That would be the advice to a cancer patient if current discussions on 'energy policy' are any indication.
Today there has been a large fracas on gas shortages, with worries about what changes to policy could mean for future investment in gas. The underlying assumption being that Australia needs future investment in gas.
I was listening, as I often do, to Jon Faine on the radio. He interviewed a colleague in Canberra about the implications and the options. But not once did either journalist mention climate change when discussing energy options.
This seems to be a persistent blind spot. Jon Faine, and colleagues in the ABC, seem to agree that climate change is real, that there is a scientific consensus on the issue, but they don't seem to think that this means that something has to be done. This isn't about politics, it isn't about radical positions, it is at the very least what needs to be done to protect the global economy (which is far more important than the people in that economy, obviously).
Climate change is a cross-cutting issue. It affects refugees, it affects women, it affects food security and energy security and jobs and health. Yet it is never mentioned in relation to any of these things, at least not on the ABC.
As you can tell, this is starting to annoy me. But it's more than that. It is an example of how media framing is preventing us from recognising the scale of this issue. This is the biggest problem the world faces right now, and yet most of the world's media are fiddling as the world burns.
As readers, as viewers, as human beings with a stake in the future, please urge your local, national and international media of choice to not just pay lip service to the reality of climate change, but look at how you might change your programming if the future of the people on this planet actually mattered.
PS This was supposed to be an uplifting happy post for International Women's Day. I got distracted.
Thursday 9 March 2017
Monday 6 March 2017
The urgency of climate action
Too many headlines today indicated that we are not just living in a present that is driven by fossil fuels, but we're still investing in a future driven by fossil fuels. I sometimes wonder if bankers and politicians think that their children will be living in a different world than ours, if they are living in a different world from us, where the reality they can buy is reality, and it insulates them from the need for clean air, from a livable atmosphere, rising sea levels and thirsty koalas.
Which means there's an even greater need for action from people not blinded by rhetoric and money to make change happen.
One of the things I'm trying to do is work with my local climate action group, and I'm fortunate enough to be in an area where there is a FANTASTIC group doing amazing work. They're working hard on getting signatures for the Climate Emergency Declaration; are working to persuade politicians that there is a climate emergency; and providing voters with clear information about climate-friendly candidates in local, state and federal elections here in Victoria.
But perhaps one of the most important things is that they're helping disseminate ideas about what can be done on a local level, by local councils, by local governments, by communities, to those who can make changes.
In some ways, the need for change is comparatively clear cut from an Australian perspective. From a Malaysian one, when we talk about the need for change, there are so many urgent items on the agenda, that climate change seems to be, well, not insignificant, but we need to do so much other stuff FIRST before we can put it on the agenda.
The problem is that time is not on our side. Climate change is already causing changes in Malaysia's water supply, in the seasons. The prognosis is not good, and we need talk about climate resilience and cutting Malaysian emissions; working to reforest our landscapes.
But we can't wait for leaders to emerge who will create these changes, we can't wait for the systems to catch up with the problems, we need to create the solutions, and put them into action, leaving the 'leaders' to catch up. Interested? I'm hoping to post links in posts over the next few days on how communities can drive change :). Here's one file to start...
Which means there's an even greater need for action from people not blinded by rhetoric and money to make change happen.
One of the things I'm trying to do is work with my local climate action group, and I'm fortunate enough to be in an area where there is a FANTASTIC group doing amazing work. They're working hard on getting signatures for the Climate Emergency Declaration; are working to persuade politicians that there is a climate emergency; and providing voters with clear information about climate-friendly candidates in local, state and federal elections here in Victoria.
But perhaps one of the most important things is that they're helping disseminate ideas about what can be done on a local level, by local councils, by local governments, by communities, to those who can make changes.
In some ways, the need for change is comparatively clear cut from an Australian perspective. From a Malaysian one, when we talk about the need for change, there are so many urgent items on the agenda, that climate change seems to be, well, not insignificant, but we need to do so much other stuff FIRST before we can put it on the agenda.
The problem is that time is not on our side. Climate change is already causing changes in Malaysia's water supply, in the seasons. The prognosis is not good, and we need talk about climate resilience and cutting Malaysian emissions; working to reforest our landscapes.
But we can't wait for leaders to emerge who will create these changes, we can't wait for the systems to catch up with the problems, we need to create the solutions, and put them into action, leaving the 'leaders' to catch up. Interested? I'm hoping to post links in posts over the next few days on how communities can drive change :). Here's one file to start...
Sunday 5 March 2017
Morality
This week I have been told by one of my children what a bad person I am. More worryingly, I've been told by an adult who I have been trying to assist sort out her affairs for just over a year, what a bad person I am.
So I have been thinking, quite a bit, on what I think about the nature of good and evil, and what makes a person 'bad', or not. I'm not really interested in discussing whether Trump, for example, is the new evil, whether physical violence is wrong, but more in the banal everyday acts where people we might think of as 'good' contribute to clearly bad things.
