Global Warming - a personal view

Peter Garrett

Yeah. You’ve got the song in your head now, don’t you? Midnight Oil’s anthem to the Stolen Generation is one of those songs that stays with you. Midnight Oil. Remember them? They were a force. A strong bunch of politically motivated men. Anti-uranium, pro-environment, on the side of the aboriginies. There was everything about them that I liked in real Aussie men – they weren’t afraid of the authority. They weren’t afraid to kick arse and to make you feel like a bit of a loser if you didn’t care.

So then, last year, there was an election and Peter Garrett put his money where his mouth was and became a politician. His party got in and wow. Peter Garrett. Minister for the Environment. Man, I have to tell you, I was excited. I was damned excited. We had Peter Garrett on our side. All the possums and wallabies and gum trees and whales and degraded land and insects and spiders and water tables and crocodiles and everyone. We all had him on our side and things were going to go good.

Minister for the Environment, Peter Garrett, is NOT a rock star.

And then he said it was okay to turn a pretty valley in Tasmania into a pulp mill. And thought that smiling and being nice to the Japanese would stop them from sending whaling ships into Australian Antarctic waters. And gave the nod to a uranium mine to use a process that will involve radioactive water leaching back into the water table.

Now this blog is not about how Peter Garrett gives me the shits. It’s about how all politicians give me the shits and they do it because they think they are rock stars.

They’re not.

They’re public servants.

Now I want you to repeat that phrase

public servants

PUBLIC SERVANTS

PUBLIC SERVANTS

Yeah. Getting that second bit?

SERVANTS

Because we are the boss of them. They are NOT rock stars. They are NOT media gurus. They are NOT in charge of it all, they are our servants. We pay them to do what we want.

Somehow this fact got a little lost in the translation and there seems to be some sort of belief that either they are media celebrities who we all want to know, or that they are actually the tools of very rich people, and are there to help said very rich people get even richer.

We need to spend a lot more of our time kicking the pollies off their arses and reminding them that we each get one vote and that our vote carries exactly the same weight as the vote of someone with squillions of dollars.

GetUp. This will take you to their website.

GetUp is a great arse-kicking tool. They are not in love with any political party and they stick up for the rights of everyone. Basically, (for those who remember the Democrats, aren’t they defunct now?) GetUp is there to keep the bastards honest. Worth a look to keep up with the good work they’re doing.

And of course the other site where you can make yourself heard is this

click here for a link to the federal pollie of your choice

one. *Because nothing feels quite as good as shooting an email off to a pollie and telling them how bad they are. Or how good they are (makes a nice change). These people are our servants and we need to remind them of that. We really do.

*Actually, that’s a complete lie. Heaps of things feel better than emailing politicians. I mean even cleaning the kitchen bench feels better than that, but you know what I mean. Contact a pollie. Give them a bit of encouragement. Give them a bit of constructive criticism. You’ll get a warm fuzzy out of it.

Anyway, that’s my contribution for today. Next time I’m going to have a bit of a rant about ex-Federal Treasurer, Peter Costello, who clearly lives in fairyland.

what's your excuse?

Thought for the day:

politicians are public servants. We are the boss of them. They have no excuses. Neither do we.

The Story of Stuff

The first time I saw this little film must be pretty close to when it first came out, because I notice that Annie has just celebrated the first anniversary of The Story of Stuff. Go Annie.

I’ve often pondered the pointlessness of the work so that you can consume so that you can work treadmill and it’s so well illustrated in this film. It’s very American and Monkey says I should find some Aussie stats to go with, but you get the idea. We’re just as bad (or worse) than they are.

Now I have to say that when it comes to stuff, I am guilty as charged. I love stuff. I love shopping. Christmas is my favourite time of year and I am in my element, hunting for gifts and wrapping them up. Monkey is pretty “meh” about the whole thing, but I actually had a nightmare last week that I forgot to get him a Christmas pressie. Frankly I think that the whole shopping thing is an expression of our hunter/gatherer ancestors and I have a really atavistic gene.

