Author: Erica Jolly

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.

Poem. Music. Images

‘The Life We Live Is Not Life Itself’

Ian Gibbins, former Professor of neuro-science at Flinders University, now video poet who lives in Adelaide, South Australia writes: ‘Well, this is something really wonderful… The video I made with Tasos Sagris and Whodoes The Life We Live Is Not Life Itself won the top prize for Avant-Garde films in the Fotogenia Film Festival. The whole Festival has been a magnificent feast of diverse forms and voices. The finalist list included some of the best videos I’ve ever seen. So to come out on top is incredibly humbling.

Massive thanks to Tasos Sagris and Whodoes for entrusting me with their fantastic words and music and the Institute for Experimental Art in Athens for supporting the project.’

If you haven’t seen it, here is the video:
https://vimeo.com/512116821

A special way of connecting. This work is taking me, and I hope others, beyond the frustrations of continuing political intransigence, at least for a time.

That is the question!

Will the President of Brazil fulfill his commitment?

Before COP26 there was this news about the plans of Bolsonaro’s government.

Members of the ruralist caucus and allies to President Bolsonaro approve bill that paves the way for a new indigenous genocide,
APIB. 23 June 2021.

Robyn Williams, presenter of The Science Show on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National, November 21^st, expresses this concern and asks this question about this pledge from Brazil.

Amazon deforestation pledge.
‘The Amazon is being burnt and turned into grazing land. The world’s biggest rainforest influences weather systems in South America and climate even further afield. Brazil signed an agreement at the recent COP26 meeting to wind back its destructive practices. Will they stick to it?’

Amazon deforestation is stopping forest from recycling rainwater, which affects temperatures – ABC News

There is evidence in this information of Brazilian intentions a year before COP26.

Brazil sees record number of bids to mine illegally on Indigenous lands, Mongabay. 13 November 2020.

We are suffering in so many ways from the indifference of governments to global warming.  Callous indifference in their approach to people in the interest of powerful fossil fuel corporations.

In Brazil mining illegally on Indigenous lands.

In Australia, fracking on Indigenous land

in the Northern Territory.

We are democracies.

What are voters doing?

Australia, China, India, Russia are showing their indifference to the future. Coal, oil and gas are only to be ‘phased down.’

Why the humanities must come in now. How long have the humanities been trying to help us?

Back in 1959, Walter M. Miller wrote A Canticle for Leibowitz

‘A Canticle for Leibowitz is a post-apocalyptic social science fiction novel by American writer Walter M. Miller Jr., first published in 1959. Set in a Catholic monastery in the desert of the southwestern United States after a devastating nuclear war, the book spans thousands of years as civilization rebuilds itself. The monks of the Albertian Order of Leibowitz preserve the surviving remnants of man’s scientific knowledge until the world is again ready for it.’ This novel has never been out of print. Note! It spans thousands of years!

In 1897 H.G. Wells War of the Worlds was published serialised. Right at the time when there was an increase in the late 19^th century anarchist movement! See any comparison in our contemporary world?

In 1909. E.M. Forster, The Machine Stops imagined a time and situation when the society, relying on ‘the machine’ for everything in their survival, had to live underground.

In 1932 Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World took us to a government where people were made passive with SOMA sedation, keeping people under control at the least expense.

The ‘Getting of Wisdom’ was discouraged, just like Australia today with the cost of Humanities degrees – in the arts, literature, history, politics, drama, music, –  raised by 113%. Rejecting creative and critical thinking.

Now, in Australia, we have Clade by James Bradley, first published in 2015 by Hamish Hamilton.   The  meaning of ‘clade’ comes from biology. It is ‘a group of organisms believed to comprise all the evolutionary descendants of a common ancestor’ – From ‘great apes to human clades’.  In 2013 Australia’s Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, attacking effective emissions reductions, and stopping them, had called climate change crap.

Like the rest of the world, Australia has known about global warming for decades. The less frightening term ‘climate change’ was brought in by those determined to protect their carbon-fossil fuel profits. Read The Carbon Club by Marian Wilkinson which details the way Australian and American corporations worked so well to deprecate, slow down, dismiss – as Rupert Murdoch did with his media empire – to stop the elimination of fossil fuels. James Bradley has looked ahead to imagine how some will live in Australia, the UK and China.

Are we sleepwalking into disaster?

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National

Science Show presented by Robyn Williams October 30^th 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.

audio

On a roll – Ceridwen Dovey wins Bragg Prize for Science Writing again

AND

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.

audio

World sleepwalking into disaster with lukewarm climate action

I thank our national citizen-owned Australian Broadcasting Corporation for its commitment to knowledge.

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.’

Print article

‘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.

New IEEFA report sees South Australia as world’s energy …

https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com › 2021/06/03

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!

Adani blasted over ‘toxic’ $4bn plan to use Australian coal to make plastic in India
The Guardian. 18 June 2021.

• 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?

The Adani Group denies engaging with Myanmar’s military leadership over port deal but video suggests otherwise
ABC. 30 March 2021.

TAKE NOTE

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 Australian Government has been taken to the Federal Court of Australia by the Australian Conservation Foundation twice, once in 2018 and once in March 2020 (still ongoing as of September 2020), relating to its contravention and alleged contravention of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 with respect to the impact of the mine on groundwater and the country’s water resources.^[82] And we are the driest continent in the world. Yet we privatise our public waterways.

AND

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 the Science Show on Australia’s ABC Radio National and listen.

Download Crisis awaits if the world fails to act on climate (7.01 MB)

Download 7.01 MB

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?

