The Perth ‘Say Yes’ rally

Yesterday I went to the Perth ‘Say Yes’ rally to show my support for a price on carbon. It was a lovely sunny day, and it was nice to be out since I’ve been working long hours lately.

Dave and I ran into lots of our friends from the Green Drinks group, from the old GetUp ReEnergise Australia team, and friends we’ve known for years. There were speeches and a band, and a good time was had by all.

From what I’ve seen on the news and on the Say Yes Facebook page, the rallies all around Australia had a great turnout. The positive message and excellent promotion (plus the SMS reminders?) helped attract a varied crowd that really represents mainstream Australia, in my opinion.

I’ll confess that I enjoyed the rally style more than some of the marches I’ve been on. Marches just take so long to get started as we wait for everyone to get in place. The rally being at a fixed point meant that everyone knew where to be, the speakers could start on time, and anyone passing by could stop and watch if they were interested.

I’ve made a little slideshow of the Perth rally. I wish I’d gotten more photos of the people we chatted with, but everyone is so shy in front of a camera

Did you go to the rally in your city? How was it?

Earth Hour 2011 Awards: a vision for the future

Yes, that time of year is coming up again: Earth Hour 2011 will be on Saturday 26th of March, and they’re asking people to show their support for sustainable change by switching out their lights for an hour.

What I love about Earth Hour is how it’s grown and changed over the years. It started in 2007 in Sydney with a few supporters in other Aussie capital cities, and has now grown to be a truly global event (as you can see in the video below).

Back then we were all fresh from watching An Inconvenient Truth and were willing to do something that felt a bit silly, like turning our lights out for a bit. It was one of our first steps towards showing other people that we were going to get serious about this climate change stuff. We were happy to inconvenience ourselves if it meant we were saving energy.

But we’re beyond that now: turning our lights out is merely a symbol of a greater need. We want more than just a little energy efficiency, we want a bright green future. We want a vision of how things could be, if we truly committed to living sustainably…

So I’m really thrilled that Earth Hour is giving out awards this year to people who are showing us the way to a brighter future. We need to find and promote people who are walking the walk as well as talking the talk. I’m looking forward to learning about the best sustainability leaders in Australia.

There are a few categories: Young Pandas for the under-15s, Workplace Champions, Future Makers, Educators and a Lifetime Acheivement award. If you know someone who has inspired and helped you on your journey towards sustainability, don’t let them hide their light under a bushel. Tell Earth Hour you know someone who needs to be recognised.

In the meanwhile, make a committment to the lights-out on March 26th by signing up at the site. If you’re on Facebook or Twitter or have other contacts, share what you’ve already done to go ‘beyond the hour’. Earth Hour is often people’s first step into the world of going green, and it’s reassuring to see that others are paving the way. Show them how you’ve started making changes, and what you hope for the future.

National Swap Day

As you know, I’ve already had a go at hosting my own clothes swap party at home. I had a great time, and plan on doing it again. But I can see where people with very busy jobs and families to look after might not have enough time to plan one for themselves.

This is where the public swap events come in – you RSVP and just show up on the day with the clothes you want to swap. No fussing about who’ll be there, or making sure you have enough snacks and drinks.

If you’ve always wanted to give it a try, but haven’t made it to one yet, you’ve got a great opportunity coming up next week. On Monday 25th October, there will be Clothing Exchange swaps all around Australia.

They’re calling it National Swap Day, and there will be swap events happening in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane. And if you’re not in one of those capital cities, they’re happy to send you out a swapping how-to kit so you can host your own.

It costs $25 for entry, and you bring at least 6 garments that are in good condition but you’d like to find new homes for. You can take home the same number of items as you brought with you, if you like. They do check for quality though, so maybe leave the spare tracky-daks for a charity donation instead!

If you’re interested, email the swap leaders for your city for more information. And if anyone is thinking of going to the Perth swap, please let me know and maybe we can meet up!

