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Our coming NSF public meetings
Wednesday 21 October 2009, 7:30pm - "Economics for a future". Professor Michael Hudson looks at the global financial crisis and the role of banks in the context the economy as part of a larger system. Michael Hudson is a highly-regarded economist. He is a Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, who has advised the U.S., Canadian, Mexican and Latvian governments as well as the United Nations Institute for Training and Research. He is a former Wall Street economist at Chase Manhattan Bank who also helped establish the world’s first sovereign debt fund.
Hudson has frequently described Wall Street as "parasitic". For example, in a 2003 interview, Hudson said:
"The problem with parasites is not merely that they siphon off the food and nourishment of their host, crippling its reproductive power, but that they take over the host's brain as well. The parasite tricks the host into thinking that it is feeding itself. Something like this is happening today as the financial sector is devouring the industrial sector. Finance capital pretends that its growth is that of industrial capital formation. That is why the financial bubble is called 'wealth creation,' as if it were what progressive economic reformers envisioned a century ago. They condemned rent and monopoly profit, but never dreamed that the financiers would end up devouring landlord and industrialist alike. Emperors of Finance have trumped Barons of Property and Captains of Industry." More here.
More recently, Hudson said: "You can think of the financial sector as being wrapped around the real economy, almost like a parasite, and that's why it's been called parasitic for so long. The financial sector extracts interest from the economy, the property sector extracts economic rent, as do monopolies. Now the key thing about parasites, is that it's not simply that they extract nourishment from the host. The parasite takes over the host's brain, to make it think it's part of the economy, to make it think it's part of the host's own body, and, in fact, that's it almost like a child of the host, to be protected. And that's what the financial sector has done today. ...You have Obama coming out and saying, "We have to save the banks in order to save the real economy". The fact is, you can't serve both the parasite and the host."
In an interview last month Hudson went even further. Specifically, he said:
Hudson's April 2006 Harper's cover story, 'The $4.7 Trillion Pyramid: Why Social Security Won’t Be Enough to Save Wall Street,' helped defeat the Bush administration’s attempt to privatize Social Security by showing its aim of steering wage withholding into the stock market to reflate stock market prices for the benefit of insiders and speculators – and to sell to the pension funds. His May 2006 Harper's cover story, 'The New Road to Serfdom: An illustrated guide to the coming real estate collapse,' was the first major national article forecasting - in precise chart form - the bursting of the real estate bubble and its consequences for homeowners and state and local government solvency. More here
Reflecting another side to his professional engagement, he has organized a series of conferences on the evolution of property and credit since the Bronze Age. He chaired conferences on the Mesopotamian roots of urbanization, interest-bearing debt and land redistribution, the origins of account-keeping and money, at New York University, the Oriental Institute (St. Petersburg, Russia), Columbia University, and the British Museum. More here
You can view Michael on YouTube talking about Latvia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmdX6VOOwDQand about the credit crisis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pwAFohWBL4You will see here how knowledgeable, clear and direct Michael is.
Michael Hudson's visit to Australia is sponsored by Prosper Australia.
Venue: the Optus lecture theatre at CSIRO's Discovery Centre, off Clunies Ross Street, Acton (turn up the hill at the roundabout and follow the signs to the Discovery Centre).
Recent NSF meetings in date order
August 2006 - Sustainable housing and communities for Canberrans. Five speakers led us through their ideas and experiences with alternative, sustainable housing and communities:
• Fiona McIlroy, who has participated in intentional communities in their ups and downs,
• Craig Downsborough from Canberra co-housing,
• Anni Mather from ACTPLA described the One Planet Living proposal as it may apply in Canberra,
• Petar Johnson explained embodied energy and environmental load;
he also passed on his observations on the community he joined last year at Googong
• Derek Wrigley, author of Making Your Home Sustainable.
September 2006 - Annual General Meeting. Members voted to amend NSF's constitution to replace the Management Committee with a Board and to update it in a small number of administrative areas. With the constitution amended, NSF's new board for 2006/07 was elected. The meeting was followed with a talk by Frank Fenner about his new book (his 23rd) Nature, Nurture and Chance.
