Regrow Qld 30 June Issue 25 Vol 2 (Subscriber)
Food bowl at risk, surging solar in WA, the Wuling Mini EV (too cute!), Chicken Nibbles, and Greg gets his knees chilly.
gladstoneconservationcouncil.com.au - 0412 502 798 - gladconscouncil@gmail.com
It’s winter, such as it is in Queensland. Southerners skip about in shorts and a T-shirt while we drag out doonas, fluffy slippers and hot water bottles. A perfect time for some gentle reading and reflection, so we have created a magazine with a positive vision for our future, every week. If you would like to help us out, $5 /month or $50 /year will be greatly appreciated. Donations are going to much needed equipment such as wildlife cameras and air monitors - and you’ll see the results here.
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{Anna}
Editorial
Anna Hitchcock
My friends,
here at Gladstone Conservation Council we do try to play the man and not the ball when it comes to politics, but I have to admit that as we look into the abyss of a second wave Delta strain lockdown, I am having second thoughts about this policy.
I really feel like the current crop of Federal politicians are the equivalent of the out of date shelf at your local supermarket. It’s been very clear in the response to the pandemic as to where the loyalties of each side of the political divide lie.
And I might be willing to let it go, but there are lives at stake. I have managed to score one dose of the Pfizer vaccine, but will I get the second one? Will there be enough supply to vaccinate my asthmatic young adult son? These are the sorts of questions that a lot of Australians are asking themselves at the moment, and the glacially slow rollout doesn’t fill me with confidence for another summer full of natural disasters exacerbated by climate change.
Something’s gotta give.
Anna
Letters
Food bowl at risk for no reward
Dr Simon Tannock
There have been several letters published in recent weeks about concerns relating to Fox Resources Ltd and their Mineral Development Licence 3040. In today’s world there are multiple issues connected with any fossil fuel mining operation. This mining proposal raises huge concerns relating to food and water security, both in the local region and in the country as a whole, the effects of further carbon dioxide release from burning the coking coal, seawater intrusion into the freshwater aquifer in this region, and the economic feasibility and lifespan of the project.
The local region is a food bowl and generates more than $1 Billion in annual income for Bundaberg businesses, along with the thousands of jobs it creates. A huge area of this food bowl would be at risk from developing a mine in this area. Not only will it produce gigalitres of water containing toxins and silt, but it will also put the regional aquifer, the freshwater under our feet, at huge risk, when it is already listed as ‘highly vulnerable’ (1).
The coking coal to be extracted at the proposed mine would be used to make steel, and people need to realise that the need for this coal is very likely to be replaced within a decade by using hydrogen for steel making. European steel makers expect that hydrogen production will be economically viable by 2030 (2). This means that all the damage to our environment will have occurred for only a few years of coal production, with little economic return, and even less benefitting locals. When the mine is unviable, there will be no money available for environmental rehabilitation, which will be near impossible to achieve anyway.
1- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221458181500110X?via%3Dihub
NEWS
Surging solar making South West WA power grid hard to manage
“Actions taken in response to the taskforce's work on better managing the surge in solar include changes to the operation of solar panel inverters installed from July, Western Power's installation of 13 community batteries and the April launch of a register of so-called distributed energy resources such as solar panels and batteries.”
https://www.boilingcold.com.au/surging-solar-making-south-west-power-grid-hard-to-manage/
Indonesia’s 2060 target doesn’t add up
“Recent announcements by Indonesia’s state-owned utility company Perusahaan Listrik Negara (PLN) to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 must be met with caution and scrutinized as the numbers don’t stack up, according to a new report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).”
“The net-zero plan is not based on new initiatives that represent a reset of Indonesia’s carbon emissions pathway,” says co-author of the report, Elrika Hamdi.”
Forward thinking -
Peter Van Beek
More Electric Vehicle News – Too cute, smart and low priced to ignore
Sorry, I was going to take a break from electric vehicles but could not resists this. This little town car clearly shows that the future is here already. Well - not yet in good old Aussie but hey, the Federal Fossil Fools won’t be able to keep these out for long. And for good reasons too. (1)
The Wuling Mini EV is a four-seater aimed at young female city-drivers. Should it everbecome available in Australia it looks a candidate for the second family car. It has a choice of a smaller or a larger battery, the latter being good for 170 km. (2) This is ample in city driving and probably enough in most country towns. And of course, you can charge it for free at home from your own solar.
It comes in specially designed colours: the above, avocado green, lemon yellow and white peach pink with more coming. This is not surprising as the design team is two-thirds female with an average age of 27. They created a lot of optional extras:
a solid-colour roof
stickers that express your personality
studding the roof with lights that sparkle at night
and a choice of interior covers such as velveteen browns. (3)
But the main attraction is the price. In China, Tesla’s Model 3 sells for $39,300 (I presume US$). The base model of this Mini EV sells for….. $4,500! A recently upgraded model, the Macaron, sells for $6,000. And don’t despair fellows, they are working on a version for young males too.
It sold 270,000 cars in its first seven months. It is outselling Tesla Model 3, making it the world’s best-selling EV. One promising aspect is that General Motors owns 44% of the company and is making good money from it. So, they now had a taste of it. Other car makers are showing interest as well and are starting to adjust their range of small cars.
