Tag: Environment

• The Problem’s in the Thinking

  August 17, 2023 3:31 pm Comments Off on The Problem’s in the Thinking

  This article will use the acronym of ILM for simplicity’s sake, despite the generalisation and homogenisation that the term represents.
  A solution often posed to the challenges of climate change, environmental damage, and habitat loss unleashed by colonialism, is to find ways to integrate Indigenous land management (ILM) into the Western ecological management systems currently used in Australia. In support of this promising solution, ten years ago the Australian Landcare Council commissioned a review of the extent, scope and diversity of ILM practices across Australia, seeking to assess success factors and barriers to its use.
  Although this review represented a positive step toward changing how we care for land in Australia, very little has changed on the ground. Australia’s natural landscape continues to suffer from extractive and damaging practices. The review identified that one barrier to integrating ILM into current practices was that “power imbalances lead to western systems playing the dominant role in education and land management practices” and suggests this represents a threat to traditional knowledge and languages and ILM.
  While the identification of this barrier gets close to the issue, the reasons Australia’s attempts at ILM integration continually fail are more complex. The underlying barrier is the uneven dynamic of power between Western and Indigenous epistemology and ontology. Epistemology and ontology sound like scary words, but epistemology is really just theories of knowledge, and ontology is the philosophical study of existence, being, and reality. By thinking about ILM and western environmental management through the lenses of epistemology and ontology, we can begin to see where tensions emerge in integration.
  Academics have argued natural resource management in Australia relies on ‘whitefella’ separation of cultural, ecological, and social knowledge. Specifically, Western ecological knowledge treats elements of the environment separately, and compartmentalises their management, focusing on quantitative measures, like equilibrium, and notions of ‘maximum sustainable yield’. Moreover, the environment is treated as a commodified resource that must be managed, not a living entity in relationship with people.
  We can trace the epistemological foundations of western resource management back to the Age of Enlightenment during the 17th and 18th centuries, and the replacement of religion with science as the primary source of knowledge and normative judgement. From this shift, a tendency emerged in Western philosophy towards positivism. Positivism is a philosophical system that focuses on what can be scientifically verified, or logically proven, and rejects metaphysics and theism.
  The dominant scientific paradigm of today finds its roots in this tradition. In this world view, the binaries between mind and body, nature and culture are reified, and many aspects of human life are reduced to biological imperatives. Western philosophy, with its emphasis on reason and science, rejects the metaphysical, and instead seeks to understand reality in ‘objective’ terms. This ‘enlightened’ preference for secular thinking has led to a treatment of any ‘non-objective’ religious or spiritual traditions as beyond the realm of the objective sciences.
  In this system, knowledge exists separately from and outside social and historical definitions and processes, and moreover, this separation is the basis for its authority. Western philosophy, in its quest for ‘objective’ knowledge, has sought to exclude any cultural, ontological, or epistemological elements, essentially erasing any link between culture and place, which is the foundation of Indigenous knowledge.
  Indigenous knowledge processes are deeply bound to local place, as knowledge is formed through the unique characteristics of ecologies, in which “country tells you what is going on, it calls for action and invites engagement”. In this model, the health of the land is linked to the health of the people. Relationships to land form the basis for all interactions, and a symbiotic relationship exists in which the knowledge that sustains ecological practices, the social roles between people and the living environment, and the environment itself, all produce each other. This system of knowledge stands in stark contrast to the Western tradition, in which culture and nature, human and non-human are distinctly separate categories.
  Due to the philosophical origin of Western ecological theory, a tendency has emerged to understand and use Indigenous knowledge in a very specific way. Specifically, it is generally only engaged with or sought out or regarding knowledge that is already considered to be relevant to Western notions of environment, and already within the purview of ‘science’ and ‘reason’. An example of this is the seeking out of Indigenous knowledge around back burning for fire control, in order to improve the current practices and systems. Another tendency that emerges is to view ILM as a timeless, static repository of knowledge to be mined. This perspective emerged during the environmental movements of the 1960s, in which indigenous people began to be understood and portrayed ‘noble environmentalists’ living in harmony with the land.
  The consequence of these tensions is that the process of integrating ILM becomes a process in which Indigenous knowledge is seen as ‘content’ to be extracted and used for management purposes, rather than a process itself, a set of practices and symbiotic interaction and relationships between people, other living beings and things. Western ecological management often seeks to extract ILM from its local context which produces it, taking only what is perceived to be of value – that with demonstrable tangible outcomes. This extraction of ILM is completely contradictory to Indigenous culture, in which knowledge is produced in relationship to local places, and through the relationships between the people living on the land.
  This tendency for ‘cherry picking’ has been widely discussed in environmental theory as a major obstacle in integrating these systems of knowledge. However, it is not enough to simply recognize that ILM is not static but adaptive, constantly being renewed in local engagement with people and country, and not able to be extracted as a tool for ecological management.
  Instead, we must also recognize the epistemic incompatibility between the two systems of thought, because the underlying objectivity of the Western system is derived from its separation between science and culture, people and things, from its rejection of the spiritual and metaphysical.
  Indeed, it seems an unlikely possibility that the dominant Western system would be able to understand and view indigenous knowledge as valid for what it is; a place based, ethic of living, that incorporates non-human living things. To recognize this and to recognize the value ILM has, would be to undermine Western philosophy’s authority as ‘objective’.
  Frameworks for integration have suggested a re-conceptualisation of the relationship between these two systems. Suggestions include holding meetings about environmental care on country, set through Indigenous frameworks of negotiation, based on Indigenous customs. Other suggestions include the pedagogical tool ‘perspective taking’, where participants are required to engage in the identity and narratives of others, and situate them according to themselves, and examine any connectedness between the two has been posed. These solutions, however, unfortunately, fall short of a suitable framework for integration, as they fail to account for the uneven dynamics of power between the Western and Indigenous systems of knowledge. They reflect a superficial engagement with the ontological divide, and suggest an even playing field in which each perspective is given the same epistemic authority.
  Other solutions posed, emphasise that engagement with indigenous knowledge must be ‘equitable’, and incorporate “genuine exchange”, “two-way learning” and “moral reciprocity”’. However, moral reciprocity is an intersubjective exchange, in which each party recognizes the worth of the other. For that reason, I am hesitant to accept that a framework of integration between these two systems of knowledge could involve moral reciprocity, when the epistemic authority of one system relies on the abject rejection of fundamental elements of another.
  Indigenous scholars have echoed similar concerns, arguing that when Indigenous knowledge becomes a commodity, it can be appropriated and used by the dominant structures of power to support the existing status quo, and can be appropriated, marginalized, and even used against Indigenous communities.
  In this way, we can see we should be sceptical of any attempts to integrate ILM into Western ecological management systems, as it could be seen as is akin to neo-colonial assimilation, in which the context and true meaning of the knowledge is erased, thus perpetuating the constant, gradual dispossession of Indigenous dispossession on country.