October 2006 - The biology of global warming and its profitable mitigation - Walter Jehne’s talk gave us a holistic, integrative approach to climate change, bringing in data from a far wider range of disciplines than is reported in the media. He argued that, while remaining concerned about atmospheric carbon levels (and the burning of fossil fuels as a cause of these) as one piece in the jigsaw, we should look for the causes of climate change more widely. These causes include water vapour (and, hence cloud albedo, which reflects heat from the sun back out into space) and the critical part played by bacteria seeded from leaves into the atmosphere. Deforestation, land clearing and the degradation of soils were pointed to as the main causes of climate change, as they affect albedo, carbon release and precipitation.
An outline of this important talk has been published in the December 2006/January 2007 edition of Nature and Society and republished in the CSIRO Sustainability Network Update. Discussion continued in the next Network Update and a follow-up article appeared in the April-May 2007 edition of Nature and Society.
November 2006 - Applying justice frameworks to environmental decision-making - Decisions concerning the siting of infrastructure developments or the use of natural resources have the potential to damage a community's social well-being if the outcomes are perceived to be unfair. However, justice is accepted as central to the well functioning of society with fairness being an expectation in day-to-day interactions. In this presentation Catherine Gross talked about her research into justice and environmental decision-making. She presented her findings from a proposed wind farm case study which she monitored in NSW last year and took questions from the audience - some supportive of windfarms, others opposed.
February 2007 - Origins of the nuclear/greenhouse impasse: a view from the Earth and anthropological sciences Andrew Glikson gave a stimulating to this Nature and Society Forum meeting. Andrew gave us a panoramic picture of the state of the climate based on historical patterns and present measures, juxtaposing this global problem with the neocortex of the species Homo sapiens which has caused the problem. Andrew's talk was bold, truthful and frightening and provides a benchmark for us to measure the boldness and truthfulness of our nation's political, business and civil society leaders on climate change.
A report of Dr Glikson's talk and a follow-up article appeared in the April-May 2007 edition of Nature and Society. Dr Glikson has contributed this critique of the television program The Great Global Warming Swindle.
18 April 2007 - Bushfires in Australia - A panel of two speakers: Paul Collins on the history of bushfires in Australia and what we can learn from that history, and Nic Gellie who has had years of personal experience fire fighting and is now undertaking research for a PhD on this topic. Nic told us about the relationship between the factors that drive fires in the landscape and how these factors have interacted over time to produce the severe fires we have witnessed in the last hundred years. Paul Collins had available for purchase copies of his recent book "Burn".
16 May 2007 - A discussion of the proposal initiated by Nature and Society Forum to have the ACT nominated as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. The workshop familiarised participants with the biosphere reserve concept and the ACT biosphere reserve nomination currently being considered by the ACT Government. Members and guests also discussed mobilising informed community interest in the nomination and ways in which the biosphere reserve might best function and how it could help Canberra in the future.
20 June 2007 - Recycled water: issues for Canberra - A panel of three speakers discussed the pros and cons of recycling and alternatives.
Paul Perkins (ex-senior exec of ACTEW and now adjunct professor at ANU) asked are we having the right conversation? Many institutions are still in denial about the gravity of the water shortage situation - he foresees famine in the next 5 to 10 years in the Northern Hemisphere in water stressed areas such as Northern China. Previous thinking and practice in Australia has been slow to catch up with the reality of the situation now. Paul's main points are here.
Dr Deb Foskey (Greens MLA) emphasised demand management approaches and required changes in our attitude towards water, questioning extravagances such as green lawns and swimming pools. Further, there is a need to frame the debate within an appropriately broad framework; e.g. current political commitment to population growth in the Canberra area to 530,000 by 2030 is nonsensical, given the water constraints. Deb's main points are here.
Dr Peter Colligon outlined why the current ACT proposal for water recycling is a high risk proposal on health grounds. He pointed to the unsustainability of the huge volume of water going downstream for rice growing (vis-a-vis that used in Canberra). He thinks there is a variety of measures that can be taken to obviate the need for Canberra to move to the high risk (albeit low probability) recycling strategy being proposed. Peter's main points are here.
