Environmentality 12 February 2014, Dr Tim Read, Moreland Greens

Is there a Dr in the house? Yes there was, two in fact.  Lucky us.

On Environmentality this week it was all about politics and to make sure we got the facts right we invited Dr Tim Read, Moreland Greens member, former Greens candidate for Wills who is now running for preselection in the seat of Brunswick!  He is a very busy man, and Tim, we do appreciate you taking the time to cycle out to our studios in Hadfield.

The topics covered today were everything from getting involved in a political party, exercise or lack there of it within our community, manufacturing and the EastWest link just to mention a few.  Make sure you Listen to the Show!

It is endlessly fascinating to me that neither major parties in Australia have embraced the science and technology capabilities we have.  When you chance across stories like the one in Sustainable Business about a carpet manufacturer that is heading towards zero emissions and impact on the environment by 2020, it really makes you wonder when our government is going to get behind and start supporting clean, green alternatives. We don't need to be brain surgeons to guess that the company I am referring to are are European.  Of course they are!  Tony Abbott and the party he leads seem to be steering us down the path of no return with a reliance on big polluters to keep our economy moving.  But I digress to something more palatable.

It is great to see that the Drs' in the house practice what they preach with regards to moving away from a reliance on cars to get around.  Melbourne has quite a good network of bike lanes and paths that connect our city and suburbs.  Have a look at the Bicycle Network website it has lots of great information about organised bike rides and all the bike networks that connect around town.  There is also Map My Ride which has detailed downloadable routes which also detail the terrain and all those hills you may need to have extra fuel for.  You can also add your own rides to this site too.

Music played today was

Weddings Parties Anything, Fathers Day
Josh Pyke, Middle of the Hill
Katy Steele/Paul Kelly, This Mess We're in

Next week on the show we will be talking gardening with Jodi Jackson

Environmentality 5 February, 2014 Hume Environmental Champions

It was such a relaxed and casual show today.  We had two lovely guests returning to the studio; Caroline Overbeek, Environment Community Development Officer, Hume City Council and Lee Scott, Environmental Champion with a passion for our native bees and making sure they have somewhere to safe to live. You can listen to the show here..

The Hume Environmental Champions has been running for three years and Lee has been involved for the last two.  Lee has amassed has over 250 like minded native bee enthusiasts to promote the plight of our native bees by building hotels for them to ensure their survival.  Mercedes Ramirez has written a beautiful story, A Hotel for Polly,  which is a great way to explain to kids all about our bees and how much we need them.

The Champions project has had great success in building and strengthening the community of Hume.  Apart from all the bee enthusiasts, the Lemon Tree Project and the Sunbury Organic Food Coo-op are another couple of great examples of community coming together.  

If you live in the Hume area and have an interest in the environment why not get involved and become an Environmental Champion.  You don't need any experience or even a project in mind, just give Caroline a call - 9205 2310

There are so many living green festivals happening now and over the coming weeks.  Some you may like to check out if you are in the Melbourne area are:

Woodend Sustainable Living Festival, this Saturday 8 February
The Seymour Alternative Farming Expo, weekend of 14 Feb, running since 1991 it might appeal to the urban farmer in you.
The Sustainable Living Festival - 8 to 23 February with so many things happening you will be in a spin.
Sunfest now in its 38th year, held on the weekend of 15 March

If you like so many others are perplexed and completely outraged by the Western Australian governments' decision to cull sharks that happen to be cruising too close to the beach you can join an on-line petition and add your own personal message to Colin Barnett, go to the Conservation Council of WA and lodge your objection.

Music played on the show today

Joan As Police Woman, The Classic from The Classic Album
Kevin Walton, Like the Sun from the album Momentum
Joe Geia, The Mosquito Dance from the Injidda Bygun Nunga Koori and Murri Love Album
Coloured Stones, Dark Seed

Don't miss next weeks show - Tim Read,  The Greens

Make Sure You Listen to the Show!

Environmentality 29 January 2014, Ursula Alquier, Lock The Gate Alliance

Hi Environmentalitists,

We had a punchy show today with a fabulously passionate Ursula Alquier, Victorian Coordinator for Lock the Gate Alliance talking with us on the landline.

Along with Ursula's passion we had our guest presenter, John, raising his voice and asking Tony (Tony Abbott that is), to quit coal and move to renewables.

A great win for  the town of
Poowong and the
 Lock the Gate Alliance

It would be a great thing if our humble radio spot and this blog were able to move the Prime Minister even milimetres in the right direction.  So it is fortunate for our beautiful country that we have organisations like Lock the Gate Alliance joining forces with other environmental organisations and community groups to stop the pillaging and destruction of our water resources in search of more coal and gas reserves.

