The Greening of Gavin

Albert and I

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Gavin and Al

Well, once again I have applied to be a Climate Project presenter and if successful, I will have the privilege of being trained over 3 days in July by none other than Al Gore.  For those who don’t know, his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth shocked me out of the Matrix and into reality!  It was responsible for my so-called ‘green epiphany’!

Hopefully, my application was a little bit more convincing this time around, and I managed to complete it without too much trouble.  I described how the region that I live in is kind of in a ‘70 time warp as far as Climate Change action goes, and that I am just the bloke to spread the message in the Western part of outer Melbourne.

I also mentioned my part in getting the sustainable living group up and running and raising awareness about climate change in the local media.  One of the conditions is to give 10 presentations to large audiences over the course of a year.  No problem for me, because I am used to public speaking to crowds of at least 50 people.  Last Thursday night was a breeze, and I really enjoyed talking about climate change and sustainable living.

I have had some really great feedback about my presentation, and I have also been approached by the Australian Youth Climate Coalition to talk at their Powershift conference.  Not sure of the details, but will find out soon enough.

It would be nice to get a Guernsey for the game this time around, but if not this time, I will apply again next year.  Wish me luck, and maybe the picture I made will come true!  Me and Al, just imagine it.

Australia Can be a Green Super Power

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Al Gore recently threw down the gauntlet and issued a challenge to all Americans. It was as simple as this;

“I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100% of its electricity from clean energy within 10 years” – Al Gore, 17 July 2008

You can see what he had to say below, in this remixed video of his speech from the We Can Solve It Campaign.

Now, I know that with some good leadership, they could achieve this goal and go a long way to averting peak oil, and making a big impact on climate change. Hey, they sent lots of men to the moon for goodness sake, just because President Kennedy asked them to!

If the current administration can come up with U$700 billion to bail out greedy investment banks who created their own downfall and wreaked the US financial system, the administration should have no trouble whatsoever producing the funds to meet Al’s challenge. It just takes the political will to do so.

So, if the US can do it, why couldn’t Australia. Once again it takes political will and strong leadership to make it a reality. In the past, we built the Snowy Mountain scheme, the Overland Telegraph, fought courageously in two world wars and many other conflicts, so why can we produce all of our energy needs from clean, renewable energy in 10 years time, just as we met these lofty challenges. We have built massive cities where none stood 200 years ago, so 100% renewable energy should be a breeze!

Just have a look at our interior. We have so much sunshine in inland Australia, that we could power the entire energy needs of the country with a combination of solar thermal and solar PV power stations. Just look at places like Mildura and outback South Australia which all have many hours of uninterrupted sunshine per year, and are close to transmission lines of the national power grid.

We also have some of the best geothermal potential in the world, with hot rock discoveries around Innaminka in South Australia. Geothermal electricity can replace our night time baseload that is currently provided by coal, and can be generated 24/7. The potential is unlimited, we just need to do it.

In southern Australia, the potential of wind power on the west coast of Tasmania is another untapped energy resource, and with the Basslink undersea power cable connecting Victoria to Tasmania, the apple isle has the potential to feed the national grid. Even wave and tidal power are an untapped resource waiting in the wings. If we can connect Tasmania to the mainland, why wouldn’t we think of connecting Queensland to PNG or Indonesia and selling the excess renewable energy? Surely someone must have thought of that before me!

Peak Sun and Peak Geothermal are billions of years away, unlike Peak Oil and Peak Coal, which are just around the corner. These two rapidly closing events have the potential to devastate our economy, our country, and human civilisation as we now know it. We must start to harness the renewable energy potential this great brown land offers us every single day of the year.

Instead of waiting for these peaks to pounce upon us like a crouching tiger, lets act, and urge the government to fund these projects via any funds coming out of the up and coming Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme proposed to begin in 2010. By utilising part of the available funds, we too, can become a green super power. Both the Australian Conservation Foundation and GetUp! have active campaigns to urge the Australian Government to act now. Please add your voice to the groundswell.

Lets not miss a once in a lifetime opportunity to create a bright future for this country and lead the world in renewable energy technology.

