Month: December 2021

Not just Bolsonaro in Brazil.

Time to go to the New Testament –

Matthew 7:3: ‘Why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thy own eye?’

Time to look at this beam in Australia’s eye. What we will allow to happen to our bio-diversity! And this is just one instance of it. Consider the ‘green washing’ in the name.

Find out about this definitely mis-named Verdant Earth Technologies, established only 2018 since Morrison’s Australian Coalition fossil-fuel supporting government has held power.

Nothing will be lush, rich, flourishing, thriving, teeming, prolific after Verdant Earth Energy is finished with it in the name of ‘biomass’. And all the koalas will be gone.

‘Destroying forests to burn for a few minutes of electricity is not a climate solution, it is environmental vandalism and must not be allowed.’ See how big that beam in our eye is!

And Australia suffers from so many bushfires and they are worse and worse and we lose so much! And it is the beginning of our summer and there is a bushfire in Western Australia now! And a company expects to be allowed to do this!

Listen to the Nature Conservation Council on this video.

‘Biomass is not green energy’.

WATCH AND SHARE THIS VIDEO ON REDBANK TO SPREAD THE WORD Watch on Youtube   Share on Twitter   Share on Facebook Verdant’s proposal, if approved, would require more wood than Forestry Corporation generates from its logging operations across the whole of NSW in an entire year. Verdant plans to source this timber from anywhere within 300km of Singleton, threatening forests all the way to Grafton in the north and the Illawarra in the south. If approved, Redbank will trigger the logging of thousands of hectares of our native forests each year. Biomass proposals like Redbank could set back forest protection and climate action by decades and must be rejected. Watch & Share Video LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS PROPOSAL  Burning trees for electricity releases enormous amounts of carbon dioxide and feeds climate change.   It takes a forest tree decades to grow but only seconds to burn in a power station furnace. The overall climate impact is arguably worse than coal, and the destruction of forests and all the animals that live there is devastating. Protecting native forests and the carbon they store is one of the solutions to climate change.

I wonder how many ex-patriate Aussies care about what could be happening here.

We have a Minister for the Environment increasing the number of coal mines and wanting to reverse the decision of a Federal judge that she has a duty of care for children whose health suffers from ‘climate harm’ – asthma – from coal mines.

You have the right to vote in the next election.

Our ABC RN Science Show

Privatising developments in space?

We have the right to be concerned.

A serious warning from the University of Adelaide’s

Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

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Space travel and illegal wildlife trade are bringing greater biosecurity threats.

Fears of new biosecurity threats

Next – Australia’s new Chief Scientist presents her hopes for our possible contributions to the future with our public universities centre stage.

A reminder of the vital importance of Australia’s public universities that were left to languish by this Australian Coalition government in 2020 while COVID 19 raged.

Our public universities had to shed 40,000 positions. All that knowledge, acquired over years, lost. Lecturers, Tutors, Researchers, Librarians, Assistants had to find work elsewhere. They were not going to be funded to stay working for us.

Australia’s billions in revenue went to businesses and private schools, not to the knowledge and capacity of Australians to prepare for a future of global warming.

Hurrah for Cathy Foley – We must have the Humanities to ask the right questions.

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Our chief scientist’s goals and hopes for science in 2030

Robyn Williams, presenter of our public ABC RN’s Science Show gives her the last words in today’s program – December 11th 2021.

This Chief Scientist from Australia’s CSIRO knows we need STEAM not just STEM.

When it is private fossil fuel wealth, not weather and the necessity to invest to adapt to changing climate and increased uncertainties – floods on the east coast, major bush fires on the west coast now in Australia’s early summer – that matters for those in government, in a democracy we can vote them out!

We are citizens not just tax payers.

The sciences with the humanities!

Music in this world of geological time.

What matters is our capacity to share wonder.

The Jenolan Caves in New South Wales, Australia.

1. > One of Australia’s Most Amazing Experiences
2. > The Jenolan Caves Blog.

‘Underground Ecstasy‘ – the story of music underground.

December 5, 2015. Worth repeating in 2021, even if a pandemic has got in the way.

‘Every day, people tour Jenolan’s Lucas Cave. Deep underground, in The Cathedral Chamber, they are transported by a sound and light installation that showcases the dramatic proportions of Jenolan’s highest, grandest and acoustically magnificent chamber. With a sound system designed for performance in this sublime, natural amplification space, The Cathedral is the natural environment for a profound musical experience.  The voices of Dame Joan Sutherland and the Vienna Boys’ Choir have been further elevated by its majestic proportions.

But it is the default soundtrack used on most Lucas Cave tours that evoked sheer delight in the heart of a recent visitor.  Cave guide, Lisa Sampson, led her tour group into the Cathedral Chamber, and remotely activated the default soundtrack, as usual.  To her amazement, the piece of music was a massive favourite of a man in her tour group. In fact, he turned out to be a member of the composer’s worldwide fan club!  So, the tables turned, and cave guide Lisa received a fascinating commentary about the composer, the music, where it has been used and why it sounds so familiar to most people.

The song? The Ecstasy of Gold – originally composed by Ennio Morricone as part of the film score of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

Lisa was inspired to do some serious digging into The Ecstasy of Gold. Here is what she discovered. The version played in The Cathedral is by Metallica. It’s been the super-band’s introductory music at concerts since 1983. Jay-Z sampled it in Blueprint. The Portuguese football team Sporting FC have used it as their introductory music for a season of home matches. It’s been used in an episode of The Simpsons and in a Spongebob Squarepants film. In fact, The Ecstasy of Gold has been so extensively covered that it has its own Wikipedia entry!

People have been singing in The Cathedral Chamber since it was first explored in 1860. In fact, it is one of the oldest, continuously running tours in Australia.

This is 2021 remember. Check it out. If you can, come and EXPERIENCE it. If your school, music group or organisation has a special relationship to a piece of music or musical artist, contact Jenolan Caves on 1300 76 33 11 and ask whether it can be played in The Cathedral on your Lucas Cave tour. Remember to book the Lucas Cave tour too! Don’t forget. This is December 2021. We hope it can be visited in 2022.

Nature and culture nurture one another. Come and immerse yourself in both.

AND – ABOVE GROUND, IN 2021,

WE NEED TO TELL AND HEAR A STORY OF WHAT TOMORROW MIGHT BE.

If you take this journey beneath the surface in 2022, remember and care about and be prepared to do something about the global warming of our blue planet. It is our collective home. And vote for the future for all of us,  not for the increasing profits for the greedy fossil fuel corporations and their appalling, shameless political allies in Australia.

Australia’s Prime Minister danced a jig to celebrate an LNG development in the ocean off the North West of Western Australia. An attack on bio-diversity. A $16 billion project that could have supported real clean energy developments across the nation and provided support for the people of the Torres Straits whose island homes are suffering from changes in the climate. Australia’s First Nations and our Pacific ‘family’ as he calls our neighbours. No! He dances a jig and cheers for Woodside.