Bathurst Community Climate Action Network

Have we been conned? Flannery, Garnaut, Hamilton and McKibben Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 At this Sydney Writers' Festival event highlight, 'Have we been conned on climate change? An emergency Town Hall meeting', four leading climate change thinkers address the devastating lack of political leadership on the issue of climate change in Australia. Environmentalist Tim Flannery (The Weather Makers), economist and author of the Garnaut Report Ross Garnaut, academic/writer/public intellectual Clive Hamilton (Requiem for a Species) and US journalist and activist Bill McKibben (Eaarth) speak frankly and passionately about what needs to be done and where the political system has failed. Sydney Town Hall, May 2010. http://www.themonthly.com.au/have-we-been-conned-flannery-garnaut-hamilt...

Are any events being planned for the 350 day? www.350.org

Venue: CSU Allen house (N1) staff room.
Agenda
a.       Building and Urban Planning.
Report on meeting with David Shaw
 
b.      b.  Energy APT
 Pyrolosis  in the Central West. Visit to Pacific Pyrolosis.
 Proposals for group purchases.
i)                    Solamate  http://www.sola-mate.com/ 
ii)                   Solarchoice   http://www.solarchoice.net.au/   
  NSW review of feed-in tariff.

 http://www.cleanenergycouncil.org.au/cec/policyadvocacy/NSW-solar-bonus 
  Any other business
 

Spring is here, and we all know what that means. Swooping magpies. Okay, early spring also means warmer weather, more light in the mornings and glorious cherry blossoms. Even though we're still at risk of tomato-killing frost until after the race weekend (that's the rule of thumb at our house), we can at least start thinking about growing tomatoes. But it also means swooping magpies.

I have been swooped and my hardy black Labrador Bertie has also, to his astonishment, been swooped. Just about everyone I know has been swooped. Once, I was riding my bike along Research Station Drive on the university campus when I received a blow to the head. Fortunately I was able to stay upright and fortunately I was wearing my helmet.

What are we to do about the magpies? First, take precautionary measures. These include avoiding certain nesting spots, wearing zip ties sticking up out of your helmet to stop them striking full force or wearing an icecream container on your head (if you're a small child and don't yet care about looking silly).

Second, enjoy the magpies. Just as roses have thorns and babies have to have their nappies changed, there are two sides to the magpie coin. There is nothing more beautiful, more iconically Australian, than a full-throated magpie call. The swooping is all about raising the next generation of choir members. So go ahead and swoop, magpies! Oh yes, that's the other recommendation: an umbrella. That works really well.

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Those new compact fluoro lightglobes that have taken over from the old style ones may be more energy efficient, but where do we put them when they finally die? Bathurst Regional Council has advised us that both fluorescent tubes and compact fluoro lightglobes can be recycled at the Waste Management Centre. The charge is five cents per kilo for the current financial year, and there is a minimum charge of three dollars, making it more cost-effective to recycle a number of globes at one time rather than single items. Both items can also be recycled through the annual household hazardous chemical collections at no charge (up to 20 litres/kgs).
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Whatever else may be said about the elections just gone – and an awful lot is being said as we go into the first hung parliament since the Second World War – it would be safe to say that concerns about climate change are now firmly on the political agenda. The rising vote for the Greens, for whom this is the number one issue, stands in contrast to the declining vote for the major parties, who tried to dance around the issue rather than give us clear policy. While the major parties were more comfortable talking about the economy and even "the boats", they can't stamp out a rising feeling in the electorate that "the great moral issue of our generation" is still to be decisively confronted. (I'd just like to add that I'm not a member of the Greens, although I did support them in this election. Bathurst Community Climate Action Network, for which I am publicity officer, has no affiliation to any political party, and people of all political persuasions make up the membership of BCCAN.)
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Last Thursday night, environmental consultant Professor David Goldney gave a presentation to the local historical society about the natural history of the Bathurst region. When he started with the creation of the universe I thought we were going to be in for a long night, but he quickly got on to more recent times. Professor Goldney has been picking over written accounts from all sorts of people as they came across the mountains to the Bathurst plains in the nineteenth century. Their observations give an insight into how rapidly the landscape, created over millions of years and then tended by the Wiradjuri people for tens of thousands, was transformed within just a couple of decades by European settlement. White cedar disappeared almost immediately and soil erosion set in very quickly. He ended by saying that today, landholders should be paid to restore and maintain the health of our landscape. He added that there are many examples of ecologically beneficial farming and landholding practices in our region that should be supported and propagated. Professor Goldney is now working on a book about all this, ensuring that his research will be available to the people of this region into the future.