  A solution often posed to the challenges of climate change, environmental damage, and habitat loss unleashed by colonialism, is to find ways to integrate Indigenous land management (ILM) into the Western ecological management systems currently used in Australia.

  Elizabeth Fewster

• Autumn at the ANU

  May 19, 2023 11:06 am Comments Off on Autumn at the ANU

  Stark Red Series

  Orange Series

  Chris Jackson

• Greenwashing

  May 13, 2023 9:33 pm Comments Off on Greenwashing

  Greenwashing, the act of making claims that overstate a company’s actions to combat climate degradation, is deceitful, widespread, and often difficult to detect. While it is routinely criticised, it still remains an effective tool for companies to reap the benefits of positive public relations, while keeping their environmentally destructive business models unchanged. When faced with this force of power, it is important that we as consumers hold companies accountable for their actions. To this end, I have detailed three industries infamous for this technique, some avenues to spot their lies, and alternatives that are genuinely environmentally friendly.
  FASHION INDUSTRY
  Who could’ve guessed the industry which continually promotes excessive consumption, exploits inhumane working conditions, and advocates for archaic and oppressive beauty standards, would be dishonest about their environmental impact? Being responsible for a tenth of all climate emissions, the largest contributor to microplastics in oceans, and creating one-fifth of industrial wastewater worldwide, the fashion industry has a lot to hide. However, it has been fast to stay on the ‘trend’ of appearing sustainable.
  Endless lines of new ‘responsible’ and ‘green’ catalogues have made the industry afloat with new products that appear to be a step forwards but are nothing else than savvy marketing. A 2021 report by the accredited British non-profit Changing Markets Foundation found 59% of green claims made by apparel brands were unsubstantiated or misleading, with some notable key players performing even worse [1]. All but four percent of H&M garments labelled as sustainable were found to be in breach of British governmental guidelines for sustainability [2]. Online retailer ASOS’s ‘responsible edit’ range only used 9% recycled materials for its synthetic products [3]. However, there is a range of legitimate organisations that provide third-party accreditation to genuinely environmentally sustainable fashion labels. Both B-Corp and the Global Organic Textile Standard have websites listing these labels and are a must-see before your next wardrobe update. One final heads up as well, up to 80% of donated clothes never reach op-shops, so while donating clothes still remains the best means to recycle, op-shopping is by no means a sustainable hobby [4]. However, clothes swaps remain a great alternative, as does selling clothes yourself.
  FOOD INDUSTRY
  Food is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse emissions, natural habitat destruction, and broader environmental degradation. As this was the subject of my last piece, I will avoid detailing what you loyal readers already have heard. However, companies in the food industry have also remained industrious in avoiding real action towards decreasing their environmental impact.
  Straightforward claims such as ‘100% recycled plastics’ can be factually incorrect through dodgy wording [5]. Many major non-profits which offer certifications do very little to promote sustainability, such as the RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil), the certifier for ‘sustainable’ palm oil used by companies such as Nestle. It has been called a ‘greenwashing’ tool by conservation organisations for its inability to prevent widespread deforestation and land degradation over the last 20 years and thus must be viewed as such by consumers. Other third parties have failed to deliver promises to ease waste, such as Terracycle. Hailed as an innovative means to provide recycling services to some of the world’s largest plastic polluters, it proved mostly ineffective, and instead became a tool to distract from the increasing production of mostly non-recycled plastics.
  When shopping from overseas producers, Fairtrade International serves to be the best widely adopted certification for environmentally sustainable food products, which can be found using their website, or on packages of certified products. Domestically, determining what brands are sustainable is significantly harder, however, shopping locally if possible is generally a great way to ensure minimal use of single-use plastics and land degradation.
  MINING
  Again, no surprises here. The mining industry does happen to provide the fossil fuels that are obsessively consumed, and not-so-occasionally spilled into water systems, and soil. They also extract polluting metals which form poisonous streams, during floods and heavy rains [6]. But the mining industry has not failed to spare some of its current windfall profits, to spread some endearing misinformation.
  Many companies refuse to publish data on their own environmental impacts, with only 3 of 56 major global miners reporting dam waste [7]. Furthermore, manipulation of data is common, something mining giant Glencore received international legal backlash over last year. Even barefaced lying isn’t out of the question, with Shell disclosing incorrect information about its renewable investments [8]. These efforts haven’t flown under the radar, with our own ANU publishing multiple articles, which are available to all students, documenting the environmental impact of mining in Australia, and the Asia-Pacific. The Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) also publishes regular articles bringing awareness to the underreported impacts of new mining projects within Australia. The ACF also hosts campaigns which raise awareness and combat environmentally damaging mining projects, as well as providing other forms of information including climate rankings of super funds.
   
