - and with good reason: their nations are sinking, or rather, rising sea levels increase the likelihood of them becoming "climate refugees". But this page is about our own country: Australia...

11 March 2006: Burning Coal and burning the planet - The Australian Labor Party has just released its environmental policy blueprint, and on the face of it, the policy looks 'half decent', but, as always needs to be asked, is the ALP policy all it's stated to be? And, how vulnerable is the stated target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 60% by 2050?

5 March 2006: Silencing the climate change prophets - ABC Four Corners lifts the lid off government gagging of those who know and should tell us. "Some scientists believe that there'll be more environmental refugees. Is that a possibility?" - "I can't really comment on that..."

15 September 2005: Friends of the Earth Australia: A Citizens Guide to Climate Refugees - While the Earth has always endured natural climate change variability, we are now facing the possibility of irreversible climate change in the near future. The increase of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere from industrial processes has enhanced the natural greenhouse effect.

31 December 2004: Changing worlds: the coming of envirogees - They will be coming in boats, in trucks, on trains - and in lorries, in aircraft wheel housing spaces, crouched.... An exploration of some Australian and global issues associated with ecological and seismic disasters, and the links between the two aspects of a planet under pressure - and the implications for a world community 'on the move'.

8 January 2004: Ten Steps to create an Organic Permaculture Garden - In an organic permaculture garden, the balance of a healthy self-functioning is not just retained, but also developed by deliberate design. In an organic permaculture garden, there is no need for applications of pesticides, the predator and prey are maintained in a balanced loop with plants, animals and insects.

25 November 2003: Practicing vermiculture - or owning a worm farm - Vermiculture is the practice of cultivating 'creepy-crawlies' in order to help them break down organic household waste. The power of for example redworms - Eisenia fetida - is staggering, and many people now own a "worm farm". In principle, a worm farm can handle kitchen waste, newspapers, and even egg cartons.

5 October 2003: Calming the Western Australian salt monster - In Western Australia, salt has now damaged about two million hectares of farm land. Production on those hectares has fallen, or stopped. If nothing is done, the salt will keep spreading for another 200 years. It will finally stop moving after about 30 per cent of the land has been degraded...

14 August 2003: Holistic farming: working towards your greener pastures - Talk to the people of the 750 km2 back paddock of El Questro Cattle Station, the folks at The Kachana Pastoral Company in the Kimberley in Western Australia. They regard their cows as part of the daily Executive Farm Management Team: Kachana's intensive rotational grazing plan is a proven success.

12 May 2003: The PAN Recall: the biggest medicine recall in history - The slowly forgotten MEDICARE dismantling push - legislation proposed in April-May 2003 - by Howard went hand-in-hand with the biggest medicine recall in history: the two events were only one day apart. While this should have rung all the alarmbells of the mainstream media, nothing happened. Read the 3-part analysis below. It will surprise you!

The catastrophic world events of a major earthquake, followed by tsunamis that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, during and after the Christmas weekend of 2004 provided an opportunity to express concerns about our expectations for further disaster. We took that opportunity. NewMatilda.com took it on board.

Changing worlds: the coming of envirogees

by Jack H Smit
31 December 2004
from New Matilda, Issue 18
5 Jan 2005

This is an edited version of an entry on the Project SafeCom Blog. It also appeared in this form at the New Matilda online magazine.

They will be on the move by the many thousands. They will be coming in boats, in trucks, on trains - and in lorries, in aircraft wheel housing spaces, crouched on planks under trains, and in goods containers, if we don't assist them. In the last week of 2004, when undersea earthquakes followed by tsunamis seriously impacted on countless local communities, the entire world was given a wake-up call which none of us can afford to ignore.

There were precursors of the 2004 tsunamis. The last decade saw several serious imbalances of the earth's weather patterns. During 1998, I kept a daily tally of all reported natural disasters and their impact on the world community, of lives lost, people displaced and injured - not including wars or internal conflict, I counted an estimated 2 247 000 fatalities, and around 151 million people injured and affected in several ways - from injuries to loss of house or habitat.

In Australia the solution is easy and familiar. We will need to start by building at least 1800 copies of the Baxter detention centre. No problem: they will all fit into the vastness of our Outback, far and far away from interference from the courts and from the human rights lawyers with bleeding hearts.

Then, we will need to increase the National Budget at least ten-fold - and that's just a start - to provide vessels mandated by Operation Relex, John Howard's Deter and Deny Refugee Repellent Army to swarm the Indian Ocean. We will need to increase staffing of the Immigration Department, let's say by 1200%, spend billions more on legislative extensions, establish a Migration-only Court not open for review by other courts instituted in Australia, to ensure processing does not drag on for more than just a few weeks.

Then, we will need to employ the strictest of guidelines, such as applying for asylum using English-only, and submitted on the right form issued by the Department of Immigration, making claims void immediately if asylum seekers who make it through the Repellant Army's barrier talk about something else before they express that Internationally Recognised Sentence: 'I desire to seek asylum.'

Or - we can do something different.

We could start by acknowledging that the First Law of Globalisation should recall the age-old dilemma of Cain and Abel. We are our brother's keeper with no holds barred, especially if the entire world is engulfed in a drama of epic proportions, and even more so if we claim Globalisation as our paradigm. And on a planet where borders have become irrelevant in many respects already for the movement of goods and the movement of capital, if not for people, we will have to move towards an elimination of hardline exclusions and find a way to welcome people caught up in these dramas. The moves taken in the week following the devastating effects of the tsunami are heartening in many ways: the world community has rallied, financially and in-kind, to the aid of millions of victims who are affected by the disaster.