The discussion period looked at how the public can engage effectively with and evaluate water issues within a sufficiently broad framework, and with the relevant facts to hand.
27 June 2007 - Canberra launch of "Greenhouse Solutions with Sustainable Energy" by Mark Diesendorf from UNSW Press. NSF hosted the launch of this new book. Mark himself and Dr Hugh Saddler of Energy Strategies spoke at the launch. A summary of Mark's address is here.
The publisher says: "This is a positive, proactive book that proposes a set of policies and strategies for implementing the most promising cleaner energy technologies by all spheres of government, business and community organisations. The book argues that despite being a coal- and oil-dependent country, Australia could achieve an ecologically sustainable energy system. All we need is the political will.
A partial table of contents includes: Basic concepts; Why this issue is important; Sustainable energy futures for Australia; Energy and its greenhouse gas emissions; Which technologies are sustainable? Saving energy; Wind power; Bioenergy; Solar heat and electricity; Other energy technologies; Transport and urban form; Coal and gas: can we bury the problem?; Is nuclear energy a possible solution? Ways forward.
15 August 2007 - Healthy places: an essential linkage between healthy people and a healthy planet?
People are attracted to cities for many reasons, including employment, education, social and cultural opportunities, and access to shops, food outlets, health care and other services. The United Nations estimates that during 2007 the human species has become a predominantly urban species. Currently, 90% of Australians live in urban settlements.
The way we live in our cities affects our health by influencing levels of physical activity, food choices, safety, social interaction and exposure to pollutants. These are determinants of common contemporary health problems such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, some cancers, depression, injury and asthma. The way we live in our cities also affects the health of the environment through loss of biodiversity, changes to ecosystems, carbon dioxide emissions and the production of other pollutants. These environmental changes, in turn, have feedback impacts on human health.
Tony’s thesis is that to achieve our goal of healthy people on a healthy planet, it is essential that our cities are healthy places.
29 August 2007 - The first Australian screening of "What a Way to Go - Life at the End of Empire", a stunning presentation of four emerging threats: climate change, population overshoot, species extinction and peak oil. NSF members at the screening were delighted to see a movie so closely aligned to the work and vision of NSF. "It is a great feat for one movie to serve as an entire wake-up call and a complete analysis of our global dilemma" - Jan Lundberg.
17 October 2007 - Climate refugees - a forum discussion looked forward into the future, when rising sea levels begin to flood the heavily populated deltas of Asia and low-lying nearby islands, when some monsoons are diminished and others cause massive floods, when the rivers that sustain hundreds of millions of people in south and south-east Asia lose their dry-season flows from receding Himalayan glaciers and when China diverts their waters north. Australia's responsibilities as a neighbour, as a contributor to climate change, as possessor of a well-watered north with low human population densities will be debated in the context of Australia's own limited human carrying capacity and the implications of peak oil. The discussion was led by Dr Bryan Furnass from NSF and Kerrie Tucker from ACT Greens). A report will be published in our next journal.
Wednesday 21 November 2007 - A community forum on the need for more sustainable housing developments and the respective roles of government regulators, urban planners, architects and designers (and their educators) and developers, estate agents and house buyers in achieving more self-reliant housing that is also affordable. Nature and Society Forum began in August 2007 a project to enable the community to become more aware of the issues and empowered to respond effectively to the challenges, based on the booklet "Climate Change Needs Housing Change". A report will be published in our next journal. To find out more about this project, please contact the Nature and Society Forum office.
20 February 2008 - Launch of our new Biosensitive Futures website. The launch was by Deb Foskey MLA. Professor Judith Whitworth, Director of ANU's John Curtin School of Medical Research was the keynote speaker. Other speakers included our patron Frank Fenner, our chair Catherine Gross, medical activist Tony Capon and Keith Thomas who helped build the website.
17 March 2008 – A talk by Professor Steve Keen, author of "Debunking Economics". See his papers on the website of the Centre for Policy Development. Steve has found that in just 18 months time we may be spending as much of the national income on interest payments as we were in 1990 – when interest rates were at 17 per cent. Australia's level of irresponsible lending isn’t as high as that which brought on the US subprime crisis, but because our debt to GDP ratio is growing so much faster the impact of any slowdown will be more severe here – and the pain will be much more widely spread.