Over the years, Australia has had some great success with environmental campaigns, stopping the damning of the Franklin River is quite a famous victory, but also the anti litter campaigns; Keep Australia Beautiful and Tidy Towns competitions.  A more recent win in the far north of WA is the backdown by Woodside to develop the James Price Point gas hub.  Lets not forget the residents of Tecoma that have been all the way to the USA to fight the building of McDonalds in their area. All of these campaigns were successful because communities stayed strong and supported each other to fight for what they believe in.

Make sure you listen to the show

I forgot to mention in last weeks' blog that we spoke with Greg Foyster, who has written a book called Changing Gears, a Pedal Powered Detour from the Rat Race.  Greg and his partner headed off from Tassie to Far North Queensland and interviewed lots of people living sustainable lives, which he has turned into a great read.  Thanks Greg!

Next Week we are sticking with things closer to home and talking with Caroline Overbeek from Hume City about the Environmental Champions

Music played today

Bernard Fanning, Kites from the album Kites
Don Walker, Hully Gully from the album Rock
Pete Seeger, Little Boxes
Adalita, Trust is Rust from the album All Day Venus

Environmentality 22 January 2014 - Jamie Hanson, Australian Conservation Foundation

Happy New Year Environmentality listeners and readers

I hope you all had a restful Christmas and New Year and will have time to listen to the last three shows, which are now uploaded on the the site.

Due to a malfunction in the studio communication system on 8 and 15 Jan we were unable to have our guests on, however, Jaime managed to snag himself an articulate, educated and passionate environmental activist by the name of John Merory as his co-presenter.  Thanks John for bringing some couth and culture to Environmentality.

Our first guest of the year was Jamie Hanson, Climate Change Campaigner for the Australian Conservation Foundation.  Thanks very much Jamie for talking with us.

The ACF do an incredible amount of work lobbying government and business on a wide range of environmental/sustainability issues.  With the current federal governments stance on anything to do with the environment the ACF  certainly has their work cut out for them.  Make sure you listen to the show

In the first two shows of the year 8 Jan and 15 Jan John and Jaime talked about many different topics (including the heatwave Southern Australia had) but the recurring theme was what impact we as individuals can have on making our environment cleaner, healthier and more sustainable.

There are always plenty of ideas thrown around; Use the car less, get on your bike, use public transport, install water tanks and have them hooked up to your toilet, ask your landlord to do the same, grow your own vegetables.  Buy Australian made produce, buy local produce, be aware of where your food is coming from and how far it has traveled.  Recycle your plastic bags.  All of these things mean different things to different people, so tell me

A fairly new community movement, The Transition Towns movement is a great way to contribute and be part of the community you live or work in.  Transition Towns started in Ireland and has spread around the world.  Australia is embracing the movement.  To find a Transition Town close to you go to the Transition Network site.

There are times though when the power of words is the best change maker. Some people are great writers, so get your fingers working, write to your local, state and federal reps, don't write once, twice or three times, keep writing.  The little itch you cause may turn into a large one which then makes that all important change.

MUSIC

There was an ecclectic mix of music played over the past three weeks;
Amy Kilpatrick, The CatEmpire, Reservoir Dogs movie soundtrack, James Brown, The Marquees, Queen, Tex Perkins, Lisa Miller

THIS WEEK ON THE SHOW......

We have a Ursula from Lock The Gate on the line, don't miss it!

We also have a week of hot weather coming our way.  Try and look out for any elderly neighbours as they some of our most vulnerable at this time.

Don't forget to leave us a comment or tell us who you would like to hear on the show.

Environmentality 18 December 2013 - Christmas Feasts

 

Well Environmentalitists that dreaded day is nearly upon us!  Ho, Ho, Ho I can hear you all roaring.

I feel I must confess, I am one of those people that has a house that looks like a spaceship and prepares weeks before for the feast of a lifetime.  Not very environmental or sustainable but the kids love it (big and small) and there are not too many days in the year where you get to sit and eat and sit and eat some more!

We had the lovely Jodi Jackson in the studio today.  As always the conversation was easy with a few tips from Jodi on how to keep red spider mites out of the garden and how to stop your passionfruit producing all green leaves and no fruit.

