Bathurst Community Climate Action Network

Issue 18th December 2008

Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to go on a writing retreat in the Katoomba house of the author of The Timeless Land, Eleanor Dark. Her husband, Dr Dark, had been a subscriber to Choice magazine way back in the early 1960s. Whenever I needed a mental break, I’d drift back to the old magazines and flip through the pictures of eskies and typewriters circa 1961. There was a piece on the strength of nylon stockings, and a contraption set up to test how much stretching and rubbing they would stand before laddering. But the article that really struck me was a long piece on the health hazards of cigarettes. The evidence was overwhelming: they were ruinous and people should stop smoking them right now if they wanted to live long and useful lives. As we know, cigarettes went on being a normal part of life for at least the next twenty years. There were health warnings, but there were also advertisements of healthy tanned young women and men on horseback, and ashtrays were at every elbow. There were decades between those early scientific warnings and a general acceptance that smoking was indeed bad for your health. All this comes to mind in the wake of the Rudd government’s decision to commit to a five per cent unconditional reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. If the rest of the world agrees to a tougher regime, the Australian government will make it 15 per cent. Even an international commitment to 15 per cent, according to the scientists, could leave the next generation dealing with a series of catastrophes. The target needs to be somewhere between 25 and 40 per cent. So, just like with cigarettes, we get mixed messages. On the one hand, scientists are telling us “wrong way, go back!” and on the other, business goes chugging on as usual. This bull needs to be taken by the horns and all we are managing is an ineffectual tug on the tail. But all is not lost. The government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) at least provides a framework for action that can be cranked up in future. If governments and big business are slow to move, then we will have to rely on people power to get things moving. And that’s what just might save the day: the millions of people around the world with a sincere desire to hand a liveable planet to the next generation.

Issue 11th December 2008

Just a few more sleeps and we'll know. I'm not talking about Santa – he's mercifully still a couple of weeks away. I'm talking about Penny Wong, and what she's going to announce first thing next Monday morning. The Federal Environment Minister's first diary item for December 15 will be to set our national emissions target for the year 2020. It has been a long and interesting process getting this far. We took a great leap forward when Kevin Rudd signed the Kyoto Protocol shortly after he was elected. Then we had Professor Ross Garnaut's report with its dire predictions, and then a Green Paper of possibilities and finally, on Monday, we'll have our White Paper of commitments. We've come along way since the Howard government's foot-dragging, but environmental groups are worried that that the target won't be big enough to send a serious signal ahead of the international climate change conventions coming up in Poland and Copenhagen. There is serious concern that Penny Wong's target could be as low as a ten per cent reduction. Environmental groups say this is just not enough. If the whole world decided to lower emissions by just that amount, we'd still see the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef and the swamping of homes of Pacific Islanders who will be driven out by rising sea levels. It could see up to half of all species on the planet driven to extinction. A higher target, somewhere between 25 and 40 per cent, would have much more bite. Such a target would translate to an enormous boost to our fledgling renewable energy industry and could be just in time to avert the worst impacts of climate change. Yes, it would be extraordinarily difficult, but technologically it is not impossible. The only element lacking is political will. On a local level, a report by Bathurst Regional Council's Director of Environmental Planning and Building Services, David Shaw, predicts a two degrees Celsius maximum temperature increase over the next 20 years. This would cause more storms and droughts and 10-20 days per year above 35 degrees, up from the long-term average of four days. More bushfires and uncertainty for farmers are likely. And yet we go on with business as usual. It's like a frog being slowly boiled: we may not realise how bad things really are until it's too late. But Penny Wong not only knows how bad things are; she and the Rudd government have the power to make a real difference. Only four more sleeps!

Issue 4th December 2008

It's just after 7am as I write this. If we turned back the clock a few decades, a loud whistle would be reverberating around the streets of South Bathurst and men with lunch pails would be spilling out of their houses, heading for work at the railway station. One of them would have been Ben Chifley, engine driver, and eventually Prime Minister of the country. The railways are woven into the history and culture of Bathurst, leaving a magnificent railway station overlooking Keppel Street, one of the town's most pleasant shopping, cafe and gallery strips. For visitors, this precinct gives a flavour of the unique qualities of Bathurst. People can experience shopping malls anywhere. They are convenient and functional, but they don't tell us much about what makes this place different from any other. Bringing Ben Chifley's refurbished engine back to the train station would help give life to the whole precinct. If the Visitors' Centre is sending people to the train station to have a look at the engine, it then makes sense to keep wandering down Keppel Street on foot, supporting the shops and cafes on the way down. So, how does this relate to climate change? It's part of seeing urban design and transport as part of the climate change solution. We need to honour and support our railway system. We need to understand that it is important not only to our past but also to our future. In recent years the railways have been cut back; we need to reverse this. And we need to support foot-friendly urban design. Shopping malls are about cars. They present their great blank, windowless faces to the street. They're about driving in, parking, loading up the car and driving away again. On the other hand, attractive urban design gets people walking – the great European cities show that. Bathurst is lucky in that it has charm in spades, but it won't last unless we are careful to keep it. There will be a chance to learn about and brainstorm ideas for climate-friendly urban design and architecture at a meeting at St Patrick's Sporting Club on Gilmore Street, Kelso, this Sunday, December 7, from 10am to 1pm. Eco-architect Gareth Cole will be there to lend his expertise. Presented by BCCAN, it's free, and all are welcome to listen or contribute. For more details contact Ross Macindoe on 6331 6320.

Issue 27th November 2008

When my dear friend David died earlier this year, he went cheap. This was partly because, as an inner-city Sydney artist living with a long illness, he had very little money. But it was also because he couldn't see the point in anyone spending lavishly on a coffin that would get very limited use and then be incinerated. So David had a recycled cardboard coffin that his friends lovingly decorated with colour photocopies of his paintings. Everyone gathered around it to tell stories and listen to Nina Simone while his decrepit three-legged terrier (who defied all predictions by outliving David) worked the room. With the push for a local crematorium, it is worth pausing to think about how we deal with our bodies when our lives are over. In death, as in life, we need to think about our environmental impact. Coffins  are normally made from MDF, a reconstituted wood compound containing a variety of substances known to be harmful to the environment.  According to a fact-sheet compiled by Lismore City Council, formaldehyde and other toxic volatile and environmentally persistent organic compounds are released into the immediate environment of a  buried coffin. The compounds travel away with the natural water flow or seep to the soil surface to be released as gas. Other toxins bind to the soil and sit there for decades. Cremation is also environmentally costly, with an average of 160kg of carbon dioxide released for each cremation. These problems have led to a fledgling movement for bush burials as an environmentally friendlier alternative. Basically, your body returns to the earth as compost. You are buried in a simple biodegradable covering such as a fine cloth shroud or a recycled cardboard coffin so that the myriad below-ground organisms can get straight to work on their natural processes. In Lismore City  Council's BushLand cemetery, graves are marked by a stone with an optional brass plaque attached. GPS coordinates are recorded as a back-up. The cemetery is in open grassy woodland dotted with mature gum trees. There is little mowing, gardening or general maintenance, dramatically reducing the carbon footprint of the cemetery over time. The BCCAN Building and Urban Planning Action Planning Team will hold a workshop on Sunday December 7 at the St Patrick’s Sporting Club,  Gilmore Street, Kelso, from 10am to 1pm. The workshop will brainstorm ideas for a sustainable community development on an urban subdivision  on land already owned by the Council in Laffing Waters. For details, contact Ross McIndoe on 63316320.