Conference of the Parties COP26 Glasgow 31st Oct – 12th Nov 2021

[Have you heard about what is happening in Vittel in France?]

It is the Alberta Energy Regulator.

From The Sydney Morning Herald – The SMH.

‘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.

Prime Minister Trudeau announces increased climate ambition

https://pm.gc.ca › news › news-releases › 2021/04/22 › pr…

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 7^th 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!

How is it related to ‘whitewashing’?

 

‘Corporate greenwashing’ is going on all around the world.

So, I am putting its meaning here in English and in French.

Greenwashing” your social and environmental performance is as bad as “whitewashing” profits. europarl.europa.eu	Verdir” ses résultats sociaux et environnementaux est aussi répréhensible que de blanchir ses bénéfices. europarl.europa.eu
Greenwashing or environmental whitewashing means « donning the ecologists’ green garments », which has nothing to do at […] groupe-frayssinet.com	L‘écoblanchiment ou blanchiment écologique, c’est « s’habiller en vert écolo», ce qui n’a rien à voir avec la protection de l’environnement. groupe-frayssinet.fr
(Source : Ezra Winton “Corporate greenwashing : building up new mythologies groupe-frayssinet.com	(Source : Erza Winton, « L’écoblanchiment des entreprises : la construction de nouvelles mythologies »).

Guardian sustainable business

The troubling evolution of corporate greenwashing

‘The term “greenwashing” was coined in the 1980s to describe outrageous corporate environmental claims. Three decades later, the practice has grown vastly more sophisticated.’

‘In the mid-1980s, oil company Chevron commissioned a series of expensive television and print ads to convince the public of its environmental bonafides. Titled ‘People Do’, the campaign showed Chevron employees protecting bears, butterflies, sea turtles and all manner of cute and cuddly animals.

The commercials were very effective – in 1990, they won an Effie advertising award, and subsequently became a case study at Harvard Business school. They also became notorious among environmentalists, who have proclaimed them the gold standard of greenwashing – the corporate practice of making diverting sustainability claims to cover a questionable environmental record.’

Demonstrators protest against Nestle water bottling operations in California. According to news reports, Nestle, which operates five bottling plants in California, uses 244m gallons of water annually. Reports also said that its state water permit expired 27 years ago. Photograph: Eugene Garcia/EPABruce Watson

Sun 21 Aug 2016 00.00 AEST. –  Note – this article was five years ago! Has anything changed for the better in 2021?

Go to the whole article. Begin with Chevron’s advertising campaign back in the 1980s.

This pretence about concern for the future of the planet is one of the ways we, as voters, are encouraged to believe we are doing more than we are to try to contain global warming. And, clearly, it is happening wherever corporations want to make money at the Earth’s expense while appearing – giving the illusion – of ‘caring about the planet’.

Imagine, for example, ‘Green’ high rise built on wetlands! If we don’t know, how can we challenge their behaviour? How bad are the regulations? How well is the government protecting the wetlands that we now know are essential for bio-diversity? And, if we are shareholders, why not threaten to move money to ethical corporations.

On our Australian Broadcasting Corporation television ABC Channel 2 soon ‘Gruen’ will be on. This series shows how advertisers spin information. How are they taking advantage of the pandemic? The panel examines advertisers. Due to start October.

For OUR future. Beyond Glasgow.

In the United Kingdom – the host of the UN Climate Change conference in Glasgow –

Green sport, and footy banners – Sporty – ABC Radio National

https://www.abc.net.au › radionational › programs › gr…

‘Green Sport’ – These are the Forest Green Rovers of Gloucestershire, the world’s first carbon neutral football club going green, going totally eco-friendly and being successful!

I am learning about this ancient club, with its climate changing, eco-environmental approach, in Adelaide, on our Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Radio National program, ‘Sporty,’

Meanwhile, ‘Down Under’

The presenter, Amanda Smith, also takes me to the Australian sportsmen and women before she goes to an Australian Rules Premiership being decided in COVID free Perth.

Our sportspeople’s commitment to climate change is called ‘ Cool Down’

All athletes need to cool down after a match.

This is a time for cool examination of global warming.

And this is what Australian sports people – women and men –

are asking the Australian government to do as it decides about our future.

We hear about the future for cricket matches in summer.

Penrith, the home of Australia’s fast bowler, Pat Cummins, will in the future

have summer temperature reaching 50 degrees Celsius. What is that in Fahrenheit?

David Pocock, former great Rugby Union player,  leads hundreds of Australian athletes.

They know we must have a climate change policy that faces the need for effective action by 2030. Zero emissions by 2050 is not going to be enough.

Our sports people have just made Australia proud in Tokyo, the environmentally-aware Olympic Games. Now they are making Australians proud in an even more important way. They are making us proud as citizens.

They go on Instagram and Twitter – this is the world of the young who can vote.

David Pocock on Twitter: “The Cool Down is a movement by …

https://twitter.com › pocockdavid › status

28 Aug 2021 — The Cool Down is a movement by athletes for all Australians. 250+ athletes from 30 sports calling for bold climate action to safeguard the future.

BUT – This is what Australia’s Prime Minister has done!

Morrison’s coal lump supplier, former advisor, appointed Australian OECD ambassador

‘Advisor to Prime Minister Scott Morrison and former chief executive of the Minerals Council of Australia – who gave Morrison the lump of coal he subsequently brandished in parliament, [saying, ‘This is coal. Don’t be afraid of it’]  – has been appointed as Australia’s new ambassador to the OECD.’

That lump of coal had been polished so he would not have to get his hands dirty!

Information provided by ‘The Canopy – Greenpeace Australia Pacific.’