The future really is here.
To me, it shows one thing very clearly. If you design for what the market wants, you make money. If you stick to the “we do what we have always done and why change” attitude you go broke.
Or in politics, get voted out - eventually. One can but hope.
(1) https://thedriven.io/2021/03/01/wuling-mini-outsells-tesla-model-3-as-china-dominates-global-top-10-ev-sales/
(2) https://insideevs.com/news/516146/wulinig-mini-ev-review-china/
(3) https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/6/7/in-china-a-little-known-ev-car-firm-is-beating-tesla-and-others
What we’re reading:
Multi talented Alan Corbett has teamed up with cartoonist Mark Lynch and written a book about chickens! It’s presented in cartoon format, but it contains some great tips and information for chicken owners everywhere, or those just starting out on their self sufficiency journey. Available here: https://cartoonsaboutchickens.com/
Upskilling:
Letting it go
My friends,
When running a community group, the temptation is to leave everything in the hands of two or three very competent people who will naturally gravitate to the inner circle. It is true that this is how most community groups run, and if the object of the association is to run an annual cake sale, this may never become an issue.
I’d like you though, to imagine the fallout if one or more of your competent people were to disappear from your organisation with no notice. This can happen through tragedy, or general life changes, or a fundamental disagreement over how the minutes are recorded.
That person might be you.
I’m laid up at the moment recovering from an operation which I didn’t have any time to plan for, because there was a cancellation and I was in surgery the next day. (I’m fine, don’t worry). Now while I’m still able to do a fair amount, I’m certainly not at my sparkling best. Some things have hit the cutting room floor, and you need to have a way of making that happen at short notice.
Here’s some things to ponder:
Does more than one person have access to your group’s electronic files?
Does more than one person have access to your group’s website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc?
Does more than one key person have access to your group’s financial information? We learned this lesson the hard way and now employ a bookkeeper. This is not only to make life easier for the Treasurer in trying to keep up with ATO changes, but now three people have access to the files, so we are much more resilient.
Who has all the passwords? Obviously you don’t want to let everyone have access to this information but it needs to be in the hands of more than one person.
Employees
If your group employs someone, what happens if they burn out and just resign suddenly? This actually happens often in environmental groups, partly because there are few safeguards to allow them to take time off.
Do you have enough money put aside to pay out your employee’s entitlements without leaving the group broke for half of the next year?
To prevent this from happening, who will take charge if your employee goes on holidays? It’s important that they don’t have a massive pile of work waiting for them when they get back.
How to improve
The whole concept is called ‘succession planning’ or ‘organisational resilience’ and while we are doing great at a few of these, we definitely have room for improvement in a number of areas.
I’d suggest that you work on just one of these areas at a time, and get that bedded into your organisational culture. Some things might require Constitutional changes so think carefully about the best way to make the changes happen.
Informally, one of the simplest things you can do is to train members of your group to be capable of stepping up when required. This means delegating jobs, and accepting that the results will be different to how you would have done things. Perfectionists will need to remind themselves that there is more than one way to skin a feral cat.
{Anna}
Opinion:
Winter Solstice Solace
Folks, last week was the Winter Solstice, so the seasonal wheel is now turning toward Summer; is it too early to break out the board shorts, sunscreen, and beach bucket?
Anyway, here in the northern part of the Southern Hemisphere (I think I’ve got that right?), we don’t really get what people on the wrong side of the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn call a real Winter.
There’s no snow, frost, ice or sleet, for which I’m extremely grateful, because there’s not one item in my wardrobe which would help me survive in temperatures needed for such weather events.
Plus, thermal underwear wouldn’t fit under my usual winter wear – shorts, t-shirt, cap and thongs (flip flops to our American readers).
But, as warm as our Winters are, I have noticed they’re getting hotter and shorter than the Federal Parliamentary sitting terms. And, for a change, the science is backing me up.
Still, I don’t need some egghead waving a thermometer around to tell me things are heating up. Because I have photos of myself swimming at the beach in June going back a few years.
I won’t post them here for reasons of modesty, but trust me, they’re tucked away safely in my hard drive…. except for this one when my hair was shorter and damper after a mid-Winter dip:
Granted, we only swam in the middle of sunny, cloudless days with little or no breeze, plus last year, thanks to Covid, the beach was free of hordes of migratory, pale-skinned southerners who would no doubt have been complaining bitterly about how hot it was.
While I’m not exactly unhappy about being able to enjoy a paddle in the depths of what we laughingly call Winter, I will admit to being a tad worried about it.
Because the summer season in these here parts is long and hot enough, and I genuinely don’t want it extended if it can be helped.
So last week, to celebrate the Winter Solstice, I meandered outside in my summer pyjamas and, as a newly minted ‘Carbon Neutral Pagan’, took great care not to set fire to anything to mark the occasion.
It paid off, because after ten minutes, my knees got a bit chilly, so I pottered back inside and went to bed.
I took some small solace from the fact it was cool enough to leave the ceiling fan off that night.