  While greenwashing is widespread, it can be called out. By staying critical of companies’ claims about sustainability, and knowing the avenues to interrogate these statements, the power of greenwashing can become another failed attempt to prevent our inevitable path to coexisting with our environment.

  [1] https://changingmarkets.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/SyntheticsAnonymous_FinalWeb.pdf
  [2] https://changingmarkets.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/SyntheticsAnonymous_FinalWeb.pdf
  [3] https://changingmarkets.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/SyntheticsAnonymous_FinalWeb.pdf
  [4] https://www.popsci.com/story/environment/thrift-second-hand-shopping-sustainable-ethical/
  [5] https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/marketing/lipton-ice-tea-censured-by-asa-over-100-recycled-bottle-claim/663634.article
  [6] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/oct/10/sydney-catchment-water-contamination-deadline-nears-for-mine-owner
  [7] https://gistimpact.com/news-insights/how-to-avoid-greenwashing-in-the-mining-sector/
  [8] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/01/shell-renwable-energy-spending-sec-global-witness

  Liam Berryman

• Renaturalising Sullivan’s Creek

  November 12, 2022 12:19 pm Comments Off on Renaturalising Sullivan’s Creek

  Dedicated to my Dad.
   
  During Semester 1, 2021, a group of ANU students was formed to work with local community organisation SEE Change on the topic of “renaturalising” Sullivan’s creek. The ‘SEE’ in SEE Change stands for Society, Environment, and Economics and these are the “three pillars” of sustainability that  underpin the framework used by our group. Our task was to create a report that considered key issues and explored a broad range of ways to approach the idea of “renaturalisation.”
  What does renaturalisation mean?
  Simply put, it means to return a place to its natural state. One area we focused on were the sections of the creek with concrete beds. How might we go about returning them back into soil and plants, and what are the potential benefits of doing so in terms of biodiversity, human wellbeing, economics, and community sustainability?
  These are all important areas we wanted to address, but there’s something largely absent in these sorts of considerations: First Nations peoples and perspectives. I had the privilege of speaking briefly about this project with Dr. Virginia Marshall, the Inaugural Indigenous Postdoctoral Fellow with ANU’s School of Regulation and Global Governance and the Fenner School of Environment and Society, and a Wiradjuri Nyemba woman. With respect to our focus on flooding, she noted that:
  “If we look at various concepts of living within an Aboriginal world view, the understanding of the benefits of floodplains and flooding is [that it is] nurturing to the entire environment. Why do we build near rivers that flood?”
  She pointed to research into the colonial history surrounding areas like Gundagai, Daly River, and Wingecarribee River – among many others – where Aboriginal people warned settlers not to set up camp near rivers. We at the ANU have certainly set up camp here at the creek.
  Referring to earlier discussions about the “three pillars” that began this article, she stated that a fourth pillar – Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture – is considered as ‘core,’ adding that the “triple bottom line” employed by sustainability-minded organisations in homage to the three pillars framework would instead be a “five bottom line” in many Aboriginal communities where the fourth area of culture is joined by a fifth – law. These are different frameworks that open up a broader range of considerations.  
  What does natural mean?
  To return a place to its natural state may seem self-explanatory, but what does “natural” actually mean? A state without human interaction? A time before human intervention? The Ngunnawal peoples, among others, have lived in this area for at least 20,000 years. Before colonisation, the entirety of Australia was what you might call an Indigenous constructed landscape. Dr. Marshall echoes these points, noting Bill Gammage’s appropriately titled work The Biggest Estate, as well as the work of Aboriginal authors Bruce Pascoe and Tyson Yunkaporta. Her own award-winning book, Overturning Aqua Nullius takes this same argument of an expanded, managed estate to the waters of Australia – so often forgotten in discourse that places Western words, frames, and concepts like “land” above other more inclusive Indigenous terms like “Country.”
  We don’t need to rewind the local ecology 20,000 years to arrive at a time before these concrete blocks were placed, yet we use a word such as “natural” which implies an absence of humans. We could just as easily, and more accurately, describe this process as “re-Indigenising” if what we’re aiming for is the healthy Indigenous environment from just a few centuries ago. 
  The settler-colonisers who invaded this Country saw nature as something different to and separate from themselves. As early as the 1500s, influential legal thinkers like Grotius enshrined these ideas in frameworks of sovereignty. Later, Blackstone’s 1754 comments around ideas of agriculture and the right to take those civilisations deemed lacking it formed the basis of other disastrous concepts like terra nullius. These legal frameworks prevented settlers from seeing the landscape as something already “deeply shaped by people,” with severe and far-reaching consequences still felt today. We obviously want to avoid repeating those mistakes, but it’s often hard to do from the start when the language we use, and the way we’re taught to understand it, prominently features those same frames.
  A similar idea is found in the concept of “wilderness.” In fact, a “rewilding” project for ANU was already raised long before our project began. The ANU Below Zero initiative is exploring ways to reduce campus emissions, and a community consultation document refers multiple times to the idea of “rewilding” campus. Again, this isn’t a bad idea, but perhaps we should be mindful of the framing here too. 
  A term like “wilderness” implies an absence of humans, perhaps even more strongly than the word “nature”. At the time of the interview, Dr. Marshall was planning to attend COP26 as a Pacific delegate, to engage in discussions around these issues, exploring “how we can learn from Indigenous knowledge and culture in working with an Indigenous environment”. She added that:
  “Wild and wilding is a colonial concept that relates back to the colonial discourse of ‘prehistory’, ‘primitive’ and ‘nomads’. Indigenous peoples are very uncomfortable about these terms for good reasons.”
  In Carving Wilderness, Tracey Banivanua Mar describes the creation of our national parks system and how it both depended upon, and reaffirmed, the concept of a deserted wilderness. This idea left no room – in the mind, or on Country – for Indigenous landscapes. In a related paper on ‘narratives of dispossession’, Mar continues this line of thought and considers these colonised landscapes as a kind of history text – one read through mere occupation, an act that constantly reaffirms those same ideas.
  It’s important for us to appreciate the hidden values in frames like these so that we can work to also include thoughts beyond or outside them. Once we also start framing “nature” as “Indigenous environment” or similar, it opens new and exciting ways of thinking about problems like those concrete blocks.
   
