Renewing my energy

Just a quick one. I haven't mentioned yet that I attended a forum this past week at City Hall, where I heard talks by Andrew McNamara, Judy Wicks (www.whitedog.com), Gilbert Rochecouste (www.villagewell.org) and Robert Pekin (www.foodconnect.com.au), and saw a new peak oil documentary produced locally (aquilaproductions.com.au).

It was wonderfully inspiring, if a little sobering... not so much a pep rally as a recruitment drive in a war effort. Hmm.

So I have a renewed sense of urgency which has already prompted me to consider a carectomy, cut way back on my meat and dairy consumption (even on Ice Break) and have another stab at the backyard gardening. I also wrote letters (emails) to various people at the state, city and local community levels expressing my concern regarding the issues and my desire to be part of the solutions.

Would have been at Northey St Community Garden this morning if it weren't for the badly interrupted sleep #2 and #3 gave us last night. Instead I'm going to look at designs for chicken tractors.

Some time soon I'm going to review and update my action plan.

Discuss: growing food in cities, and using the internet to learn how

During the course of my work this week I had reason to visit a school in north-eastern New South Wales. That region has a reputation for attracting and fostering people with "alternative" views and values, particularly in regard to environmental protection and sustainable living. So it was that one of the teachers, knowing beforehand that I publish this blog, introduced me to a student who has a keen interest in permaculture and who is also active in a group centred around the Transition Towns concept (see link in my "highly recommended" sidebar).

Now, not that this blog has a huge world-wide audience or anything, I would like to give that student the opportunity to remain anonymous but at the same time see if I can't get a bit of discussion going here around a couple of the ideas that have come to mind as a result of our meeting.

I put that TT link over there ages ago and haven't looked at their site in months. I think they're clearly world leaders, forging a path to the future. What I'm not so sure about is how to make that path into a highway wide enough to take the cities along with the towns. I should revisit their site and see if there's been any progress on that subject.

One of the obvious things (to me) is that people in cities will need to grow food for themselves and their immediate community. More than that, they'll need to do so sustainably, recycling nutrients in efficient closed loops and doing it all with an absolute minimum of external energy inputs. In other words we need permaculture cities. Unfortunately the vast majority of city dwellers know nothing about growing anything.

Take me as an example: I have a borrowed copy of the 2nd edition of "Introduction to Permaculture" and recently bought the Digger's Club's "Australian Fruit & Vegetable Garden". I've been experimenting in the back yard for the past year or so, but so far have very little to show (or eat) as a result.

So, you thus-far anonymous student, if you're looking for school project ideas that combine IT with permaculture, you might consider starting an online library of training/instructional podcasts or other resources to help city folk like me with no horticultural knowledge transform our backyards and balconies into productive, sustainable food gardens. Seriously - was there ever a period in history prior to the present day where an entire generation of a civilisation had no idea how to grow their own food? We need that knowledge back again, and the internet provides a platform unlike anything else in human history for the distribution of knowledge.

The internet might well be our best defence against falling into another dark age as oil production falls. We stand to lose a great deal of our personal mobility. It just won't be feasible for people like me to travel hundreds of kilometers in a single day just to provide some brief specialist service. But if we can maintain and build on our communications infrastructure and the library of publicly-accessible knowledge then the physical isolation won't necessarily be a barrier to skills and ideas.

What I would like to do now is to invite you all to hit the comments and have a bit of a discussion about those two ideas and their intersection. Will city people need to grow their own food in the future? Can the internet be used effectively to deliver training in the essential garden skills and design principles? If you're a city person, what kind of online resources do you think would help you? If you're a gardening guru, how could you best capture and share what you have learned?

Global Issues, Local Action!

I just received this on a mailing list:



Lots of things I love about this:
- High profile, high quality production focusing on sustainability
- We now have State Minister for Sustainability, Climate Change and Innovation (an inspired combination!)
- Local council support from the Morningside Ward Livability Committee
- Business engagement (the cinema complex)
- Fund raising for local climate change initiatives

What's more, the message came to me via a completely different political group, which demonstrates unity across a broad spectrum of parties, groups and levels of government.

I've been looking for an opportunity to hear and perhaps speak with Andrew McNamara, recently appointed as the Minister for SCCI as noted above. I'll be trying to make the time to get across the river and participate in this event. If you're reading this in Brisbane, please spread the word.

Top Aussie: "Carbon-free economy" by 2050

From the ABC:

The Australian of the Year [Professor Tim Flannery] has told an energy conference in Sydney that climate change is occurring more quickly than at first thought and time is running out to make substantial emission reductions... "what that really means is that four decades from now we have to be living in a carbon-free economy."

Wake up, Australia, before the Great Barrier Reef and Bondi Beach become nothing more than stories we tell our grandkids. That is if society survives long enough for us to have grandkids.

Whatever you think about the economy or health or education, the most important issues this election are climate change and sustainability. Please vote for the long term, not just the next term.

Maths Problem

Solve:

A man has two identical water tanks of diameter 2.2m. Mere moments after connecting the downpipes to catch rainwater, the heavens open up and the tanks fill to a height of 0.8m. If the tanks have a combined capacity of 10,000 litres, how much higher can the water rise before it starts to overflow out the side of the tanks where no drain pipe currently exists, quite likely causing serious damage to the compacted rock dust foundation on which the tanks are sitting?

Answer:

Not bloody far enough! The bottom of the overflow outlet is less than 1.2m higher than the base of the tank, meaning the tanks are about two thirds full after just one night's worth of moderate rain and a couple of showers.

