Gippsland Climate News

The bushfires that raged across eastern Australia in 2019-20 mainly affected four states – Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia. Wikipedia noted that this “period of bushfires in many parts of Australia… due to its unusual intensity, size, duration, and uncontrollable dimension, is considered a megafire”. Although known as the ‘Black Summer” the fires burned in all seasons. Over 11 months they burned about 30 million hectares, cost over $103 billion, and there were 33 direct fatalities plus a further estimated 445 from smoke inhalation. 

The influence of climate change on these events was obvious. From the initial ignition of the fires by more frequent lightning strikes (denied and ignored by the News Corp) through the extended dry period in eastern Australia to the extreme heat, meant that the fire season duration and fire intensity has been substantially increased. Also in many areas current logging and tree removal practices may have exacerbated the situation.

The Climate Council wrote that in “April 2019, a group of former fire and emergency services chiefs formed Emergency Leaders for Climate Action (ELCA). They shared deep concerns about the potentially catastrophic impact of the imminent 2019-20 bushfire season following serious bushfires in Queensland, NSW and Tasmania in 2018, and continuing drought. The ELCA group were united around the unequivocal scientific evidence that climate change, driven mainly by the burning of coal, oil and gas, is worsening extreme weather events, including more hot days, heatwaves, heavy rainfall, coastal flooding, and catastrophic bushfire weather – disasters they had all experienced during their long careers.”

In Gippsland the bushfires commenced on the 21.11.19 and it was not until 27.3.20 that they were declared contained, burning for a record more than 100 days. During this time I blogged regularly, which included catastrophic days of fire expansion, the declaration of a State of Emergency, and sitting under the smoke cloud as the fire front crept towards us. My blog on the 1987 predictions of CSIRO scientist Tom Beer, with over 7000 readers, remains my most read blog by far. The firestorm and the evacuation of holidaymakers from Mallacoota made headline news around the world.

Both the old prediction of the CSIRO and the more recent one by ELCA were ignored completely by a succession of Liberal National coalition (LNP) governments. As eastern Australia was engulfed in its ‘Black Summer’ our Prime Minister holidayed in Hawaii. The governing coalition continues to support and promote fossil fuels – a major source of greenhouse gases and a big part of the problem. Hopefully this election voters will remember this, connect the dots, and consign the LNP to the dustbin of history.

Election outcomes, like economic predictions are very difficult to get right. Currently the Liberal National (LNP) government is on a precariously low majority of one. After eight years of mismanagement on climate, endless porkies from the PM, and dissension within LNP ranks, it is hard to see them being returned. But we are barely into the official election campaign and there appears to be a strong media bias in their favour. Labor seems to be copying the Howard 1996 campaign of making themselves as small a target as possible, but in contrast the media then were all for Howard. To this can be added the effect of Palmer’s millions, if any. A Liberal victory is something I don’t even want to think about.

At the moment there are two most likely outcomes. The first and most likely is a hung parliament with Independents and Greens in the middle. The other – if the opinion polls hold – is an ALP majority with the LNP smashed. If the latter occurs and the Libs were to lose three or more seats to Independents it may well bring about a split in the Liberal Party that I have been predicting for some years.

With the situation in Gippsland a strong swing against both sitting members is possible with a small chance of change in Monash. Hopefully Dr Helen Haines MP, who has campaigned tirelessly for renewable energy in Indi will get a bigger majority. A landslide to the ALP would see Monash change hands, as would a very strong Independent vote.

The Climate 200 backed independents are getting a lot of attention – especially Monique Ryan in Kooyong and Zoe Daniel in Goldstein. Their Voices groups have been active for some years, and in the case of Kooyong had a strong ‘Climate Independent’ in 2019. The result can clearly be seen in the large crowds they are drawing to their meetings and their enthusiastic volunteers. It is these candidates plus activists in extra parliamentary groups and on the social media that are making this into a real climate election.

