our [for the moment] Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced that she is calling a meeting of 150 interested parties to discuss Australia's potential responses to climate change.
i have some advice for her.
Julia dear, save the airfares and cut lunches and the money and just stop logging the forests.
now we've got that sorted, give the loggers some shovels and seeds and send them out to plant more trees
they'll find it far more satisfying [and less dangerous] than chopping them down
then
legalise the planting of hemp for paper, cloth and nourishing food from the seeds
put systems in place to harvest 'storm water' in the cities
and use it to keep urban trees alive
[they help clean the air]
make safe bicycle lanes AWAY from roads
and then set about tidying up industrial emissions
and on a lighter note
the kind person who writes the 'make something' pages
has put up a bunch of really nice photos of the recent workshop in Toronto
in case anybody would like to see what we got up to there....
Hear hear!
ReplyDelete"Not enough fish and too many people"
ReplyDeleteEric Bell
Perhaps we could add birth control to that list. =-)
and a lovely image appearing here too
ReplyDeleteblue and white door knobs i see...
curious ..
YES, YES, and YES!
ReplyDeleteIndia, you make sense....politicians and the general public will never fall for that.
ReplyDeletei'm completely with you! thank you for your voice!
ReplyDeletethats a real thoughtful write - thanks
ReplyDeleteBut it begs asking just how the country can return to a surplus by 2012/13, as guaranteed by Mr. Swan, when Prime Minister Gillard is going around the country throwing money around, left right and centre, to get the voters on her side. Perhaps she is no good with figures? Perhaps she is no good with promises? Perhaps it’s all just political spin? Whatever her motivation (let me not be accused of making judgements), one only has to look at some of the figures being promised, and then ask the question – just who is going to pay for all of this when we already have a deficit of $57.1 billion dollars.
http://just-me-in-t.blogspot.com/2010/07/does-government-own-printing-press.html
Such good suggestions! I wished John Key read your blog, too!
ReplyDeleteAnd the photos from your workshops are utterly dreamy. I've got four months and a bit to wait...
Well said India! I popped over to 'make something' and enjoyed the photos.
ReplyDeleteWhat important thoughts & message, India!
ReplyDeleteWhen we purchased our property in the late '90's, it was a scrappy thing, not too pretty having been logged a decade earlier. We've left it to regrow, helped a bit by planting trees and not disturbing natural reseeding that blew in on the wind. It is humming back to life now -- much biodiversity to be found -- "baby" Douglas firs 20 feet tall, hedgerows of natives along the perimeter. I am convinced that if more folks could see/feel this kind of process happening around them, they would be changed forever. And their priorities would change forever.
One day, I am going to get up to such things as happened in Toronto -- mark my words :>]]
Hear! Hear!
ReplyDeleteWell put India... thought of attending as one of the 150?
ciao,
Sophie
the good news is - artists have been working with recycled storm and black water creating public water areas to demonstrate how alternative water usage - and some new developers are also using black water for their urban green areas... slowly slowly some are getting it....
ReplyDeleteI could not agree more.
ReplyDeleteAnd then, if the pull of being center stage is still tugging at her, she'd have something quantifiable and useful to say to the rest of the worlds politicians who can't see the wood, never mind the trees.
But all of that makes sense, you can't expect a government to listen to sense!
ReplyDeleteCessation of old-growth logging is a must, there's no getting around what that would do for our environment and water levels. Maybe people should take up the 2 grand 'scrap your car' plan and use the 2 grand to buy tree seedlings...one less 'polluting' car and who knows how many more trees.
thank you for your thoughtful contributions, everybody. as regards stormwater - Colin Pitman has been leading the way here in South Oz, storing harvested surface water in underground aquifers - and it was a strange coincidence that exactly 2 weeks after I had sent the South Australian Premier a copy of my 'watermarks' catalogue [2008] in which Mr Pitman was mentioned in an essay, that suddenly he was being spoken about in the media by members of government...
ReplyDeleteand as far as cars go certainly it's time to get some of those black-smoke-coughing kombis off the road
but
i'll still contend that retaining my 1996 Mazda MX6 , perfectly maintained, is more environmentally sustainable than say, mining nickel in Canada, processing it Europe, sending the stuff to Asia to make a new Prius and then shipping that Prius back to wherever the selling point will be.
before scrapping a perfectly good vehicle that already exists in order to use new resources and energy for a replacement - consider each requirement on a case-by-case basis
now off to plant more trees, cos it's raining!
excellent post!!!!
ReplyDeletemakes me crave a workshop with you even more
the photos from toronto are amazing
please let me know when you are returning
Why does politics always look/sound/seem so stupidly complicated; when really it's as simple as that isn't it.
ReplyDeletePlant more trees - be happier for it. {yeah yeah, green hippie talk, but.....}
Hope you got the mag in the post... enjoying your reading? I'm eager to hear your thoughts.
How about coming over to this side of the pond to make a little presentation to our infamous congressional lawmakers... Here in our state the attorney general is trying to extract five years worth of research documents from the university so he can prove that the climate change research conducted here is fraudulent... ugh.
ReplyDelete