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Category Archives: Bathurst Community Climate Action Network
On shopping
Ah, shopping. Where would we be without it? At this time above all others, we are being called upon to Shop. If we shirk our duty, consumer confidence – which needs constant boosting, like the self-esteem of a teenage girl – will plummet. If that goes, it doesn’t bear thinking about. So position yourself behind the biggest trolley you can find, and shop.
Only problem is, a lot of the stuff that will be bought over the next couple of weeks – including whole puppies and kittens – will be barely used, unloved, unwanted, stored at the back of the linen cupboard and/or discarded. Young dogs will eventually turn up at animal shelters, garbage will pour into landfill and atoms of carbon dioxide will float off into the atmosphere to wreak havoc on our atmosphere.
So what are we to do, when it’s good to spend but bad to consume? One cheap and easy thing we can do is refuse to buy things that are just silly. Anti-bacterial hand gel, for example. Here it is, spreading across the land in its own plastic bottles and pump-action lids, offering convenience and cleanliness and the solution to problems we didn’t realise we even had until just a little while ago. But the anti-bacterial obsession doesn’t stop there. I recently saw a TV ad that showed how the wall above a baby’s bed was crawling with germs. The idea was to terrify parents into buying a particular anti-bacterial spray. Being clean is no longer good enough; people are now encouraged to go for hospital-grade sterility in their own hands and homes. This is unnecessary and may even be harmful – our immune systems need something to work on to keep them functioning properly.
If you’re blessed with spare cash, another path to sustainability is to go off in the other direction and spend a lot of money. Rather than buy cheap junk that will need to be replaced in six month’s time, buy more expensive items that will last a long time and can even be repaired. A hand-crafted dining table made to last for generations is far less damaging than a new, cheap imported table marinated in industrial chemicals that will need to be replaced in five years’ time. So whether you spend a little or a lot, there’s always some way you can show the environment that you care. Tracy Sorensen is the publicity officer for Bathurst Community Climate Action Network (BCCAN). Visit www.bccan.org.au
First published in the Western Advocate (Bathurst, NSW, Australia) on Saturday, 18 December 2010.
Information is not a story
As I write this, the Wikileaks drama is unfolding. Whatever becomes of Julian Assange himself, there is no question that we are in a new era of information gathering and sharing. Information is everywhere and there is just going to be more and more of it. The cat, as they say, is out of the bag.
I’ve been thinking about this over the past couple of weeks. It’s clear that information is very different to story. A story can exist without any factual information (we call that fiction) but information, in order to get out there and sink in to people’s minds, needs a story to frame it. If a piece of information fits inside a story we already know, we can easily digest it. If it falls outside the frame, we can have trouble even “seeing” it, let alone understanding it.
The recent sexual abuse cases in the media are a case in point. Why did families allow paedophiles into their homes, their children’s bedrooms? Didn’t they suspect something? If the story is “priests are trustworthy” then factual evidence – even evidence that’s right in one’s face – can be ignored because it falls outside of the framework of this powerful story.
The role of journalists has traditionally been to sift through raw information and then distill it into a story, a narrative that has meaning. But they’re not the only ones at it. Stories are constantly being told and retold at home, at school, at work – everywhere we go, because stories are how we make sense of the world.
In his latest book, Here on Earth, Tim Flannery says we pass on genetic information but we also pass on cultural information in the form of “memes”. These memes pass from one generation to the next just as relentlessly as our genes.
When it comes to climate change, we have the scientific information – bucketloads of it – but in my opinion we are lagging when it comes to digesting the true meaning of this information. If we really “got it” we might be doing a little more about it.
The Bathurst Community Climate Action Network is embarking on a “Visioning” project in 2011 to develop and promote stories about what this town might look like in a low-carbon economy. If you’re interested in being involved, contact us through our website.
Tracy Sorensen is the publicity officer for Bathurst Community Climate Action Network (BCCAN). Visit www.bccan.org.au.
This article was written for the Western Advocate, Bathurst’s daily newspaper.
A sign of things to come?
Column written for Bathurst Community Climate Action Network for Bathurst newspaper The Western Advocate published 26/3/14.
When I went down to have a look at them the other day, the bats in the trees on the Macquarie River brought to mind the title of the American civil rights song, Strange Fruit. Hanging still in the heat of the day, they looked like pods growing from the branches. The bats are an odd sight here in Bathurst, and whether this is a one-off event or the beginning of a regular occurrence only time will tell. As the earth heats up, we’ll get more strange sights and smells. Some of these will be hardly noticeable; others will be the first signs of threats to livelihood or lifestyle.