  Originally published in Woroni Vol. 72 Issue 5 ‘To Be Confirmed’
  Think your name would look good in print? Woroni is always open for submissions. Email write@woroni.com.au with a pitch or draft. You can find more info on submitting here.

  Nick Blood

• Sapiens to Systems

  April 11, 2022 4:25 pm Comments Off on Sapiens to Systems

  Evolution occurs when animals adapt to better live in their environment. Climate change and the Anthropocene are changes to our environment. However, because they are happening so fast, we cannot evolve through our usual means of mutation. To survive, and, in many ways, to thrive, in a new era, we will have to evolve deliberately and collectively.
  Often, when we talk about our Anthropocenic future, we speak with cynicism. We talk about how doomed we are, about how much we and the planet will lose. The signposts of our times seem to point in only two directions: what needs to be done by 2050, and the hellscape that awaits us afterwards. Fundamentally, a good portion of us seem to have lost a lot of hope. This is understandable. In many ways, it is a logical viewpoint. We are one of the most individualistic societies to ever exist, having to confront a problem caused by our collective actions and which can only be solved by our collective actions. If we were not living it, it would be fantastically ironic.
  Increasingly though, people are understanding that this fatalism and odd schadenfreude is what hamstrings us. Proposals like the Green New Deal are solutions-orientated, but, in their wholesale view and in their intersectionality, they give us a better vision of the future. They give a third way of looking forward. The debate now is moving away from questions of needing to evolve, to the question of how do we evolve? What traits do we need to better suit the coming century?
  In a word, systems. In two words, systems thinking. Just as individualism plagues us, so too does an obsession with taking ecological and economic cycles and processes and trying to make a graph out of them. The four lines required to make a supply and demand diagram are some of the most damaging you can draw. Not because they are inaccurate, but because of how much they leave out. If we’re trapped in Plato’s cave, then these bivariate models are the shadows on the wall. The fire is approaching the market as embedded in a broader social and environmental context. Oxford economist, Kate Ratworth, has attempted to create another way of visualising a single market: wherein the market is taken as a system, with supply and demand being feedback loops, not linear processes. This market also has a clear limit – environmental sustainability.
  What we should evolve into is an understanding of our world as composed of systems. These systems have multiple components which replace the traditional independent variable, but each component is a keystone – if removed, the system teeters dangerously. The classic example we’d be familiar with is an ecosystem. Remove a producer organism, like plants, and the system crumbles, but remove also apex predators and herbivore populations explode unsustainably. When we attempt to break down the world into phenomenon Y as a cause of X, we stress the dependence of Y on X, but in doing so, we lose the interdependence of these two variables within a broader system.
  When we reduce the world into models, choices are made about what to exclude and include. We exclude what we deem irrelevant which, as history warns us, is a dangerous game to play. Climate change challenges economics because it pushes and prods for putting the environment front and centre of these models. Otherwise, reality and economics will flee into the distance growing further and further apart, a phenomenon seen today in the celebration of economic growth built off future environmental collapse.
  Systems thinking doesn’t stop with the economy. Just as we fail to embed the economy into other systems like the environment and society, so too do we fail to view ourselves as agents in a larger, broader system. This is not simply a criticism of the neoliberal “There are individual men and women and there are families…” It is about reworking the conception of humans as distinct from their natural environment. The West has long sat on this principle of othering; creating binaries and hierarchies of value. Race, gender and sexuality have all been catalogued and reduced to the accepted ‘status quo’ and the rejected other, to either be feared, patronised, or forced out. We do the same thing with the environment. We erect picket fences to distinguish between where we and our lawns end, and where the ‘wild’ begins. But we cannot be separated from our ecosystem; the idea of a human is meaningless without the global and local environment in which they live. Understanding this irrevocable connection is one of the most crucial steps in evolving into the Anthropocene and the reality of climate change.
  Much of this is nothing new. It is the West that struggles with this. Many other cultures incorporate eco-centrism into their views, especially First Nations people and other Indigenous cultures around the world. For once, the West needs to take a backseat. Successful climate action will be paired with justice and sovereignty for Indigenous peoples.
  One of the most dangerous myths of climate change is that we have no choices left. Whatever happens in the next two decades, it will be a series of decisions made by our society. Some will be undemocratic, made by elites in backrooms, while others may not even be presented as choices, only as unfortunate necessities. But with every step, through action or inaction, we will be choosing what we evolve into, we will force ourselves to adapt to the new landscape. To paraphrase Chomsky, it is better to choose optimism over despair, to choose through the ballot, but also to choose by approaching life as complex and vulnerable systems, needing to be comprehensively understood, with no factor excluded. By evolving towards a system outlook, we take a step to evolving into not just the new era, but into something better.
   