The archetype of this is the average citizen of Nazi Germany. I have recently been reading a book on women journalists and writers who worked in Germany from 1900-1950, and the one I found most fascinating was the literature reviewer who wrote the New York Times, and in an underspoken way worked around the Third Reich, reviewing writers who were banned and talking to her American audience about a Germany that was being demolished before her wavering eyes. She certainly seems to me to be skirting around that line of allowing evil to happen, despite an apparent commitment to the pre-Reich days and writers, not drawing attention to the exceptional nature of the Nazi regime, pretending it wasn't really there.
I feel that there's a lot of this around today, that it is hard not to be part of it. We all know that there is really no such thing as cheap clothes, that someone somewhere pays the cost, and it is the cost of wasted lives attached to sewing machines in shoddy warehouses that might collapse or burn, the cost of cotton grown in fields and harvested by slave labour, and conditions of environmental degradation. We all know this. And yet, it is so easy to go and buy a cheap t-shirt, to buy a cheap t-shirt over the more expensive.
And even if we buy the more expensive t-shirt, is that doing the right thing? Are we being deceived by fair trade labels or taking jobs away from those most in need, and giving them to comparatively privileged Western factory workers?
Vegetarians are criticised, because they are taking food from poor farmers and inadvertently killing intelligent mice; vegans are culturally insensitive. And making ethical purchasing choices is the purview of privilege, and makes no difference so WHY BOTHER?
Some of these, particularly the last, are valid criticisms of trying to live ethically in a world that values money and consumption above all else, but I think they are important facets of trying to change that world starting with ourselves.
But changing our individual consumption patterns isn't going to make real changes to the planet unless we work on social changes too, on changing and re-imagining the world we live in, the world we share together.
And here I'm kind of stumped. I know how to get involved in big things, I can write letters and sign petitions and visit politicians, but none of that seems to get to the heart of the problem, which is imagining a better world and sharing and building that vision in the communities in which we live.
I'm currently exploring other people's ideas on this, from a local co-op that I'm part of (with the family) to reading and listening to new ideas. But I'd like to build something that will appeal to my (literal) neighbours, to my family and friends, and not just those who already recognise that this world isn't working.
So this is an invitation to the conversation, and perhaps a hope that it will help me learn more about how to be a better person.
So I have been thinking, quite a bit, on what I think about the nature of good and evil, and what makes a person 'bad', or not. I'm not really interested in discussing whether Trump, for example, is the new evil, whether physical violence is wrong, but more in the banal everyday acts where people we might think of as 'good' contribute to clearly bad things.
The archetype of this is the average citizen of Nazi Germany. I have recently been reading a book on women journalists and writers who worked in Germany from 1900-1950, and the one I found most fascinating was the literature reviewer who wrote the New York Times, and in an underspoken way worked around the Third Reich, reviewing writers who were banned and talking to her American audience about a Germany that was being demolished before her wavering eyes. She certainly seems to me to be skirting around that line of allowing evil to happen, despite an apparent commitment to the pre-Reich days and writers, not drawing attention to the exceptional nature of the Nazi regime, pretending it wasn't really there.
I feel that there's a lot of this around today, that it is hard not to be part of it. We all know that there is really no such thing as cheap clothes, that someone somewhere pays the cost, and it is the cost of wasted lives attached to sewing machines in shoddy warehouses that might collapse or burn, the cost of cotton grown in fields and harvested by slave labour, and conditions of environmental degradation. We all know this. And yet, it is so easy to go and buy a cheap t-shirt, to buy a cheap t-shirt over the more expensive.
And even if we buy the more expensive t-shirt, is that doing the right thing? Are we being deceived by fair trade labels or taking jobs away from those most in need, and giving them to comparatively privileged Western factory workers?
Vegetarians are criticised, because they are taking food from poor farmers and inadvertently killing intelligent mice; vegans are culturally insensitive. And making ethical purchasing choices is the purview of privilege, and makes no difference so WHY BOTHER?
Some of these, particularly the last, are valid criticisms of trying to live ethically in a world that values money and consumption above all else, but I think they are important facets of trying to change that world starting with ourselves.
But changing our individual consumption patterns isn't going to make real changes to the planet unless we work on social changes too, on changing and re-imagining the world we live in, the world we share together.
And here I'm kind of stumped. I know how to get involved in big things, I can write letters and sign petitions and visit politicians, but none of that seems to get to the heart of the problem, which is imagining a better world and sharing and building that vision in the communities in which we live.
I'm currently exploring other people's ideas on this, from a local co-op that I'm part of (with the family) to reading and listening to new ideas. But I'd like to build something that will appeal to my (literal) neighbours, to my family and friends, and not just those who already recognise that this world isn't working.
So this is an invitation to the conversation, and perhaps a hope that it will help me learn more about how to be a better person.
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