There will be more debates like the one we’ve had this week over the licenses to shoot the bats if they are discovered eating our harvests. One shift we’ll have to get used to is soaring electricity prices. In the long term, the only way is up. With the state government’s gross feed-in tariff policy, this could be a good time to go solar, or, if you live on acreage, to switch to a small wind turbine. You get 60 cents per kilowatt hour generated, a great enticement. There’s an increasing number of local solar companies advertising in the 2010 Yellow Pages – a sure sign that the sector is now beginning to generate jobs. Bathurst Council also provides subsidies for solar hot water and photovoltaic roof panels.
A word of caution, though: in the wake of the insulation fiasco (batts, not bats!), it’s essential to ensure that work is carried out by reputable operators. Bathurst Community Climate Action Network is gathering information about local renewable energy suppliers, as well as stories of consumer experiences, to share on its website and in other forums. If you have information you’d like to share, contact BCCAN through the website below.
It’s Earth Hour on Saturday, and everyone is invited to switch off their lights at 8.30pm to save energy and add to the worldwide movement in support of stronger action on climate change. Rahamim has invited everyone to a campfire gathering at St Joseph’s Mount in Busby Street from 8pm to 9.30pm. Bring a plate and a friend, and talk about hopes for the planet.
When I went down to have a look at them the other day, the bats in the trees on the Macquarie River brought to mind the title of the American civil rights song, Strange Fruit. Hanging still in the heat of the day, they looked like pods growing from the branches. The bats are an odd sight here in Bathurst, and whether this is a one-off event or the beginning of a regular occurrence only time will tell. As the earth heats up, we’ll get more strange sights and smells. Some of these will be hardly noticeable; others will be the first signs of threats to livelihood or lifestyle.
There will be more debates like the one we’ve had this week over the licenses to shoot the bats if they are discovered eating our harvests. One shift we’ll have to get used to is soaring electricity prices. In the long term, the only way is up. With the state government’s gross feed-in tariff policy, this could be a good time to go solar, or, if you live on acreage, to switch to a small wind turbine. You get 60 cents per kilowatt hour generated, a great enticement. There’s an increasing number of local solar companies advertising in the 2010 Yellow Pages – a sure sign that the sector is now beginning to generate jobs. Bathurst Council also provides subsidies for solar hot water and photovoltaic roof panels.
A word of caution, though: in the wake of the insulation fiasco (batts, not bats!), it’s essential to ensure that work is carried out by reputable operators. Bathurst Community Climate Action Network is gathering information about local renewable energy suppliers, as well as stories of consumer experiences, to share on its website and in other forums. If you have information you’d like to share, contact BCCAN through the website below.
It’s Earth Hour on Saturday, and everyone is invited to switch off their lights at 8.30pm to save energy and add to the worldwide movement in support of stronger action on climate change. Rahamim has invited everyone to a campfire gathering at St Joseph’s Mount in Busby Street from 8pm to 9.30pm. Bring a plate and a friend, and talk about hopes for the planet.
To RSVP call 6332 9950.
The lovely grasses
On the cabinet above the TV set, I have a large spray of dried grasses that I gathered a couple of years ago during a walk down Hawthornden Creek. As we made our way from the Boundary Road Reserve past the back of the university, environmentalist Chris Marshall pointed out features in the landscape and could tell us the name of every type of grass that was growing there. As someone with little or no knowledge of grasses, it was a bit of a revelation. Once I started to get my eye in, something that seemed amorphous and ordinary – the scraggly grass around an eroded creek – became interesting in its diversity.
It is great to see that Bathurst Regional Council has now singled out Hawthornden Creek for some TLC. It is the first of our six urban creeks to be targeted for rehabilitation and restoration. The creek, which is severely eroded near the archery club grounds, will get a series of rock ramps to slow the flow of water and loss of sediment. At its February meeting, the council voted to allocate $50,000 towards the first stage of the project, which would involve survey of the site, design of the in-stream structures and the implementation of on-ground works if available funds allow.
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With talk of a second track for Mt Panorama, wouldn’t it be great to have an electric (or renewable energy) car race around the mountain? It would be an international drawcard and give developers of new technology a great showcase for their products. I know I’ve said this before, but I say it again now just to keep the idea out there.
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Speaking of renewable energy, we have an active local group exploring the idea of a community-owned wind farm in the area. The group has welcomed the recent report from the state parliament’s committee on rural wind farms, which recommends that the government supports the construction of power lines in remote areas to transport the electricity generated by wind farms. If this went ahead, it would be a great boon to the wind farm industry. The full report is available here.
This piece was written for the Bathurst Community Climate Action Network (BCCAN) column in the Western Advocate.