We heard about some mouthwatering spanish delights from Jaime's homeland and how the Christmas celebration in Espana never ends.  Make sure you listen to the show to get Jodi's berry vanilla panna cotta recipe

Wherever you are and whatever you eat over the festive season be it dining on dry salted cod, coloured rice, pickled veg and herring, lamb biryani, roast pork and veg or boiled potatoes and sake we at the team of Environmentality wish you all a safe Christmas and New Year.

A big thank you to all our guests who have given their time so generously over the year.  To our loyal listeners we look forward to you tuning in again on 8 January 2014.

It was a Brazilian music fiesta today with music from Caetano Veloso, Roger Carlos and Pedro Guerra and we finished the show with a song from Sydney band Alpha Mama, If Ya Goni Lie

Environmentality 11 December 2013, Amy Middleton, Australian Geographic

Ever wanted to know what the top ten most dangerous animals in Australia are? What about most dangerous snakes and spiders?  And let's not forget about the legendary Drop Bear.  It seems that this is what most visitors from overseas are obsessed with and quite a few of us that live here too!

Amy Middleton, Online Editor from Australian Geographic was kind enough to join us on Environmentality where we also discovered that Jaime is not too keen on spiders and gets a bit sweaty thinking about sharks! Well he is not the only one.

Check out the Australian Geographic website for the most dangerous top 10 in all sorts of categories.

Aurora Borealis (northern lights)

Aurora Australis

The show was not all about being scared and looking out for wild and creepy creatures. There was much discussion about campsites, photographers, the northern and southern lights also known as the aurora borealis and aurora australis.


Now is the time to be out and about enjoying the sunshine, grab your tent, and head off, there are so many great places to explore and lots of them are free http://www.australiancampsites.com.au/.    

If you fancy yourself as a photographer take some snaps and send them into the Australian Geographic competition, mind you after looking at some of the entries, the competition is fierce.

It wasn't a great week for one part of our beautiful country.  The Ranger Uranium mine had a toxic spill from it's leach tank of 1,400 cubic metres of uranium oxide slurry and acid.  It is not great news for the area as the Ranger mine sits within the boundaries of the world heritage area of Kakadu.  Kakadu has a tough enough battle dealing with cane toads, cattle, buffalo and tourism let alone environmental disasters like this. 

We debuted music from our very own Rachel Wood, with a couple of her own compositions and a beautiful cover of Kylie's Hand on Your Heart, make sure you listen to the show!  Unfortunately you can't buy any of Rachel's music yet, stay tuned for any updates.

Other music played on the show was Only One from the John Butler Band and a song from Sarah McDermott.

Next week is the last show of the year so we will be celebrating with our gardening guru Jodi Jackson.

Environmentality 3 December 2013, Paul Shelton, A Year of Treading Lightly

mobile phones, toothpaste, plastic food containers, paint, dvds, lip gloss, UV block out blinds, almost all products in a $2 shop, solar panels,  cleaning products, high chairs, flat screen tvs, upvc windows, bean bag fillings, lounge suites, microwaves,  bread bag ties, bread bags, most of your clothes if you shop like me, vegetable punnets, the list is almost endless - what am I talking about? All these things are made with bi products of petrochemicals!

Today's guest was Paul Shelton, check out Paul's blog. Thanks Paul for joining us, it was great to talk to you.  Paul has done a stirling job of trying not to buy or use anything that is derived from petrochemicals.

And guess what?  He, his wife and two children have done it!  And no they don't live in some idyllic country town with no food miles, farmers and greenies on every corner. They live in suburban Melbourne.  To hear their story and see how they taken living sustainably to another level Listen to the Show.

Why is it that in the here and now we are all excited to talk to people like Paul, no disrespect Paul!  We are amazed at his and his family's ability to get on and get back to basics.  Is it because we have essentially become so insular, so reliant on the big 24 hr one stop shop, is it because we are lazy these days?  It wasn't that long ago, 25 years maybe that my grandparents were self sufficient in a food sense.  They grew all their vegetables, had a small orchard and had lots of chickens and ducks, which they didn't name, but farmed and ate.

I guess I am preaching to the converted as whoever reads this blog and listens to the show is probably interested in sustainability in some form.  What Paul and his family have achieved is fantastic, but it is not something that everyone is going to want to achieve.  Maybe we could all start with something small.  Something like buying Australian, read the labels, where is your food coming from?

So what am I going to do?, because lets face it, I am one who could do a little more.  As my chickens have gone broody and the last of my broad beans eaten, I don't have anything apart from a few herbs to swap with neighbours, I am going to make a concerted effort not to use cling wrap.  That for me is a huge ask.  It means I will need to find all the lids to all those containers in the bottom draw!  

Now that is enough to make me cry!