The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National
Science Show presented by Robyn Williams October 30th 2021.
The prize winners, the anthology, the history remembered. The Science Show this week is all about Bragg.
Sir Lawrence Bragg, Nobel Prize for crystallography, born in Adelaide, insisted the best science writing for its essential import to be realized and discovered was ‘akin to poetry and literature.’ See his Foreword to The Apple and the Spectroscope. That is the aim of the annual anthology of the Best Australian Science Writing, published by New South, the publication arm of the University of New South Wales.
Listen to Ceridwen Dovey speak about why she writes about science and why this prize-winning work focuses on what we are doing to the night sky. None of the billionaires setting out to privatise space asked any of the astronomers how or whether their flights might impede their study of space. They had no interest in potential killer asteroids. We will have 60,000 satellites crowding the night sky in ten years. Who is caring an ounce?
Associate Professor Alice Gorman, space archaeologist, Flinders University, and former Bragg Prize winner was mentioned as one of those trying to help us see what we are doing.
Profit is being put before knowledge and the future for the children.
At the same time, Are too many nations, like this Australian government, putting short-term fossil-fuel based profits first? ARE our young people, unable to Vote, going to have to deal with what politicians, now in positions of power refuse to care about? Ian Lowe summarizes what is needed to move the world away from its current climate trajectory.
First go to Globe 4 Globe: Shakespeare and Climate in the UK
A two-day event took place in April in London
This major two-day event, co-hosted with the University of California (Merced), gathered experts, activists and theatre practitioners in a vital exploration of the relationships between Shakespeare’s works and the current climate crisis.
Scholars explored ecological collapse and renewal in Shakespeare’s texts; environmental experts mapped out ways in which Shakespearean theatres and festivals could achieve sustainable and ethical futures; theatre professionals reflected on the capacity of live theatre to change audience perception and behaviour.
AND also in the UK, meeting the challenge of climate change.The actions taken by the national government!
These documents with their policy positions contain clearly stated decisions and they are legally binding.
UK 2050 =21 documents in existence, of 1868 pages.
Heat & building strategy.
Heat pump grants
Electric vehicles incentives
End gas boilers by 2035.
Internal combustion engine [ICE] sales ended by 2030.
All Treasury reviewed!!! – Not so in Australia – and that’s not all.
They are all legally binding.
They have five year targets.
While, in Adelaide, the example in Shakespeare’s Globe in the UK has been followed by Alys Daroy.
InDaily, Michelle Wakim reports on this October event.
Eco-theatre production takes the Bard back to nature
Shakespeare South Australia – a new local outdoor theatre company with an environmental ethos at its core – debuts this week with a production of Twelfth Night in the picturesque setting of the Palm House lawns at the ‘In the early days of the pandemic, actor Alys Daroy returned to South Australia from the UK to find that Adelaide, “one of the world’s leading arts and culture centres”, was without an outdoor Shakespeare company. She was spurred into action.
“I spoke to my agent, Ann Peters at SA Casting, and she said, ‘Darling, you’ve got to do it’. So I spoke to the Botanic Gardens and one thing led to another and here we are!” says Daroy, founder and artistic director of Shakespeare South Australia, which launched earlier this year.
Alys Daroy has more than a decade of experience in Shakespearean performance, and before arriving back in Adelaide she was working on an “eco-theatrical production” at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. Shakespeare South Australia characterises itself as an eco-theatrical company, which means its approach to production conceptually and materialistically considers environmental impact and relationships to the natural world.’
‘Twelfth Night‘ cast members during rehearsals for the Shakespeare South Australia production on the Palm House lawn.
‘In the early days of the pandemic, actor Alys Daroy returned to South Australia from the UK to find that Adelaide, “one of the world’s leading arts and culture centres”, was without an outdoor Shakespeare company. She was spurred into action. And Adelaideans will be watching it now.
‘This green plot was their stage’ – paraphrasing ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream‘
And, also in South Australia, the State governments leading the energy challenge of climate change.
3 June 2021 — Not only is SA on target to meet its 2030 renewable energy target by 2025, but the state has also set a target of 500% renewables by 2050, with .
But what Did Australians hear from the Prime Minister On Tuesday October 26th, on the news Corp, Murdoch, Channel 9?
The catch cry of ‘technology not taxes’ was back in play. No modelling on show. We might be told later. [Some one said that would be ‘drip fed’.] A few slides from the booklet. No clear policy. No mandate – that’s a dirty word here since Covid19. Certainly no legislation. Only one mention of the environment and that was about ‘cutting red tape’. No increase in the 26 to 28% target for 2030 in the Paris Agreement. It had been signed on to by the then Prime Minister, Tony Abbott in 2015. He called climate change crap. There will be offsets. This was packaged as what this Prime Minister sees as ‘the unique Australian way’. And it will only be net zero emissions by 2050.