Steve outlined the probable economic consequences of the end of the debt binge, and offered advice on how to cope with the debt hangover, and proposes reforms to prevent it happening again.
Steve Keen is the author of Debunking Economics and his blog is http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/
19 March 2008 – Professor Tony McMichael's topic was Meat production and global warming. Tony, together with another NSF member, Colin Butler, and others recently had their article “Food, livestock production, energy, climate change, and health” published in the Lancet. Tony’s talk will built on that article and the international response it invoked.
“Eat Less Meat and Help Beat the Heat: A ‘Sleeper’ in the Climate Change Mitigation Debate?” - The world is eating more and more meat, and meat production is contributing increasingly to global greenhouse gas emissions. In late 2006 the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) issued an important report, Livestock’s Long Shadow, noting the impact of the livestock production sector on the world’s climate. The major greenhouse gas from the livestock sector is enteric methane from ruminant (digastric) grazers – cattle, sheep and goats. Methane, on a per volume basis, has much greater warming potential than does carbon dioxide.Nutrition scientists recommend an individual intake of around 50-100 gms of meat per day, to provide good protein, sufficient iron and vitamin B12. The high-income world, on average, now clearly exceeds that level, consuming 200-300 gms per person per day. The US has the highest per-person daily intake; the average intake in Sub-Saharan Africa is around one eighth of that US level. (Meanwhile, information this month from the World Food Programme points to a looming crisis of food prices and global malnutrition. Climate change will exacerbate this.)
In a recent paper Tony and his co-authors proposed that the world should reduce the global average daily intake of meat (especially red meat from ruminants). The fairest strategy would be ‘contraction and convergence’, wherein nations would agree to reduce average per-person meat consumption (currently just over 100 gms per day), and to do so equitably. High-consuming populations would reduce their intake and low-consuming populations could increase their intake up to the agreed average level. They recommend a global average target figure of 90 gms of meat per day – with not more than 50 gms from ruminant animals. This strategy, phased in over several decades, would be good for the planet, for assisting global equity, and for population health. The Meat and Livestock Association does not agree.
21 May 2008 - A monster problem or child’s play: coping with peak oil. Two major problems are associated with our ability to cope with peak oil: ignorance and denial. This presentation argues that a critique of a popular children’s movie may provide an entertaining way of introducing people to the serious issues of peak oil, children’s rights and child friendly cities. The Disney movie Monsters, Inc. is popular with both adults and children. Monsters, Inc. can be seen as an allegory about changing conceptualisations of children, an emerging energy crisis, and our responses to this energy crisis. However, a simplistic interpretation of the movie suggests that a technological fix will be found for the world’s looming energy crisis: peak oil. A more detailed critical analysis of the movie suggests that there are far more important messages hidden beneath this humorous children’s story. Paul's presentation explored the likely impact of peak oil on children’s well-being, and argued that while peak oil may present a crisis for children’s rights, it can also be seen as providing an opportunity, if we can only see peak oil coming and think about how we can change our cities now to prepare for it. A reflection on messages from Monsters Inc. suggests that coping with peak oil may well require the sort of creativity and openness to new ways of thinking that children exhibit in their play. In the real world, by taking a child’s perspective, and by making our cities more child-friendly, we will also prepare our cities for the challenges of peak oil.
Some of the themes outlined in the presentation have been explained in this paper by Paul.
Paul spoke to us two years ago on child-friendly cities.
18 June - Whole-of-community involvement in transformational change: an interactive workshop on collective thinking and action. This workshop template has been applied recently in a number of circumstances to bring together the areas of health promotion, community development, environmental management, professional extension, and strategic planning, in communities all over Australia. These are the areas of action required if we are to achieve NSF's mission of healthy people on a healthy planet.
To achieve effective whole-of-community change, all of these fields will need to pool their distinctive contributions. Individual change agents, community interests, specialised advisors, organisational power-brokers and holistic or integrative thinkers will need to be work together over the long term in any effective sustainability program. The workshop will involve all participants in designing a sustainability action plan for climate change in the ACT. The plan will be based on creating synergies between these interests in a collective social learning spiral.