Libraries are Cool and Free

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Since my back injury a year ago, I have had a lot of time on my hands recovering. Now, I don’t like watching commercial television because of the ads and product placement on just about every show, and only watch ABC or SBS at a push. My only two other options for entertainment and learning were the Internet, and books. I chose mainly the the latter, mainly because a good book does not use electricity, and you can take it anywhere you choose to read it. On the train, in the garden, on your lunch break, laying down or standing up (I can’t sit for long coz of the injury), in bed or relaxing in the by the pool.

Now being the frugal bloke I am, and with books costing an absolute fortune for a decent reference, how to, or gardening book, I chose to visit our local library about three years ago. I thought to myself at the time, ‘Gavin, you pay rates, why not use some of the services you pay for in the shire?’ So I did. I was gobsmacked during my first visit. It was a relative smorgasbord of books (funny about that). The first topics I read about were Climate Change, but many of the books didn’t come with viable solutions except maybe ‘Heat’ by George Monbiot. Once I had enough of that doom and gloom, I turned to the subject of Peak Oil. At the time there were only a few books on the subject, and there are many more now. One of the best was ‘Half Gone’ by Jeremy Legget. More doom and gloom, so where were the solutions, I thought? I turned to the self sufficiency section, and found books on organic gardening, how to make preserves and pickles, making beer, energy efficiency, Permaculture and many more. Even a book about worm farming and how to treat them with the respect they deserve. If I needed to keep a specific section in a book, I either wrote out the recipe or photocopied the page at the library. There were so many books about solutions, it helped me decide which actions were viable on the budget I had at hand.

I think that in the two years since I had my green epiphany, I have bought about 3 books in total, and all gardening or sustainability books. I lend them out as often as I can to interested friends, but they are all boomerangs, because I use them all the time for reference. Other than those, it is the library as the first choice for me every time.

This brings me to the really cool part about our local library. I was in Melbourne about 4 months ago and was in a book store, and this really cool book called ‘Crap at the Environment’ by Mark Watson jumped off the shelf at me. Mark is a Melbourne based comedian and was trained by Al Gore as one of the Climate Crusaders who deliver the slide show to large audiences throughout the country. He delivers his in a very comical way. Anyway, I resisted the urge to buy the book there and then ($35 I didn’t have), and walked away hoping that the book was available at the library. I checked about a month later, but even though the library had it listed in the catalogue, it had not been purchased as yet and was not available for borrowing. So with my trusty library card in hand, I logged into the library website and put a hold on the book.


Guess what? Today, after about a month after I put the non-existent library book on hold, I received a letter in the post stating that the book was on hold for me at the Melton branch. The library staff had actually taken my suggestion and purchased the book from their allocated funds for the year. That is really cool. Not only did I get the book I wanted, I am the first to read our shire’s brand new copy of it, an the kicker is that it was all FREE!

I have read the first 20 pages and haven’t stopped laughing. It looks Iike a great journey of an average bloke who knew nothing about climate change, to someone who has risen to the challenge and is educating others about the crisis that we now face and got to meet Al in the process. If he makes a few buck in the process then good luck to him. I will do a bit of a book review once I am finished reading it.

To cap it all off, both of my daughters, who up until about a year ago would not have been caught dead in a nerdy library, are both proud library card holders. Megan borrows lots of school related material and some fiction, whilst Amy mainly hires DVDs of Stargate and Angel. Each to their own, but at least they are using a wonderful and free facility. Lead and they will follow!

Also during the last school holidays, I took Ben to the library to see a show, starring Pete the Magician. I laughed so hard my sides nearly split. He had a great mix of kid and adult jokes and tricks (that some of the kids didn’t understand) and it cost me $4 for the both of us. I was even in the show, with my wedding ring joined to two others from other audience members. It beats me how he did it, but I was a bit worried at the time! Now you don’t get a magic show for $4 anywhere else! He was hilarious and very good at his profession.

So, here’s to the libraries of the world, may they continue to aid helping the world to become a better place to live in by providing us with the wisdom of the ancients.