  Originally published in Woroni Vol.72 Issue 1 ‘Evolution’

  Alexander Lane

• It Will Be Fire

  March 12, 2020 10:50 am Comments Off on It Will Be Fire

  CONTENT WARNING: NSW/Victoria Bushfires, Climate Change
   
  “It will be fire” – the unceasing echo of David Harsent’s 2014 poetry collection, Fire Songs. Harsent’s apocalyptic images of environmental catastrophe and damnation seem, read today in one of the worst bushfire seasons ever seen in Australia, apposite and freakishly prescient. 
   
  The collection of poems is bound in flames, metaphorically and literally. Contained within are four eponymous ‘Fire’ poems around which all else is structured. Fire’s power to cause ruin – to human life, to love and truth, to the earth and our environment, and to human reason – is one of many leitmotifs that run through the work: “it burns. Whole libraries on an updraught. Cascade of wings. / Substructure meltdown. What the night-sky brings. / Ashfall. Stars failing, fading. Unbreathable crosswinds. / Torrent of wildfire”. 
   
  The poems, with their images of destruction and environmental catastrophe, call up images of the bushfires that have caused wide-spread devastation over the southeast of Australia and been ever-present on news and social media platforms since September last year. 2019 was Australia’s hottest year on record, 1.52 degrees Celsius above the long-term average recorded by the Bureau of Meteorology. This eclipsed the previous record of 1.33 degrees Celsius above average set in 2013. In fact, every year since 2000 has been above average, with the five hottest years on record all falling since: 2017, 2018, 2005, 2013 and now 2019. The conclusion is obvious: Australia is getting hotter. 
   
  This has come hand-in-hand with harsher bushfire seasons. At the time of writing, this 2019 to 2020 season so far has brought the destruction of 10.7 million hectares of land, over 5900 buildings and killed 29 people. Towns along the coast of NSW, in Victoria and in southern parts of Queensland have been devastated by bushfire damage to property, land, livelihood and life. The human cost of these fires is immeasurable. 
   
  The fires are of an apocalyptic nature mirrored in Fire Songs. In Fire: End-Scenes and Outtakes, Harsent’s image of a town bears resemblance to towns currently devastated by fires: “the crackle and flare / of phosphorous, mother and child taken up as one, / the horizon ablaze, just as the fires / rolled in on the settlements”. A similar image is created in Fire: A Party at the World’s End: “the trek / to the sea under thin white skies, the firestorms at their backs, / their burdens, their weeping cries, the way the line / would lean as if for emphasis into a driven pall / of dust and dreck”. This bears resemblance to people in Cobargo and Mallacoota (and Batemans Bay, Jervis Bay, Bermagui, Mogo, Nowra, Moruya…) seeking refuge from the bushfires on beaches and the coast. 
   
  The smoke currently enveloping NSW, Victoria and now even New Zealand also has a parallel in the collection. In the poem Icefield, “there was a time… when the skyline was set / clean as a scar on glass… now the horizon’s a smudge; now there’s a terrible weight / in the air and a stain cut hard and deep”. Icefield, coincidentally, was commissioned by the World Wide Fund for Nature Australia, an agency now fundraising for the bushfire emergency. Smoke emanates through the work, folding, shrouding, covering, choking, of a nature with which we are all now familiar. 
   
  Also contained within the collection is a ternary poem Tinnitus, split between three sections of the work. Here, Harsent manifests the human propensity for lies within a central metaphor: “a single note drawn out / beyond imagining, / pitched for a dog or a rat / by a man with a single string / on a broken violin…. too sharp and shrill to be anything but lies”. This false and urgent shriek changes to the clamour of violence in the second section: “rough music in the lane, / the love-child lapped in blood / and safe at her breast, the pain / echoed in wood on wood, / steel on steel, as they come”. Finally we only hear the rattle of approaching chains: “now chains on gravel. Make of it what you will. ” The trajectory is from lies to violence to judgement. 
   