16 July 2008 – David Dumaresq: Should we grow rice in Australia, or should we eat rice in Australia? Food and Water Flows: A Zero Sum Game. David suggested that at regional, national and global scales the flows of food and water human populations induce are a zero-sum game. Current use of water and resultant production of food in the Australian landscape results in surpluses and deficits that are traded away. These traded surpluses or deficits result in environmental loads being transferred between regions and continents rather than those loads being reduced or eliminated.
15 October 2008 - Our experience of time in contemporary Australia – Lyndall Strazdins. Time pressure is a modern malaise, reported by a large proportion of Australians. it is linked to reduced mental and physical health. It also poses problems for society because it gets in the way of actions needing sustained, long-term application to improve health, and to address environmental issues. Both sedentary and active individuals cite lack of time, ahead of income or knowledge, as the reason for not exercising regularly. They also give it as the reason for driving rather than using public transport. This talk took us beyond the superficial contemporary complaint of our "busy lifestyles" and why we find it so difficult to devote our time to those activities that we believe are most important. A detailed report of this presentation will be published in the next edition of Nature and Society.
19 November 2008 – How can we save the planet in 97 months? - Walter Jehne. We have less than two years to implement the changes and ten years for them to be effective if we are to cool regional climates to offset greenhouse warming and dangerous climatic damage by 2030.
Walter Jehne gave us an update on his talk to us in October 2006. He presented recent evidence of climate change more rapid than predicted by the IPCC in even its latest report and also the implication of ‘capture’ of the climate debate by physicists in the 1970s (the ‘Jasons’ see The Times and The New York Times) – a process that progressively excluded weather observations and biology in favour of global models comprising only variables conducive to computer modelling. Walter pointed to 10 actions in each of 10 fields which could actually restore rainfall, moderate temperatures and increase resilience.
The most useful things to come out of the evening emerged in the discussion period. Discussion and debate such as this is something NSF endeavours to do well and our discussion was very helpful. Some people at the meeting were disappointed that Walter gave more time to describing the problem than in discussing possible solutions. However, Walter wanted to dwell on the physical climatological phenomena and understanding them before jumping into solutions. Walter’s presentation looked beyond CO2 emissions as the prime causal factor in climate change to the many ways in which human behaviours have disrupted natural, interdependent cycles of carbon, water, life (plant and animal). By understanding these complex systems we can best determine the points in those systems at which humans can intervene with a minimum risk of further damage to the biosphere’s processes. CO2 emissions is a small though important contributor to anthropogenic climate change, but we need to step back to look at the full picture before we jump in with solutions.
It's no good having 100 things to do, no matter how slick and glossy the plan, if they are the wrong actions to address the actual problem.
Another contributor to the discussion suggested that the situation was so dire, the nation should be put on a ‘war footing’ and that Australia needed a Churchill to focus the activity of government and citizens on dealing with climate change.
This brought the discussion to the human side of climate change. All Walter’s 100 actions were, to some extent, technical. However, technical solutions are one thing, and even though enough people on the planet understand the range of technical solutions to CO2 emissions, they still can't get significant practical action started. Another member distributed a paper Are Human Beings Hard-Wired to Ignore the Threat of Catastrophic Climate Change? and pointed to the most difficult problems being not technical but human. It's in the human mindset to reject the diagnosis and the cure - we are a species that has almost no place it its cerebral plumbing to deal with global climate change, particularly with our dopamine being stimulated in so many other ways.
Yet another member said this showed that governments has a prime role to play in leading the public through legislation such as those imposed by the governments of warring nations on their citizens in World War 2. A comment made in response to this was that if there is a war, the enemy is us.
Another member of a more individualistic bent said we all have to take responsibility and move ahead of governments. And there were yet others of a more anarchistic inclination (who said governments have demonstrated their inability to act effectively for the past decade and individualism has demonstrated its inadequacy in the face of hegemony of the status quo and its power relations) communities must act.