Which doesn’t excuse me at all. So I’m making more of an effort to not be embarrassed about second hand Christmas presents, presents that have to be eaten up or drunk, or donations to charity given as gifts (like those nifty Oxfam cards.)

Thing is, I want those grandchildren (the ones that exist only in my imagination so far) to be able to enjoy Christmas, too. So I know I have to make a bigger effort with the stuff.

Monkey was a little concerned about his last post. He didn’t think it was right to talk about veggie gardens in this blog. Too little. Just a feelgood thing. Not going to make enough of a difference.

I get that, but let me tell you a little bit more about Monkey and me: he’s the cynic and I’m Pollyanna. So I’m going to say why I think even a pot with a tomato plant stuck in it, yellowing away on your windowsill and not producing much at all is still a good thing:

Because it’s a reminder. That all that shiny, plastic-wrapped stuff we buy in the supermarket doesn’t come from nowhere. A couple of years ago there was a huge storm on the north coast of NSW and we had no bananas. For months.

Connections between people and land and resources and the environment are all laced together, all interdependent. We are all a part of this.

I’ve always been a bit in love with the idea of growing our own fruit and veggies, even though I totally suck at it. I guess this is because I grew up on my nana’s 1/4 acre block in Oakleigh and we had an apple tree, apricot, 2 cherries (magic at Christmas), plum tree, nectarine (which also contained the world’s greatest cubbyhouse), a quince and an almond. The trees were a part of our family lore – we always talked about the year the apricot was struck by lightning and split down the middle, we never ate an apple without a knife in one hand because they were rotten with coddlin moth grubs, but no apples ever tasted better.

At my other nana’s house, Pop had the veggie patch and there were always fresh tomatoes, potatoes, peas, carrots and beans.

I know. It’s an old thing and blocks aren’t that big any more and who has the time anyway. I spend most of the year buying my tomatoes from the supermarket and wondering why in hell those guys on TV can grow such great veggies when mine all either die or never get big in the first place.

But we made a big effort this year. And by that, I mean a couple of weekends. And I work a lot on weekends, so it’s not like I have all my Saturdays and Sundays to spare. But I think we’ll be harvesting our first zucchini by the end of the week, and the tomatoes are hanging like little green Chrissy balls on the plants, and there are flowers on the peas and chillis, and I reckon if we can do it, then anyone can.

Even if it’s just a hanging pot with a few tomatoes in it, it’ll look kind of Christmassy, and they’ll taste great, and you’ll be reminded that tomatoes are real.

I never liked supermarkets much. All that packaging with things purporting to be food containing who knows what chemicals and coming from … where? China, USA, New Zealand (well, at least that is a little closer).

We have started our own veggie garden and that might help a little or just feed up the possums, slugs and snails. I used to be an avid veggie gardener but have not had the time to do it justice for many years and I don’t really envisage the rest of my life growing stuff just so I can have a rest of my life. There are other people who run farms and grow things and I’m sure they can do it far better than I ever could. And that gets me to my point. I’ve been looking for some alternatives to shopping at the supermarket and after a short search found the following two companies who deliver locally grown produce to your door, and the pricing seems reasonable.

http://www.gippslandleanbeef.com.au/

http://www.thegreenline.com.au/

Now I can’t vouch for either of these companies as I haven’t dealt with either but I will be soon and I’ll update this post with the results.

This blog is a personal record of a journey of discovery and learning that my partner and I are embarking on.

For to many years we have kept our nose to the grindstone and ignored what is going on in the world around us. Two recent events have changed that for us.

1. The recent financial events that seem to have come about since no one in the financial world really understood what was going on and it seems didn’t really want to understand as long as it all kept growing.
2. Coming across the videos on Youtube of a lecture by Dr Albert Bartlett (thanks Bertie for forwarding that link to me!)

I doubt that two people writing a blog can change much by themselves. But if each of us can convince two other people and each of those two more and so on then as Dr Bartlett explains very simply and convincingly in his lecture, we can change the world.

We welcome comments from all, positive and negative, and will try to keep the comments system open to all but the problem of SPAM may make this difficult.

So welcome and I hope that we can make this blog at least a little bit interesting for others to read.