Should either of these outcomes materialise there will still be a lot of work for activists post-election, starting with countering the predictable reaction of the fossil fuel lobby and the media – led no doubt by the climate criminals at News Corp.

Republished from the Bass Coast Post with permission

​Local “blue carbon” projects to maintain and restore mangrove, seagrass and saltmarsh ecosystems in Western Port could make a major contribution to meeting local and national targets of net zero carbon emissions.

These marine ecosystems are capable of capturing carbon up to 30 and 50 times faster than terrestrial forests, locking it into the marine sediments for thousands of years.

The Western Port Biosphere Reserve Foundation has partnered with the seven member councils of the South East Councils Climate Change Alliance (SECCCA) and Deakin University’s Blue Carbon Lab to build on research already undertaken along Victoria’s coastline.

​The Blue Carbon Lab will examine how investment in local projects of marine ecosystem protection and restoration could optimise carbon sequestration and storage.

​The new study will focus on Western Port and the eastern edge of Port Phillip Bay, both areas with existing blue carbon assets, and with potential for even greater capacity for carbon capture through the restoration of areas already damaged or lost.

Biosphere Foundation CEO Mel Barker said funding from SECCCA’s member councils, including Bass Coast, would help ensure that future and more significant investments into blue carbon would yield positive returns for local communities, the climate and sustained biodiversity. “This research will help build awareness that the conservation and restoration of our coastal ecosystems is indispensable to help us adapt and mitigate to climate change.

“Not only could future investment make a substantial contribution to Australia achieving net zero carbon, but it would also help enhance marine biodiversity in the bays and support sectors like recreation, tourism and fishing,” she said. Marine ecosystems can capture carbon up to 30 and 50 times faster than terrestrial forests and store it for thousands of years. Bass Coast Mayor Michael Whelan, who chairs SECCCA, said participating councils would derive substantial benefit from access to evidence-based guidance for future environmental planning and programs for blue carbon ecosystems.

“Deakin University’s Blue Carbon Lab is one of the world’s leading centres for blue carbon research, focussed in quantifying the capacity of our coastal and marine environments to help offset carbon emissions, especially in the region most relevant to our bayside councils.”

The head of Blue Carbon Lab, Professor Peter Macreadie, said the project would deliver a valuable roadmap for future investment in blue carbon ecosystem restoration, supported by comprehensive maps of existing habitat, suitable areas for coastal wetland restoration and other co-benefits deriving from these ecosystems (eg. coastal protection, fisheries, improvement of water quality).

“With the support of the Western Port Biosphere Reserve Foundation and SECCCA, this project will be crucial to understand the blue carbon opportunities at local and regional scale within the Western Port Biosphere Reserve and South East Councils Climate Change Alliance region.”

“We expect that our project will identify the areas within this region that are suitable to deliver productive blue carbon projects and biodiversity outcomes with the right level of investment and evidence-based project planning and management,” he said.

Gippsland is one of safest seats in the country for the Nationals and the LNP coalition and after Nichols is the second safest coalition electorate in Victoria. The electorate of Monash is another matter, although generally it is considered safe Liberal on a seven percent margin.

Since its inception in 1949 the seat of Monash – then McMillan – has been variously held by Liberals, Nationals, Labor and an Independent. Between 1980 and 2004 the seat was marginal, swapping between Liberal and Labor members, but since 2004 has been held by the current LNP incumbent Russell Broadbent. Broadbent benefited from the realignment of electorate boundaries to exclude the then solid labour area of most of the Latrobe Valley. Jessica O’Donnell, who stood for the ALP in 2019, is their candidate again. Mat Morgan is a keen young Greens candidate.

But the big difference this time around is the Voices for Monash candidacy of Phillip Island solicitor Deb Leonard. She joins a group of more than 20 other “Voices” candidates around the country, some of whom have been attracting a substantial amount of attention. It is difficult to assess whether any of this will ‘spin-off’ for Deb in the Monash electorate – perhaps in attracting more media attention than usual. The main policies of Deb, and most of the other ‘voices’ candidates, are threefold – science based climate action, integrity in politics, and gender equality.