Blog Action Day 2010: Water

Main Creek, near Euston, courtesy of the MDBA website

Every year I join in on Blog Action Day, where bloggers from around the world all focus on one topic for a day. This year the topic is Water. The issues surrounding water use around the globe are very familiar to Go Greener readers – ocean acidification, overfishing, drought and climate change. Today I want to look at just one local aspect of this.

This week the Murray-Darling Basin is in the news. It’s Australia’s largest river system, with an average of 24,000 gigalitres of water travelling through it each year. It’s truly an amazing ecosystem:

• Starting in Queensland and travelling 3,375km to South Australia, the rivers form lakes and wetlands, recharge groundwater supplies, and refresh estuary environments.
• The basin area covers 1,061,469 km² of land, and is home to hundreds of native species of plants and animals. They rely on the river’s seasonal flows to breed and flourish.
• The basin is also Australia’s food bowl – it provides over one-third of Australia’s food supply! The wide range of environments means that it’s used for grazing livestock, wine regions, fruit, vegetables, grain crops, and cotton.
• It’s also home to 2 million Australians – that’s nearly 10% of us. Everyone there relies on the river system: for drinking water, cleaning water, for their jobs and for their future.

We are so dependent on it for every aspect of our lives.

But we don’t show it any respect. Less than half of the waterflow makes it to the end of the river, because we drain it so heavily. We’ve let carp push native species out of their homes. We’ve let the river get salty and filled it with runoff chemicals that cause enormous algal blooms.

If we don’t learn to take care of this precious resource, we’re the ones who will suffer for it. Our farmlands will be ruined and unusable, there won’t be any wildlife to enjoy, and no-one will be able to live there anymore.

The Murray-Darling Basin Plan is a start. It’s based on the science of what can be sustainably taken from the river, and what needs to be done to restore it to it’s former glory. I know there are farmers who are deeply unhappy with it. It’s going to be extremely hard for them to change their methods and in some cases give up their land. But we can’t continue to just take from the land and water the way we have been. We have to give something back to nature, to replenish it and make it last into the future.

It’s about the hard numbers and facts: 24,000 gigalitres can only be made to stretch so far. If we use it all for irrigation, what’s left to drink? Or if we drink it all, how will we water our crops? How will we preserve our wildlife? Water is in limited supply, and we have to be wise about how we use it as our population increases.

I hope that our farmers can consider more than their crucial role in Australia’s food supply, and see their place in the wider eco-system of the Murray-Darling Region. Hopefully they will not only support the plan, but come up with ways to make it better for their children and grandchildren. By sustaining the river system, they sustain us all.

Walk Against Warming, Sunday 15th August

Earlier in the week I promised I’d talk about some ways to make your vote count in this election. This might look like an event announcement, but I think it’s a great way to give your vote some extra oomph.

This year’s Walk Against Warming is actually pretty quick after the last one that happened back in December. It’s going to be held on Sunday 15th August, the Sunday before the election, and the organisers are hoping to get huge numbers of people.

Check the Walk Against Warming website to find out details of where your city is holding the walk. I’ll be at the Esplanade in Fremantle at noon with some friends, if you’re going to be there too let me know in the comments and we can try to meet up.

From the website:

We’re going green and clean. We’re reducing our greenhouse pollution and recycling our waste. We’re saving water and energy, and buying greenpower. And we’re forming climate action groups – all across the country.

Meanwhile our leaders have been all talk, backflips, and delays. They’ve given us rising pollution and a free ride for big polluters. This election, help us put the pressure on our political leaders…

Protest marches don’t directly bring about change. But what they do is to show how many people believe in the cause enough to get off their butts and make a public statement about it.

Right now, politicians in the Labor party and the Coalition think they can sideline climate change as an issue. They think the penalty for ignoring it won’t be as harsh as the hassle they get from the fossil fuel companies. We need to show them there’s more of us wanting climate action than they’ve reckoned on, and that we’re prepared to vote accordingly. They can have all the campaign finance from big business that they want, but businesses don’t get a vote: they need us if they want to win their seats.