  Truth is absent and lies are everywhere in the collection. In Fire: Love Songs and Descants, the written word is thrown on the pyre: “so leap these on, letters, cuttings, poems, diaries, notebooks… everything said wrong, everything said in haste”. Old writing, old lies, are described as “all that’s left of counterfeit and fear”. Perhaps this is a response to our current state, replete with echo chambers, agenda-heavy media, ‘fake news’ and information overflow. Even in the current bushfire crisis we have seen some of it, in the ‘disinformation campaign’ carried out by fake social media accounts pushing arson as the cause for the fires, undermining the connection between bushfires and climate change. The Fool at Court is a poem of a single couplet – there is, after all, no substance to a fool – that could truly be applied to some modern-day politicians: “he wears seven colours in his coat and lies / with the Queen at night, and lies and lies and lies.” 
   
  With these parallels, Fire Songs seems to prophesy. Written in 2014, it is, in this respect, similar to many environmental studies conducted through this century and the last of the dangers of accelerated climate change. Many studies warned of an increased risk of bushfires due to rising temperatures, the increasing length and severity of droughts, changing rainfall patterns and other climate change-related phenomena. 
   
  For example, the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Co-Operative Research Centre has been modelling the increased occurrence and severity of fires – which they suggest is highly likely tied to increasing temperatures in Australia – since 2003, the year it was founded by the Australian Federal Government. Similarly, the 2018 combined report of the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO showed a one degree Celsius increase in Australia’s climate since 1910, an 11 per cent decline in rainfall in southeast Australia since the late 1990s, and long-term increase in extreme fire weather across large parts of Australia.
   
  Many studies appeared to predict the 2019 to 2020 bushfire season catastrophe, such as the 2008 Garnaut Climate Change Review, which stated: “recent projections of fire weather suggest that fire seasons will start earlier, end slightly later, and generally be more intense. This effect increases over time, but should be directly observable by 2020”. Similarly, a report from the Climate Institute of Australia predicted the number of days with a ‘very-high’ fire danger, by the Fire Danger Index, to increase by up to 30 per cent in NSW and Victoria by 2020.
   
  We have been given the information necessary to put in place protection mechanisms, safeguards and adaptation strategies. The failure to do so before this catastrophe has resulted in the widespread shock and anger at political institutions over Australia. That our governments have ignored such warnings is justifiable cause for anger. 
   
  Further cause for anger is the lamentable lack of effective climate change policy; in the recent 2020 Climate Change Performance Index, Australia was ranked worst out of all 57 participating countries, with “the dismissal of recent IPCC reports, the government not attending the UN Climate Action Summit in September, and the withdrawal from funding the Green Climate Fund”, as well as the failure to propose renewable energy or emission reduction targets, resulting in the lowest possible overall score, 0.0 out of 100. 
   
  We are not acting on climate change. Bushfires are a catastrophic and manifest danger that have resulted directly from increased temperatures. The devastation caused to lives, homes, livelihoods and land are only direct consequences. We are also facing decreased food security and increased cost, displacement and bushfire refugees (adding to the millions upon millions of people already displaced in the context of disasters and climate change worldwide), damage to our water treatment and supply infrastructure, and a serious water shortage – country towns in NSW and Queensland are approaching Day Zero for water, and it’s only mid-January. There are also many other dangers of climate change: longer and worse droughts, rising sea-levels, the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, of rainforests. Fire Songs again prophesies: “it will come to fire, so they say, despite the roar and roll / as continents calve from icefields, as rainforests fall, / as the sea first takes the lowland then takes the rest, / fire nonetheless, fire on the skim of the sea, fire at the core”. 
   

  George Owens

• Is Vintage Clothing Eco-Friendly?

  November 13, 2019 5:30 pm Comments Off on Is Vintage Clothing Eco-Friendly?

  With so much commotion around the environmental impacts of fast fashion and clothing production in general, many people have been turning to op-shops and vintage stores for more sustainable fashion options. Whilst clothing found in an op-shop has no requirements on the age of the garment, vintage fashion is defined as a garment produced over 20 years before the time of its re-purchase. Vintage fashion has often been hailed as the future for sustainable fashion, but what are the main benefits of vintage clothes? 
   
  Well, for the most part, the production of clothing items in the first instance is the same between fast fashion items and vintage clothes. However, the difference lies in the fact that a fast fashion item is likely to have a shelf life of four weeks in a store and will be worn by its owner a handful of times. This contrasts directly with vintage items, which become vintage only after remaining in use for more than 20 years. This comes down to the fundamental principle that recycling and reusing clothing that has already been produced seriously saves resources, thus being more environmentally sustainable. 
   
  Many people believe that recycling clothing is in itself a sustainable fashion solution. However, there are currently exorbitant amounts of donated clothes filling up warehouses across the globe. This is heavily due to people believing that they can counteract the negative implications of fast fashion by donating their old clothes, which is not the case. If we continue to donate clothes as quickly as we produce them in order to make room for new purchases, it continues the negative cycle of fast fashion. 
   
  If donating and recycling clothes is to be a sustainable option, it is essential to follow up donations with purchases for new items at second-hand or vintage stores, or even trading clothes. It is this process of keeping clothes in use for long periods of time that creates vintage clothing and supports the slow fashion movement, making it a more sustainable option. However, the vital element in making vintage clothing sustainable is that we as consumers don’t continue to purchase new non-renewable clothing, as this still encourages excess levels of fashion waste. 
   