The task before Deb Leonard in Monash is formidable. She needs to be in the top three in the ballot and to take about 10% of the vote from both Labor and the Libs. Whilst the chances of winning from third place are slim, Monash/McMillan provides an interesting example of this. Wikipedia noted that in 1972 Henry Arthur Hewson “was elected to the Australian House of Representatives as the Country Party member for McMillan, despite receiving only 16.6% of the primary vote. This was one of the lowest primary votes achieved by a successful candidate, elected in a single seat electorate, in the history of Australian elections.”

In Debs’ favour there are at least three active climate groups in the electorate and opinion polls have indicated for some time that a substantial majority of the population want climate action. Also the incumbent is lumbered with his extraordinary position on covid and vaccinations but how this will play out at the poll remains unknown. Then there are the ‘unknown unknowns’ – such as preference flows, the role of the Murdoch media and the Palmer advertising. Their blatant campaigning may backfire on them.

Deb Leonard needs to poll at least 20% of the primary vote in Monash and to have taken a substantial amount of that from the incumbent. She also needs to draw primaries from all the other candidates, including the greens and for there to be a strong flow of preferences to her. At the moment none of the election gurus consider that the seat of Monash is in play. One twist may be for the flow of preferences to favour the ALP. Of the two Gippsland seats Monash is the one to watch.

The Victorian planning minister has just approved the thirty-three wind generator Delburn wind farm. The ‘farm’ is situated in pine plantations to the south west of Morwell and is adjacent to the Valley infrastructure. It would be difficult to find a site in Victoria more suited to the ‘just transition’ to renewable energy with the advantages of Delburn. In terms of local flora and fauna the pine plantations are a ‘desert’ and the environmental effects of the wind farm close to zero. Also the generators are remote from farmland and are ideally located to support employment in the Valley.

The project developers noted “Local business procurement and employment opportunities are a key focus of the project” and the “economic analysis of the project estimates that the Delburn Wind Farm will create up to 186 FTE direct and indirect jobs during the two-year construction period and approximately 24 direct and indirect new, on-going jobs during the 30-year operating life. Wherever possible OSMI is committed to maximising local procurement and employment opportunities.”

An article by Rio Davis on the ABC noted that the battery aspect of the project was not approved but this was only a small part of the project. Batteries can be built fairly quickly and a number are already proposed for the Valley. Of more interest in this article is the opposition of Gippsland South MP Danny O’Brien to the project. It would seem that Mr O’Brien opposes any land based wind generators, in spite of the advantages of the Delburn project, though it will affect a handful, or less, of his potential voters.

On the plus side O’Brien stated that he fully supported offshore wind. “In my view, given Gippsland’s relatively densely populated landscape, the right location for wind farms is offshore, where I strongly support proposed facilities such as the Star of the South.” This is more good news but it is clear that O’Brien, and the conservative side of politics in general, is yet to comprehend the urgency of the climate emergency.

The Delburn wind project is good news. Hopefully it and other similar local projects like the Gippsland Renewable Energy Park and the offshore wind projects will get strong local and political support and where possible proceeded with as quickly as possible.

Dorothy Sayers, early twentieth century crime fiction writer, coined the phrase “it pays to advertise”. This is a truism in the world of politics and its purpose in this sphere is to change behaviour rather than selling something. There is a vast range of phenomena that can be described as political advertisements, from wearing a badge or attaching car stickers on vehicles to books, films, theatre and other artworks. The effect of these ads/actions can be both short to long-term.

My political campaigns over 10 years involved various forms of advertising, and the campaigns themselves were advertising – to alert the populace to the dangers and threat of climate change and to offer some solutions. Accompanying these campaigns were a variety of advertisements – leaflets, press releases, radio interviews, paid newspaper ads and on one occasion a paid TV ad. The latter, for budgetary reasons, was screened only at times when the audience was very small. If the aim of all these campaigns was to change voting patterns then they definitely failed. Whether they increased people’s awareness over a longer period is much more difficult to assess.

