Look for me on Channel 7 News tonight talking about simple things we can do to combat climate change! I mentioned using less, buying local, buying second hand first, turning down the thermostat on your hot water heater, composting, living closer to work, walking and biking and even car sharing. We talked about the seriousness of climate change, 2007 being one Australia's the hottest years on record, and we touched on the drought. It'll be interesting to see how much of that makes it in - the reporter, Ben Terry, tells me it'll air all up and down the coast of Queensland!

Afterwards Ben asked if they could contact me for future, related stories - of course I said yes! I also had an opportunity (off camera) to tell him about the SustainaBundy guide, and he asked me to keep them in the loop on it.

We're being heard!

The Australian Conservation Foundation now has a website, called Who On Earth Cares, where we can each put ourselves on a map of Australians who care about climate change. Over 11,000 of us have already signed up, and have committed to taking the equivalent of more than 16,000 cars off the road by reducing our personal greenhouse gas emissions. You can answer some short questions and input your address and it will generate a letter you can personalise and send to your local member of Parliament - it even creates it in PDF and gives you the name and address of your MP! I cruised around the map and saw that a number of people in my city have already signed up, and other members of relocalize.net have too (yep, I found you Sonya!) I asked the ACF to add functionality to allow people to message one another through the site to work together on community actions - hopefully they'll come through.

My local MP is Paul Neville. I emailed him my letter, rather than posting it, to save transport emissions and materials consumption. I also edited it heavily. Here's what my letter said:

Dear Mr Neville,

Climate change and resource depletion are the most critical issues we face today, bar none. As indicated in next month's IPCC report and recently discussed by Tim Flannery, because of our overconsumption, since 2005 Australia has already been producing the amount of greenhouse gases that weren't expected until 2015. We have very little time before climate change happens so rapidly and on such a large scale that it is irreversible. To reduce my greenhouse pollution, I:

- shop with businesses that sell local (instead of imported) products whenever possible
- will be installing solar panels on my home
- have installed a water efficient shower head and reuse my greywater in the garden
- always set my washing machine to wash my clothes in cold water, on a lower RPM setting
- always turn off appliances at the wall when they aren't in use, instead of leaving on standby
- eat less meat, grow my own vegetables
- work from home, and walk or bike instead of driving whenever possible

It is absolutely critical that we reduce our consumption of fossil fuels and unnecessary stuff. We must carefully conserve resources, and manage and recycle our waste. We must start treating the environment with the respect it deserves - we don't have anywhere else to go once we've used it up and left it for dead. I hope to see Australia become a leader in relocalisation: reducing consumption and producing all our needs locally, instead of polluting our air, water and soil to transport the latest shipment of iPods.

Ordinary Australians are doing what we can, but we also need your leadership. I would like you, as my political representative, to step up to the challenge of reducing Australias greenhouse pollution. What goals will you set to reduce our emissions by 2020 and 2050 as part of Australia's contribution to avoiding dangerous climate change? How will you ensure that 25% of Australia's electricity comes from renewable energy by 2020? Will you help Australia join the rest of the world by ratifying the Kyoto Protocol? I ask that you raise these important questions with your party and let me know your party's position on them.

Please acknowledge receipt of my letter, which I am sending via email instead of post to reduce transport and materials consumption. I look forward to receiving a prompt response to my questions.

Sincerely,
Andi Hazelwood
SustainaBundy
http://sustainabundy.org
(contact info removed)

Sign up, add yourself to the map, and send a letter to your local politician. Who On Earth Cares makes it as simple as possible.

My husband and I keep a personal blog which is chiefly about our adventures moving from the US to Australia, buying a rural property, building a passive solar strawbale house and attempting to become self sufficient. The property is now for sale, because the price to finish the project has escalated beyond our reach. It's been a roller-coastery journey, we've made plenty of mistakes and learned an awful lot on the way- things that we take into consideration as we move onto the next stage of the adventure in Bundaberg. Our blog is read mainly by family, friends and acquaintances, and occasionally we get feedback from our readers.

Recently I received a two part email from a reader. She builds loft homes in Mexico with her church group, and after reading about the benefits of composting toilets on our blog, thought they'd be great in these constructions in Mexico- but they're so expensive! Aren't there any reasonable ones around? I replied, "Composting toilets are indeed expensive, and given the way our current culture and markets operate, they will remain so until the demand increases. And of course that won't happen until the general population gets over fear of their own waste and accepts responsibility for it! And though it's absolutely necessary for us to be responsible for our own bodily waste and ALL other types of waste, I don't have strong hopes for that happening."