We were not citizens, merely tax payers with not interest in the future for the nation’s children. We were only consumers and customers. The technology needed to be capable of commercialization. It was competition not collaboration. And coal and liquid natural gas, with fracking, and 900 wells in a forest were well and truly in the mix as the ‘traditional’ – not the polluting – industries. And there was no guarantee that there would not be more of them.
We are told Gautam Adani wants to speak in Glasgow! The Prime Minister of the UK will decide.
Those who care about the environment and the future for children are entitled to ask these questions, aren’t we?
How many of these global corporations are setting out to have it both ways?
Greenwashing while they continue to profit as much as possible from pollution.
Will Adani use the coal from Bravus, the Carmichael mine in the valley of Galilee, Queensland, to make plastic in India? Plastics – so much part of the worst pollution in land, rivers, lakes and ocean on every continent. Think of the size of the population of India. Think of plastic waste dumped in villages in other countries. Imagine it all mounting up rather than money being invested in cleaner alternatives.*
A polluting fossil fuel – coal – from Australia for a major polluting product – plastic – in India!
See the article in The Guardian – Imagine pile on pile.
Centre for Science and Environment’s (CSE) new background paper on plastic waste and its management forms the backdrop of discussions at a webinar attended by key bureaucrats and experts
79 per cent of the plastic made in the world enters our land, water and environment as waste; some of it also enters our bodies through the food chain, says the CSE analysis
India has not yet acted on the Prime Minister’s call for ‘freedom’ from single-use plastics. The government’s 2022 deadline for such a ban has now been rescinded
And there is a serious question about whether Adani is supporting the military junta in Myanmar with its history of murder and mutilation?
Still, the Coalition government of Australia dithers afters decades of refusal, since 1996, to take a global perspective on the advantages of national investment in clean energy, manufacture, vehicles and products.
The Act of Parliament under which the Coalition government has been taken to court was passed in 1999. It is 22 years old. It is ‘not fit for purpose’ to protect the environment. And the Coalition refuses to implement the Graeme Samuel Report presented early 2020 because it will strengthen the legislation to protect the environment.
The Report on the State of the Environment is due to go to Parliament.
Go to theScience Show on Australia’s ABC Radio National and listen.
Emma Johnston, Dean of Science at UNSW is a chief author for the next State of Environment Report for Australia. She says the last 5 years has seen a long list of environmental catastrophes a result of climate change. Landscapes are being devastated by fires, floods, extreme heat, and drought. Species are moving their ranges, which works for some animals. Not so easy for plants. She says crisis is staring at us if the world fails to urgently reduce carbon emissions. Nations need to recommit to the zero by 2050 commitment made in Paris in 2015 and go even further.
What can young people expect from those who represent their nations at this conference in Glasgow?
‘West Australian mining billionaire Gina Rinehart is fighting to keep her North American expansion dreams alive as she launches legal action to overturn the rejection of her $800 million coal mine in the Rocky Mountains of Canada by a provincial environmental watchdog.’ It is the Alberta Energy Regulator. See the SMH article by Peter de Kruijff 27/7/21.
22 Apr 2021 — During today’s Leaders Summit on Climate, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, announced that Canada will enhance our emissions reduction target under .
Meanwhile – in Western Australia, Gina Rinehart is in a video to the students of her old school insisting ‘humans do not cause climate change’. See the article in the SMH October 7th 2021.
She dares to call all the evidence ‘propaganda’.
She has never heard of the Industrial Revolution?
She could not care less about the impact of acid rain on forests.
Humans are responsible for the impact of deforestation.
Glaciers are warming
She ignores the facts of chemistry.
The output of carbon dioxide from coal-powered energy
Fossil fuel corporate giants are interested in their profits.
Has she ever cared about the impact of our waste on land and sea?
Do mining giants ever ‘rehabilitate’ properly?
Rejects the greenhouse effect?
Australia’s Minister for the Environment has just approved the third new coal mine development in a month.
Australia does not have a national environmental watch dog.
It does not have a national policy. The Prime Minister has set aside the report by Graeme Samuel on the ‘not fit for purpose’ National Environmental and Biological Diversity Act passed by John Howard’s government back in 2002. Take note. They removed the word ‘Conservation’, a critical element in the Act passed in 1999!
Sciences and Humanities 