Likewise, running a blog meant that to increase reader numbers, small advertisements and promotions were put on the free social media. Along with business cards and a small stickers placed in second hand books and circulated locally, this has been far more successful with reader numbers generally around 600-1200 per month with a peak of 7000 during the bushfires.

Aside from continuing to blog I consciously attempt to advertise every day – this includes wearing an “I support Climate Action” badge pinned on my hat, a “Climate Action Now” corflute in our front window, stickers on our cars and on our rubbish bins, with the latter being in the street for 24 hours every week. As well I tweet and post on facebook daily. One of my favourite sayings is from Gandhi and worth repeating – “You may never know the results of your actions, but if you do nothing there will be no result.”

A climate activists’ task is to advertise continuously the best way they can and to hope that this eventually will bring about some of the desired change.

My family and I joined the Fridays for Future and school strike on the 25 March in Bairnsdale. About a dozen others were there and we spaced ourselves along the centre strip besides the highway with our various signs – ‘Toot for Climate Action’ “Vote Climate’ and ‘Climate Action Now’ predominated. The large ‘Logging is Criminal in a Climate Emergency’ banner also made a welcome reappearance.

I sat in a chair beside the east-bound lanes and spent some time sitting with, and talking to Audrey Porter. Now in her 90s I have known Audrey since the 1980s when we were both active in the Bairnsdale People for Nuclear Disarmament, sometime called the Bairnsdale Peace group. We got lots of toots and one or two outbursts of verbal abuse, barely audible above heavy revving engines. ‘Get a job’ one comic screamed, little considering the applicability of their unimaginative abuse to two old age pensioners – one a nonagenarian.

The age spread of the demonstrators and the lack of youth was one criticism that could fairly levelled at the event. There was just one student with his mother amongst us. This contrasted dramatically with the student strike and demonstration of three years ago when about 200 students marched from Nagle College and the High School to the Rotunda in the town centre. A lack of strong student leaders, intense organisation, and publicity, along with parental support seem to have been the main differences between these events. However, it was somewhat dispiriting to see the school buses passing by, emphasizing the total lack of support from this quarter.

On the positive side there were a number of new people joined us which was encouraging. Last Friday highlights the need for us to reinvigorate student action if we can. How this can be done is the big question.

Some of the effects of the war in the Ukraine are already being felt in Gippsland with petrol prices quickly rising to over two dollars a litre. Food price rises will follow fairly soon, as probably will the price of gas. The long-term answer has always been to electrify transport – in fact electrify everything – as quickly as possible which any decent government would have been actively pursuing for many years. This inflation may also bring about interest rate rises .   

The Federal government  response so far, has been to send coal to Ukraine and to block alumina exports to Russia – the former bordering on the absurd (and corrupt) and the latter probably only of nuisance value. The Feds have purchased coal from their mates at Whitehaven Coal for about $30 million of taxpayer funds when coal is abundant in Poland – Ukraine’s neighbour and Europe’s major coal producer. Shipping 70,000 tons of coal to the other side of the earth is definitely a ‘Newcastle job’. Russia is an aluminium exporter but currently sources 22% of its alumina from Australia. The first of these actions is definitely token. The second is also of token value and only critical in the long-term if the war goes on, since much of Russia’s exports are already blocked. One wonders how much of Russian ‘dark money’ is laundered in Australian real estate? Perhaps this would be a better target for sanctions?

An ABC article quoting various defence experts noted “Australia’s almost total reliance on foreign oil was just as big a weakness…and would hobble the country’s capacity to function in the event of supplies being cut” and that “renewable energy would help strengthen the resilience of Australia’s economy and defence forces by reducing their reliance on fragile supply chains.”

