Family Community Guest Book:

The purpose of this page is to make some sense of the climate change debate, suggest some practical ideas on what we might be able to do and share ideas on how we can make it easier for all of us to moderate our living habits.

There are any amount of ideas circulating on how we can make our home, work place etc more environmentally friendly. Most councils provide something based on a “Sustainable Home Guide” eg

www.lakemac.com.au
www.newcastle.nsw.gov.au/

And what is suggested is great its commonsense and it really needs to be done.
But the challenge of Earthcare Earthshare is to shift public perception to move beyond the sense of complacency, indifference and casualness that unfortunately the majority of most of our friends and even family may have towards the health of our world to one where living sustainably becomes a natural part of our lives.

Ian Lowe has some interesting thoughts on the need to go beyond the practical to appreciating our moral obligation for facing the issue of sustainability is not fundamentally a technical issue, it is a moral issue.

” It is about whether we are prepared to live the life of Riley at the expense of future generations, or whether we are prepared to live responsibly and ensure that our grandchildren have the same sorts of life opportunities that we take for granted.” To quote Ian Lowe Emeritus Professor further
“I have a small postcard in French that says, Nous serons changer le monde. We are going to change the world. And underneath it says, in smaller writing: 'If it's not you, my little one, who will begin to change the world?' And it's a way of reminding you that a sustainable future is what I hope we all want. It's nothing less than our moral duty to future generations. And that moral duty, I believe, compels us to recognise that we can't wait for prime ministers, we can't wait for state premiers, we can't wait for large corporations, we can't wait for other people. Fundamentally a change to a sustainable society starts with each one of us doing what we can as individuals, as members of households, and as members of family groups, reflecting on how our choices affect biodiversity, affect water, affect energy, affect climate—but fundamentally, affect what sort of Australia our grandchildren will live in.”

So how do we get our heads and hearts around this? Our suggestion is to begin with what we do with the kids through Earthcare Earthshare programs. We begin with an understanding that if we want them to do something then they are going to really want to like doing it. So if we want them to be more thoughtful, more caring, responsible etc towards their environment than they must really want to like even love their environment, which means changing their attitude to, perception of their relationship to their natural surrounds.

So we provide them with experiences of the bush first hand, help them to see the environment with different eyes, allow the beauty peace and harmony wash over them allow them to experience solitude….reconnect them.
And that’s what we need to do as adults, restore our relationship to the bush, restore our sense of oneness with the bush reconnect ourselves have our deeper emotions touched so we can once more develop a deeper sensitivity and empathy for what nurtures and sustains us.

Do the recycling and composting but importantly try to get yourself and the kids out literally in the great outdoors and begin to smell the Banksias and Eucalypts.

Make time to….!!!!!!!

• Visit and walk in bushland reserves for an hour or two…..
  Websites..local tourism office…
• Go camping….
  
• Landcare provides any amount of projects for you to take the kids and really make a difference in rehabbing or revegetating local bush areas. Importantly you all can see and experience the visual difference that you make.Doesn’t have to be every month but it would be nice.
  www.landcareonline.org
• Grandad idea ….began using empty yoghurt containers to grow trees and shrubs and then gave as a special gift to my grandson and daughter to plant in their garden

Kids given the opportunity love cleaning up……

We would like this guest book to provide creative and imaginative ideas that are practical, informative and importantly simple and effective. We would love any suggestions that you might like to share.
Please follow the Guest Book prompts or please email johnf@earthshare.com.au

Great books easy reading include:
The Big Fix by Ian Lowe
We Are The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery

Interesting Websites

www.safeclimate.net
www.theweathermakers.com.au
www.greenhousegases.com.au
www.ethicalinvestor.com
www.abcradionational.com

www.greenhouse.gov.au
www.earthday.net
www.sustainability.vic.gov.au

More information on Ian Lowe’s address for a full transcript visit www.abcradionational.com

“Let me invite you to take part in an exercise. I had a dream last night that I'd been approached by the Commonwealth government, taking time off from their leadership problems, to ask me to head a new ministry of unsustainability. I put a bit of thought into this, based on nothing more substantial than a beer or two, and I came up with a shopping list of things I could do to discharge this responsibility that had been laid upon me by our government. Exponential population growth I thought would be a good starting point. Growing consumption per person would be a good way of moving the agenda ahead. Deplete mineral resources, especially oil—I thought that would be a good start; overuse renewable resources like fisheries and forests and water; disrupt the global climate, maybe in economic terms we could continue to export raw materials and import elaborately transformed manufactures and ensure our economic decline. And in moral and ethical terms, perhaps we could embrace crass materialism. So there's my shopping list for an unsustainable future, and you might reflect on how well I've done my job by comparing it with current policy settings.

A sustainable community will be fundamentally different. It will have stabilised its population and its ecological footprint, it will be a zero waste society that uses resources sustainably. It will have drastically cut its carbon emissions. It will require new developments to be biodiversity positive by investing in the restoration of habitat. It will improve equality within society, and therefore will have serious triple bottom line assessments in which we look at the social and environmental consequences of our choices rather than having superficial environmental assessment and no social assessment at all.

It will have a process for making difficult decisions, so that we are able to face the fact that hard choices always have winners and losers, and ensure that there is a fair redistribution from those who win to those who lose. But fundamentally it will be based on new values of equity and durability.”