  In order to sustain the option of purchasing vintage clothes into the future, there are a few things we can do now. Firstly, purchasing better quality clothing is essential in ensuring that garments are still usable in years to come. Fast fashion clothing, which is designed to have a short lifespan, is not viable to be re-worn (or easy to repurpose) in the long-term. This makes it essential for individuals to invest in better quality products whenever possible. 
   
  Secondly, repurposing or upcycling into new items is an extremely effective way to ensure that clothes that are slightly damaged are re-used in the clothing cycle. This reduces overall waste and increases the longevity of garments. 
   
  Thirdly, repairing and donating clothing is extremely crucial in the process of ensuring that there are vintage items in the future. If we repair all the clothes we are likely to donate, it makes them easier for people to sell, and therefore less likely to be discarded as waste in factories. 
   
  Ultimately, by donating or reselling clothing, we are helping to reduce waste, which in itself promotes more long-term sustainability in the fashion sector. 

  Canada Gavin

• Environmentalism: Our World At A Glance

  5:28 pm Comments Off on Environmentalism: Our World At A Glance

  CONTENT WARNING: Brief Mention of Death
   
  1950s – AIR POLLUTION
  For the first time, people across the world began dying from air pollution released from unfiltered industrial waste. A single smog incident in November 1953 resulted in the deaths of approximately 250 people in New York City. In 1955, the first Air Pollution Control Act is passed in the United States as a response to these deaths. 
   
  1960s – SILENT SPRING
  In 1962, scientist Rachel Carson published her book Silent Spring outlining the dangers of pesticides, particularly the now prohibited Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane 
  (more commonly known as DDT) on the wider environment. The book received heavy criticism from the chemical industry, particularly due to her accusation that the industry had spread misleading information about the safety of pesticides. However, it provided immense fire for the new, and relatively small, environmental activism movement of the time. It led to a campaign later in the decade to ban DDT in the United States and throughout the world. 
   
  1970s – EARTH DAY
  On April 22 1970, the first Earth Day occurred. Around 20 million people in the United States alone protested to bring climate change and the impact of human activities on the Earth into the spotlight. In Australia, environmental activism also became more mainstream due to the case of Lake Pedder.  The revoking of Lake Pedder’s National Park status in order to proceed with damming was heavily protested by the Australian public. The extent of the protests led to the proposed Franklin Dam never being constructed, instigated by the fact that the area was deemed a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was therefore protected.
   
  1980s – OZONE HOLE
  In 1987, the world came together to recognise the risk that the depleting ozone layer poses to life on Earth, including humans. The Montreal Protocol was agreed on by 197 nations, banning the use of certain chemicals that contribute to the depletion of the ozone layer. The most important of these is chloroflurocarbons (CFCs), previously used in refrigerators. Hydrochloroflurocarbons (which are less damaging than CFCs) were banned in a later revision of the protocol, and still continue to be managed today. 
   
  1990s – SUMMITS & AGREEMENTS
  In this decade, world leaders come together for the first time to seriously discuss climate change. In 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development hosted a Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Initial commitments to the use of renewables and respecting Indigenous peoples were made. In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol was adopted by 192 countries in a commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. 
   
  2000s – AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH
  The American film An Inconvenient Truth documenting Al Gore’s political campaign to inform the public about the dangers of climate change had a ripple effect through the United States and across the world. Some research suggests that many people genuinely changed their habits and carbon footprint following the release of the film. 
   
  2010s – SCHOOL CLIMATE STRIKES
  More recently, there has been a global movement throughout schools and universities to strike for climate action, initiated by 16 year old Greta Thunberg of Sweden. In 2018, she began to skip school on Fridays to sit outside the Swedish Parliament. Her mentality, that we are in a crisis that will most heavily affect the younger generation, has been echoed throughout the world. Most notably, her blunt comments to politicians and policy makers questioning why they are not taking any action are refreshing for many millions of people around the globe.  As a result of this youth, climate strikes are becoming frequent occurrences across the globe. They demand change in a plea instigated by the generations who will have to bear the burden of climate change and environmental degradation in the future. 

  Tash Salisbury

• Eco-Fashion: Are millennials putting their money where their mouth is?

  September 3, 2019 9:29 pm Comments Off on Eco-Fashion: Are millennials putting their money where their mouth is?

  Millennials have been a large driving force for changes in the fashion sphere, with youthful trends such as designer loungewear and large printed logos becoming more prolific. Additionally, the largest growth in eco-friendly investments and consumption has stemmed from millennials. An article from the Environmental Leader states that millennials are twice as likely than the average person to invest in companies with an environmental focus. A Neilson study has found that almost 75 per cent of American millennials have changed their food consumption habits to support more sustainable practices. In Australia, such changes have helped to reduce the amount of plastic packing in stores and have led to the growth of farmers markets and smaller fresh produce stores. 
   
  Interestingly in terms of fashion, almost 60 per cent of millennials have stated that they are interested in certified sustainable clothing, with up to 69 per cent stating that they will check whether a clothing brand is sustainable before purchasing according to the Oeko-Tex Association. However, shopping centres and online shopping platforms are still rapidly selling extremely harmful, low-cost fast-fashion. So, are millennials putting their money where their mouth is? 
   