A bit of quick pipe work by my helpful neighbour (the one who installed the downpipes without the drainage in place, saying it wasn't going to rain soon enough to be a concern...) has now mitigated the threat. Any overflow will now be channelled a few metres away over the lawn where it can't cause any major trouble. Proper drainage to the street is a project for another day.

The next question is what to do with around 6,500 litres of water, given that I don't yet have a pump or any plumbing to take water into the laundry and toilet where it's needed. Thankfully the answer doesn't require a calculator: time to go pump shopping.

The best news I've had in ages

Check out this story in today's local newspaper, then come back to me.

With the exception of some of the public comments at the bottom, I am absolutely delighted to see this. No, I haven't finally gone mad, this is actually really good news.

Why? Two reasons.

First, because Andrew McNamara has been appointed as Minister for Climate Change and Sustainability by new Qld Premier, Anna Bligh. Andrew has been on my watch list for a little while now as both the Member for Hervey Bay and the patron of the Australian branch of ASPO - the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (and gas). This guy clearly understands that we are facing an enormous threat in the form of soaring fuel prices and he's now been placed in a position of authority where there's the potential for taking real action towards reshaping our society to cope with it.

Secondly, Peak Oil is now front page news. I've said in the past that I think it's a pity Climate Change got the public's attention first. In my opinion Peak Oil is the more critical problem - though of course our response to it must include a comprehensive strategy to deal with the climate issue. It was inevitable that people would bump into the oil problem eventually but I think today goes down in history as the day that South-East Queensland first took notice.

I wonder how long it'll be before Canberra does the same.

Notes from Caboolture Sustainable Living Fair

Well that was interesting. CREEC wasn't hard to find, and I was pleased to see it's quite close to the Burpengary train station. I might find myself heading that way for a bike/train outing every now and then to participate in some of their events. It was about 22km from my place by car.

I went along to this fair with a few priorities in mind:
1. Find out more about growing food in the back yard and/or community gardens
2. Ask about distribution schemes for locally-grown produce
3. Try to make contact with people who live nearby and are focused on sustainable living
4. Maybe clarify the Greens' position on alternative nuclear energy technologies (there are some which don't produce waste that lasts for thousands of years and are almost useless for making weapons... but you don't hear about them much)

Amazingly enough, I scored four out of four.

I met some very nice and enthusiastic people from Permaculture Caboolture (not sure whether they're technically a club, society or what) who have heaps of information to share about growing food and who know heaps of other people to link up with to promote food gardening at home or in community gardens or in school programs. I'll be following up on a number of the suggestions I received and will be sure to note them here online.

There's apparently a meeting somewhere in Brisbane this coming week regarding a program which teaches organic gardening and food preparation to primary school children as part of their routine curriculum. Will make an effort to get along and check that out.

Regarding local food distribution, there's an organic farm at Beerwah which sells "subscriptions": each week you give them $60 and they give you a big box of assorted veges. The Permaculture Caboolture people are hoping to start a monthly organic farmers market at CREEC starting on the 14th July. And another bloke is talking about establishing a community garden program at Petrie, which would also link up with the regular markets which are held out that way.

And I did enjoy a chat with a guy on the Australian Greens stand about the theoretical possibility of safe, clean nuclear energy production using technologies which are quite unlike the uranium fuel cycle that everybody associates with the term "nuclear". I was very pleased with the open-minded and sensible reaction - he'd even heard of thorium before I mentioned it.

A few other quick observations to wrap up:

• A lot of paper brochures being given away - how ironic.
  
• Good representation from Caboolture Shire Council, but with an unsurprising emphasis on economic considerations and "waste management" as opposed to true sustainability.
  
• I was surprised to see fast food and pre-packaged drinks on sale. (Thumbs up to the organic sausage sizzle though for good taste and the single paper napkin.)
• Local businessman pushing a carbon sink program: $40 for 17 trees, 100 year expected lifespan. It's probably a good thing.
• Greens guy reckons that ethanol being produced for fuel in Qld is derived from the waste material left over from sugar production as opposed to the sugarcane juice itself. I need to do some more research: that might tip the overall energy balance in favour of that particular scheme... but you can bet your Porsche that it's not scalable to the point where it replaces even a small fraction of the state's fuel requirements.
  

Adelaide shows the way

The southern Australian city of Adelaide is the target of many an unkind word from the mouths on the eastern seaboard, but I wish I could spend some time at Christie Walk and talk with the people behind its design.

Many aspects of sustainable living are reflected in this gorgeous building complex, from the use of natural light and ventilation to solar hot water heating to the rooftop gardens. I would love to live in a house that was something like this.

Which way to bet

Pulling back my vision to around 2037 or so, if the modern world hasn't crashed by then and I'm still alive, I'll probably need to have some decent savings behind me to help sustain Michelle and I through our later years. That's the conventional economic wisdom which leads to superannuation and other financial investment schemes.

On the other hand, the combined pressures of climate change, peak oil, peak soil, overpopulation and so on could conceivably bring the global economy to its knees and effectively wipe out any such investment. It could be argued that it would be far wiser to invest in a parcel of productive land and work to establish sustainable food, shelter and energy resources there.

Of course it's not a black and white decision - there's a whole world of choices in between the two extremes.

So what do you think? What would be the smartest things to invest in today? Perhaps there's a sensible minimum level of both those kinds of "wealth" I should be aiming towards: part practical self-sustainability and part abstract financial portfolio.

Either way, success depends on factors well outside my personal control. I suspect I'm going to end up betting both ways.