Using green energy from the sun and wind is the quick, most obvious, and easy path to complete energy independence. This path is, and has been, ignored and opposed by our ‘fossil fuel lobby’ controlled governments. With the sudden disruption of the global economy caused by the Russian invasion, we all now suffer the consequences. On a more positive note, the opportunity is here for many of the renewable energy projects in Gippsland to be fast-forwarded. Sympathetic government and active politicians will greatly assist and the aggression of the Russian dictator, inadvertently, may have done us all a favour.

Soil – the incredible story of what keeps the earth, and us, healthy by Matthew Evans (Murdoch Books, 2021)

This is definitely one of those must read books for anyone who likes to eat, cares about their health, the state of the world, and climate change. It contains important information on a topic that is still in it’s infancy in terms of scientific study but around which the continuation of life on planet earth revolves. All life comes from soil and the quality of the soil determines the quality of life. Good soil is very diverse and contains billions of organisms that care for the plants growing in it. Plants grown in rich living soil are nutrient dense, but plants grown in barren dead dirt and force fed with fertiliser are nutrient poor and eventually damage the health of all who eat from them.

Modern broad scale farming that uses pesticides and fertilisers on farms growing thousands of acres of the same crop is rapidly destroying the top soil and turning previously rich soils into barren wastelands. With 40% of agricultural land now abandoned because it is no longer fertile, and the earth’s population continuing to grow, this way of farming has to stop or we will eventually run out of land that is usable for our crops and food. Crops grown without diversity translate to lack of diversity in the gut of the creatures and humans eating them, and the whole eco system becomes less and less healthy.

Matthew Evans is clearly passionate about growing good healthy food and has researched the topic of soil very thoroughly. While it certainly is a complex subject he does a good job of making the information understandable and accessible for those of us who do not have a degree in micro-biology. He further explains how the soil was made to store carbon and how the proper treatment of soil is an essential component of the how we deal with climate change. Surely it is time that we stopped fighting against nature’s amazing eco-systems and started working with nature for the sake of the health of all the earth’s creatures and this planet that is our home.

*the Author is a Metung resident

I have blogged on the Solis solar projects in Gippsland a number of times, in particular on the smaller Perry Bridge farm. I have previously noted that this project was well behind schedule and suspected that problems with finance were the main cause of the delay. I have also blogged on their much larger Gippsland Renewable Energy Park (GREP) where I noted that the “2347 ha of land the project has acquired is low value dry land pasture and, importantly, sits on top of the Basslink cable. Many of the solar and wind projects in the west (of Victoria) have had trouble with the mains power line capacity being insufficient to carry the total power they all generate. Strategically locating by Basslink will enable the full energy production of the park to be utilised”.

In July last year the Gippsland Times announced that there “has been a major step forward for two local solar farm projects, with major investors coming on board to deliver projects in Perry Bridge and Fulham. Solis Gippsland Projects… has announced Octopus Australia and the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) have purchased the rights to develop the proposed Perry Bridge and Fulham solar farms”. It now seems they also have the rights to the GREP.

Recently Sophie Vorrath wrote in Reneweconomy that a “massive hybrid renewable energy and green hydrogen project being developed to replace outgoing Victorian coal generation has won the backing of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and one of Australia’s leading superannuation funds, Hostplus. The CEFC said on Tuesday that and Hostplus would invest in the Gippsland Renewable Energy Park – a project that will start with 500MW of solar and 500MWh of battery storage – via a joint venture platform being managed by Octopus Australia. The federal government’s green bank is tipping in $8.5 million in the project, which was initially developed by Solis RE on a 3,000 hectare site at the heart of Victoria’s proposed Gippsland Renewable Energy Zone, in the heart of Victorian coal country.”

Whilst this is all good news it is personally frustrating that these projects take so long to materialise. Where are our elected representatives championing these projects? As far as I can see there is not one of either political colour at a Federal or State level. Where are their calls that these projects proceed as quickly as possible, that they be fast-tracked to help mitigate to the burgeoning effects of climate change?