The second part of the email was telling me of this article about a house in San Diego county (my hometown) that is one of only 40 LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) platinum certified buildings in the world. I replied, "The article about the house was interesting, and it's good to see some developers starting to think a bit less conventionally. But a 3,000 sq. ft. house in the likely price range of $600,000 to $2 million with a parking lot is a long way from sustainable - we learned our hard lessons in housebuilding with our own project: houses need to be small, inexpensive and easily repeatable (and with the increasing overpopulation of the planet, they also need to be stackable if we expect to have enough land to feed everyone). Every practical bit of land around the homes needs to be used to grow food, instead of gardens full of "drought tolerant" ornamentals. The houses you and my grandmother build in Mexico are a heck of a lot more sustainable than the mansion in the article, but those of us in wealthy countries normally wouldn't consider living in something like that ourselves."

"Sustainable has become a popular word, but the definition is rarely considered. One of the most comprehensive definitions of sustainable is something that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." (Brundtland, 1987) I think this applies not only to generations but also to countries - with our intensive use of resources, Americans (and Australians, and the English, and...) are compromising the abilities of developing countries like Mexico, China and India to meet their own needs. This isn't fair or sustainable. In the long term a sustainable global population is going to require a leveling of the standard of living between the rich and poor countries."

I don't know if the acquaintance who emailed made the connection between the first part of her email and the second, but it certainly jumped out at me: composting toilets would be perfect for quick, easy to build homes for the poor in Mexico, except they're too expensive - they cost more than the entire home itself. (I'm guessing those homes won't be the recipients of composting toilets.) Just over the border in San Diego, hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars are spent to build "eco-friendly" mansions that get called Leaders in Energy and Environmental Design - awarded for squandering resources. If anything, those Mexican whack-em-ups are the leaders of the future.

I imagine this kind of disconnect is common - I never considered "sustainability" before I learned about peak oil in 2004, and I don't know many people (greenies and non-greenies alike) who consider it - real sustainability - even now. As a culture we aren't taught (for the most part) to think critically about how we live compared with other countries or future generations. Even now, sustainability, to many, seems to mean little more than increased efficiency and a bit of recycling. True sustainability is just now finally starting to get attention, but not much action.

So how do we change this? I welcome your comments.

For the forseeable future I'll be posting my latest blog entries related to relocalisation in Australia and particularly in Bundaberg, QLD over here. Come check it out!

Thursday night I gave a presentation on oil depletion and relocalisation at the Permaculture Noosa January meeting (see the attached PDF of the presentation). The main purpose of the presentation was to introduce them to their new local relocalisation group, Sunshine Coast Relocalisation - Noosa Eumundi and Districts (SCReNE). The group is being auspiced by Permaculture Noosa. While I didn't think to count, I would guess there were at least 100 people in attendance. In October I completed a two week course to receive my permaculture design certificate with instructor Janet Millington, who is a Permaculture Noosa member and is now the coordinator for SCReNE. It was exciting to see that several students from my course made the effort to come to the meeting - it was like a homecoming!

Permaculture Noosa seems to be a tight knit group of people that are already well into the relocalisation mindset: many of them grow their own food, they have regular "PET" (permaculture energy transfer) days, where members get together to help with another member's project, such as constructing a chicken tractor, mass plantings, etc., and many of their members are involved with local political issues, global warming projects and the like. I spoke to members who had researched the ancient art of weaving and had even built their own loom from scratch. Another member (male, mind you!) was crocheting what appeared to be an Afghan blanket, like the ones my grandmother has made all my life, as he listened to the speakers. Relocalisation fits neatly into the permaculture group's existing activities, so my hope is that SCReNE will become a vital and active relocalisation group. There were some intelligent questions asked during the presentation and afterwards a few different people came up and let me know that they were keen on the idea and would be joining SCReNE.

I'd like to welcome SCReNE to the Relocalization Network, and look forward to seeing how they proceed!

Please join SCReNE and post your blog entries, events, news and articles, and make the most of the forums to brainstorm with other SCReNE members and to communicate with other relocalisation groups around the world.

For more information please contact SCReNE's coordinator, Janet Millington.

If you need assistance with using the SCReNE website don't hesitate to contact me.

Cheers!

The night of 29th November was my 8th wedding anniversary. We stayed in a lovely hotel, right on the beach. Romantic, right? So what'd we do with our time?

We watched TV.

SBS aired "Independent America", a documentary about "big box" retailers versus local, independent businesses. It was an absorbing and wildly inspiring trip around the back roads of America that examined the detrimental effects that Wal-Marts and Starbucks type giants have on communities, compared to the strength of local economies where support for independent businesses keeps money in the community. How exciting to see a relocalisation doco, even if it never called it by that name! Lots of other Australians who caught it agree- read the comments here.

If you missed it, you can still order the DVD. It's $20 USD well spent.

Even on a wedding anniversary!