  A recent study by the Business of Fashion has found that only 37 per cent of millennials who say they purchase sustainable fashion actually do, whilst only 34 per cent of millennial consumers intentionally purchase fashion products because of their sustainability. The evidence shows that consumers do care about the sustainability of their purchases. However, the purchasing records indicate a clear gap.
   
  There seem to be two major reasons for this: firstly, misleading and unclear advertising and secondly, the availability of sustainable clothes for purchase. Most young consumers are looking for affordability when making purchases due to a lower disposable income than the rest of the population. In the current market, the cheapest clothing comes in the form of mass-produced fast-fashion that allows you to purchase most items for less than a $10 note. 
   
  Online platforms such as Amazon and Wish have allowed poor quality and highly polluting companies to sell items that rapidly undercut any form of sustainable fashion. To produce something that is environmentally sustainable, it costs significantly more than regular clothing. On The Iconic the cheapest pair of jeans that are defined as environmentally friendly and made from sustainable materials cost approximately $120, compared to approximately $12 for a regular pair. The price difference is astronomical, which makes it extremely difficult for young people to afford sustainable clothing items. 
   
  On the contrary, another key reason for the gap between words and actions is misleading advertising. Many companies promote products as ‘conscious’ and ‘sustainable’. However, there are currently no universal standards that verify the use of these words in advertising. This means that many products promoted to consumers as environmentally friendly are just as damaging as their mass-produced, fast-fashion counterparts. This means that many consumers think they are doing the right thing, however, due to a lack of accurate information fall flat on purchasing sustainably. 
   
  Overall, whilst millennials could be dubbed one of the most eco-conscious generations, we are still falling flat in the realm of fashion. Potentially a solution to avoid that gap between words and actions is to create a universal standard for marketing eco-products, like health stars but for clothing products. Additionally, new technologies and resources that can help reduce the price of eco-fashion to make it more affordable would drastically improve the realm of eco-fashion and individuals ability to purchase ‘greener’ products. Despite millennials driving the sustainable consumption movement forward, there is still a long way to go for both fashion companies and individuals if eco-fashion is going to become a part of mainstream society.

  Canada Gavin

• Instagram and the Rise of Environmental Activism

  August 7, 2019 11:38 am Comments Off on Instagram and the Rise of Environmental Activism

  I first heard about plastic-free July last year on Instagram. Being a science student with a marine science major, I’d been continuously exposed to the threat that plastic has on our marine ecosystem, in particular, the wildlife. Like many others, I didn’t realise how much we rely on plastic in our current society until I tried to remove it. Everything from hygiene and beauty products, to both fresh and pre-packaged foods, to clothes, is packaged in plastic. It seems almost impossible to remove plastic from our lives. 
  This is why I think social-media-based movements like Plastic Free July are so effective. Not only do they create a community online where information and tips can be shared, but it also makes it very clear how to get involved. I’ve found the @plasticfreejuly community to be very inclusive, as it encourages people to reduce their plastic consumption, without the pressure of entirely eliminating plastic. Their goal is for everyone to reduce their plastic use as much as is feasible for each individual. This contrasts to many other movements that advocate an ‘all-or-nothing’ approach that ultimately pushes people away. On the Plastic Free July website there are options to pledge a variety of goals for the month, including trying to remove only coffee cups and plastic bags, becoming plastic-free for just one week or going cold turkey for the whole month. Having inclusive options like this means that more people feel like they can get involved without having to completely change their lifestyle.  In environmental activism,this is extremely important. A million people trying to remove some plastic from their lives, even if the amount is small, is exponentially more effective than a handful of people being completely plastic-free, which is often what happens when people are shamed for not entirely removing plastic from their lives. Small steps across a whole community make enormous impacts.
  I’ve seen a few things on social media lately laughing at those who use keep cups and think they are ‘eco-friendly.’ While using a keep cup is a first step to reducing plastic waste and your environmental footprint, so many more steps can be taken. In my opinion, making fun of those who only use keep cups is so stupid. Yes, the keep cup has become ‘trendy,’ but isn’t this something we should be celebrating? It shouldn’t matter if some people only use a keep cup to be fashionable and not for environmental reasons. I mean, it would be great if they could do it for the environment and consider their footprint in other aspects of their lives, but they’re still using a keep cup. It’s ultimately a win for the planet, so who cares? Personally, I’m stoked to see anyone using a keep cup regardless of their motivations. The reality is that becoming more environmentally conscious is becoming more and more mainstream. High profile public figures and influencers are talking about it more than ever, and the market for environmentally friendly food, clothing and retail is bigger than ever before. Back to Instagram, people with huge followings are spreading their message of sustainability such as Grace Beverly (1 million followers), DJ Tigerlily (604k followers), Zanna van Dijk (280k followers) and David Pocock (202K followers). With such a wide reach, public figures have an enormous influence on encouraging sustainability to their followers. 
  Social media has been crucial to Greta Thunberg’s school strike activism for climate change, which has now spread across the world. The attention garnered by her large following has pushed her into the spotlight as the face of environmental activism for our generation. And while Greta’s feed, on first glance, has very little in common with Grace Beverley’s, the message is the same. Encourage, not discourage, bring people in and don’t leave people out. Keep your keep cup, encourage discussion, but most importantly, accept everyone into the environmental activism movement. Like plastic-free July, encourage people to take any step, no matter how big or small. And be stoked that environmentalism is finally becoming fashionable.

  Tash Salisbury