Bob Douglas's blog

 There is a growing awareness of the benefits of community gardens and farmers’ markets. They both contribute to community building, sustainability and reducing our carbon footprint.  Fresh locally grown produce has benefits for our health and our environment. 

 While both of the current candidates to be the next Australian Prime Minister keep as low a profile on climate change as they can, and avoid engaging in public discussion of their joint, unacceptably low,  2020 emissions target of a 5% reduction in emissions based on 2000 levels, the news in the ACT is much more positive.

Love our City. Love our Future. Love 40% Less CO2. This year the ACT Government is deciding on their CO2 targets for 2020. They have nominated between 25% and 40% and there is a growing number of Canberra residents who believe the only responsible choice is 40%. Hence the We love 40% Campaign (love40percent.org). 

 It is good news that Malcolm Turnbull will re-contest his parliamentary seat and that a key factor in his decision relates to the Federal Government’s announcement that it will delay action on its ETS.  Perhaps from the backbench Turnbull could restore some integrity and urgency to the energy and emissions debate.

  It is now clear that human actions in the next decade will determine the future suitability of planet earth for human habitation.  Our world leaders did not get their act together at Copenhagen and there is now a very strong likelihood that unless communities around the world demand very urgent action by our governments, our children will be locked into a very unpleasant future. 

Humanity has always lived on the edge of trouble, but this time the future is looking pretty unpleasant. It is not just the combination of overpopulation and climate change, peak oil, global inequity, terrorism and the threat of nuclear war. It is also the progressive world-wide collapse of the ecosystems on which we all depend for our sustenance.

The planet is dying and we are pretending it is not happening because we haven’t yet got our collective act together to deal with these realities.   The polls tell us that action on climate change is falling down the political priority list and that climate change deniers are doing quite well in the struggle for the hearts and minds of people across the developed world. Eat drink and be merry………

Three weeks ago Australia 21 held a conference in Canberra to consider the application of resilience thinking to all this stuff. For this purpose, we brought some of the leading resilience scientists in the world together with a group of Australia’s policy makers.