Of course, while George W Bush and John Howard have signalled moves to form a rather grandiose alliance with Australia, Japan and India to coordinate relief, the Bush Administration's financial and other aid remains an expression of the fact that the USA under Bush is more interested in spreading its hegemony than in playing its role as an equal partner in this drama. But the world will learn this lesson fast, I expect. If Bush does not become more intelligent in his approach to many issues, there will be a full-scale rejection of the stupidity and blindness of a president only interested in American domination of the world stage.

While local, regional and State communities in Australia, as well as the churches and aid organisations have excelled in their rushing to the aid of the ten stricken nations, the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland called the initial overall aid efforts by rich Western nations "stingy." And the New York Times, on Christmas Eve, observed that:

1. $35 million remains a miserly drop in the bucket, and is in keeping with the pitiful amount of the United States budget that we allocate for non-military foreign aid. According to a poll, most Americans believe the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent. [1]

The link between earthquakes and global warming and the ensuing pressure on the earth crust, whether it is our populated or remote landmass or the ocean floor is now widely accepted by scientific opinion. The public are also increasingly aware of the link. Gordon Drennan from Burton SA in a recent letter to the Editor of The Age wrote:

1. It is no coincidence that a Richter scale 8.1 earthquake near Macquarie Island between Tasmania and Antarctica was followed just days later by the catastrophic one in the Indian Ocean off the Aceh coast. Both are on the boundary of the India-Australia tectonic plate, and shocks and stresses from the first would have contributed to the one that followed. And a factor in the Macquarie Island earthquake would have been the redistribution of load on the planet's crust as Antarctic ice melts due to global warming. As the climate warms, and more Antarctic ice melts, the countries on the boundary of our plate - New Zealand, New Guinea, Indonesia and southern Asia - can expect more and bigger earthquakes. [2]

Or elsewhere in a discussion of the relationship between glacier melt-down and earthquakes in the Alaska region:

1. Alaska is seismically active because a North Pacific crustal plate is ramming into southern Alaska, creating pressures that must be relieved at some point. However, these pressures do push up high mountains where glaciers form - and the weight of the glaciers pushing down can stabilize the situation, if not eliminate the risk altogether. Remove that weight, and the likelihood of a quake goes up as the strain accumulates. (....) Photographs show how glaciers in the fault area had thinned substantially during the 80 years since the previous earthquake activity. [3]

In the New Statesman of May 2004, Mark Lynas mentions similar findings:

1. In the pre-industrial era, levels of carbon dioxide per cubic metre of air stood at roughly 278 parts per million (ppm). Today, they have soared to 376ppm, the highest in at least 420,000 years, and probably much longer (....) if the current rate of carbon accumulation continues, the rise in temperature could be as much as 6 Celsius by the end of the century, according to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (....) according to a paper from the Benfield Hazard Research Centre (....) the impact of methane hydrate failure could be very dramatic indeed. If enough gas is released, entire continental slopes could collapse in enormous submarine landslides, triggering tsunami waves of up to 15 metres in height - enough to level entire coastal cities. Again, there is a precedent: just 7,000 years ago, an area of continental slope the size of Wales slid downhill between Norway and Iceland, triggering a tsunami that wiped out neolithic communities on the north-east coast of Scotland.
2. (....) A recent report for America's military top brass warned that mass refugee flows and competition for water and food could plunge the world into nuclear conflict. "Humans fight when they outstrip the carrying capacity of their natural environment," it warns. "The most combative societies are the ones that survive." The report charts some of the "potential military implications of climate change", including the collapse of the EU, civil war in China and the takeover of US borders by the army to prevent refugee incursions from the Caribbean and Mexico. [4]

We can conclude from this that the world community, in addition to regular rushing to the aid of those whose lives are compromised by such disasters, needs also to rush to pressure governments to immediately spend time and commitment to reduce its damaging footprint on the capacity of the planet to deal with our impact on it.

Our own very survival in the world is dependent on our ability to pressure governments to enact restrictive legislation, both on the corporate world but also on its allies in other countries. Local community groups must be mobilised to pressure local, state, and in Australia, federal governments - especially via backbenchers as was learnt from the refugee movement since TAMPA.

Mobilising local communities to not only collect goods and services, funds and donations to be sent to countries affected by last week's earthquake but also to lobby representatives in State and Federal government to take the message seriously and wake up the community. Bumper stickers saying 'Stop the Envirogees: Sign Kyoto' could be the message for a start - not because I support a halt to refugee intake, or that I think that signing the Kyoto agreement is a panacea for the debacle of the environmental danger we find ourselves in. But it might be small start, and a reminder that we are going to need all the cleverness we can muster; otherwise we'll be washed away.

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Jack Smit is the founder and co-ordinator of Project SafeCom Inc., a community association in Western Australia that has engaged people and politicians around Australia about refugee policy issues and treatment since the Tampa stand-off in 2001, acting as activists and lobbyists. Project SafeCom supports 'sustainable' and 'sustainability' policies that positively affect all people and the planet and it seeks serious changes in Australia, especially amongst politicians, so that policies start to reflect a direct countering of what it perceives as 'people and planetary emergencies'. Project SafeCom's website is located at http://www.safecom.org.au/

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