(provided by Judy Walker, convenor of the BCCAN Community Awarenes Action Planning Team)
I must admit I’m a bit of a politics tragic. However, during this election campaign I’ve enjoyed the comedy of budgie-smugglers, wrangers, personality changes and the picture I have in my head of boats of asylum seekers chugging up the Macquarie River as we are “overrun by illegal boat arrivals”.
However I can’t find any way of dealing with the fact that both major parties have shuffled the issue of climate change off to the side and are doing their best to avoid effective action.
Labor is promising us a talk fest and a scheme to allow farmers to earn carbon credits for purchase by plane travelers or companies, so that they can say they are environmentally conscious.
The Coalition has said it can deal with the problem of carbon emissions. Where will the Green Army of 15 thousand volunteers come from and exactly what they are going to do? What will be the cost to the taxpayer of their activities? The Coalition has said that it will encourage polluting industries and farmers to cut back on their CO2e emissions voluntarily, by offering them a subsidy. Will the cost of this be available for public scrutiny? The taxpayer is going to have to provide that subsidy. In fact, if industry takes up this promised subsidy, the cost on the public’s pocket will be a dreaded “great big fat tax”. Yet the Coalition wants us to believe that “a big fat tax” is only when you actually use the words “carbon tax” and make the polluters pay the tax.
Meanwhile the vast majority of scientists tell us that a 5% reduction of emissions is not enough. The heat wave and forest fires in Russia and the devastating floods in Pakistan are telling us that too. While the Coalition and Labor play their games the scientists are putting forward positive, achievable actions.
On Thursday, 12 August, a collaborative research report was released at a meeting at the Sydney Town Hall. The 16 page synopsis summarises a plan for Australia to transition to renewable energy in the next 10 years. It examines the cost of such actions. It deals with the issues of employment. It concludes that this transition is achievable and affordable. Look at the report for yourself on the Beyond Zero Emissions website.

Come to Cafe Kai in George St. for a meal, social interaction and a talk about Water by local environmentalist Ashley Bland.
 Click HERE for more details.

Early June
Now is the time to plant broad beans in Bathurst. Nominal time for a crop is 4 months, so planting in June should give a crop in October. Cropping needs to be finished before the weather gets too hot, so planting time is from June to August.
Quantity - for a family of 4, 1 packet of seeds should be about right. 50 to 60 g of seed will be about 30 to 40 seeds. I suggest you divide them into 2 (or 3) batches for planting in June and July (and August).
Seeds are usually planted 25 cm apart in a double row.
The plants tend to fall over if not supported, which may be OK but the bean pods tend to get wet and dirty and may be more subject to disease. To support them, drive in 4 wooden stakes at the corners of the area of your double row, and wind a piece of string around the stakes at heights of about 30 cm, 60 cm and 90 cm.
Make sure you cover the planted seed bed with mulch to control weed growth.
At harvest time, start picking early - the whole pods can be eaten when they are very young. When more developed you need to discard the shells and just eat the seeds. The seeds can also be dried for longer term storage - and of course save some seeds for next year.
There will be more info on preparation later in the season.
Other things to consider planting now:
Garlic (last chance this month - any garlic that you have bought should be sprouting now, just plant it and it will give you a whole bulb with multiple cloves in November or December.
Spinach (English)
Peas
Onions

Check out the link here:
http://www.abc.net.au/insidebusiness/content/2010/s2989984.htm

I made it! I got all the way from Hyde Park in Sydney to the glorious waves of Bondi Beach using nothing but bipedal action. I mostly walked, but there were a few jog-trots in there as well. It was slightly surreal, but exhilarating, to take over streets that are normally clogged with traffic. There were times when everything went very quiet – the spaces between loudspeaker music and Elvis impersonators – and it was just the sound of 70,000 feet on the road and cheerful chatter. Sunday also happened to be one of those dazzlingly bright days that Sydney can turn on, with the sun glittering on water.

But it was hard not to notice all the plastic cups. There we were, like cyclists in the Tour de France, receiving water from supporters on the sidelines. You'd grab a cup, have a slurp and then throw the cup down to join the thousands of others. As we passed through the watering stations, the sound of feet crunching over dead cups was really something. It was like kicking up autumn leaves, only crunchier.

Plastic cups are made of oil. We're running out of oil – and in the case of BP, wasting a whole lot of it in the Gulf of New Orleans – so the idea that we should be using plastic as if there were a never-ending supply seems a little crazy. The arrival last month of the Plastiki, the catamaran made of two-litre plastic drink bottles, drew attention to the craziness. Expedition leader David de Rothschild made the epic journey from San Francisco to Sydney to draw attention to the great swirling soup of plastic in the Pacific ocean known as the Pacitic garbage patch.

Maybe the City Surf needs to implement a two-tier system where the serious runners get plastic cups (because they're special) while the rest of us are forced to bring our own receptacles.

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A big thanks to the TAFE welfare students who released their report Walk Ride to the Future last Friday. It explored why fewer kids than ever ride their bikes or walk to school. BCCAN will be using the data to help devise a community campaign on this issue.