So, although we did not reach agreement, we all came away understand better the complexity of the biophysical problem and that solutions will need to embrace biophysical sciences, evolutionary psychology, politics and the hard work of community organization and activity. CO2 emission reduction is not the silver bullet - and there is no silver bullet.
21 January 2009 – Walter Jehne continued the topic he began in his meeting of 19 November. Since that meeting, our Prime Minister has indicated he is committed to doing nothing effective about climate change in Australia. It is now 2 years and four months years since Nicholas Stern warned us we had a decade to deal effectively with climate change, but nothing significant has been done except the production of reports, holding global conferences and political posturing. None of these are reducing the encroaching pace of climate change.
This meeting continued the lively discussion which began at the November meeting with Walter taking the unconventional position that climate change is so serious and so advanced that it is 20 years too late to affect climate change by reducing CO2 emissions (with most of CO2 emitted in the 1970s and later still being released from the ocean buffer). Walter explained that biological mechanisms can be deployed to restore natural processes which are integral to both the carbon cycle and the hydrographic cycle and that these would both cool the planet and restore rainfall - locally, regionally and globally.
18 February 2009 – Scarred Lands and Wounded Lives. A showing for the first time in Australia of the movie Scarred Lands and Wounded Lives with a talk by the film makers, who are long-time supporters of Nature and Society Forum and were visiting Australia at this time.
18 March 2009 – Can the Murray-Darling Basin be saved from collapse? - Professor John Sandeman - Droughts, changing weather patterns due to climate change, unsustainable state and federal government policies, parochial self-interest and blatant diversion of wetland water to agriculture, has brought the major irrigated agricultural region of Australia, the Murray-Darling Basin close to collapse. The present state of the Basin together with the predictions of computer modelling of future climate changes over the next few decades were discussed in relation to the existing attitudes of vested interests at all levels and the various policies now being undertaken by governments in an attempt to address the major problems. Can the basin be saved? A question closely coupled to our major one: "can the planet be saved?" John has written an article based on his talk. A summary has been published in the June-July 2009 edition of Nature and Society.
15 April 2009 – Easier deaths and natural burials - a greener way to leave this life. We had two speakers at this meeting: Bryan Furnass focused on ‘easier deaths’ and Hamish Horne, CEO, ACT Public Cemeteries, let us know – in the light of the ACT Government’s proposal to build a third multi-purpose cemetery here – of the various options which will be open for body disposal, particularly those which leave a small (or even negative) carbon footprint. A paper on the topic was published in the April-May edition of Nature and Society.
20 May 2009 – What is replacing the ACT's formal 'No Waste 2010' policy? Walter Jehne - This talk surveyed the prersent and future of waste in the ACT (and surrounding shires, to the extent they send their waste into the ACT - for a fee, which is paid by their ratepayers). Speakers include Geoff Pryor from Zero Waste Australia, Dr Maxine Cooper (Commissioner for the Environment) and Iome Christa from the ACT Conservation Council's Waste project (which is developing ACTnow as a waste minimization business precinct). A report of the evening has been published in the June-July edition of Nature and Society.
17 June 2009 – Plants to grow in the current climate – In this talk Ian Anderson used nine themes in this consideration of plants to grow in Canberra gardens as well as the surrounding rural landscape. These themes and the principles exemplified in them could have application in the wider Australian landscape. Ian drew from his 40 years of experience growing food plants in the suburbs, creating, developing and maintaining blended gardens of native plants (mainly for wildlife habitat) and such food plants, as well as the potential of tree crops in rural areas. Ian referred throughout his talk to the significance and potential of native grasses and associated forbs* for gardens as well as in rural landscapes and ecosystems. A report of Ian's talk will be published in the August-September edition of Nature and Society.
*Forbs are herbaceous flowering plants that are not graminoids (grasses, sedges and rushes). Forbs represent a guild of plant species with broadly similar growth form, which in ecology is often more important than taxonomic relationship. Examples of forbs are clover, sunflower and capeweed.]
15 July 2009 - Fresh and workable community-based approaches to sustainability in our region. In this talk local activist and community mobiliser Cindy Eiritz outlined the diverse range of sustainability initiatives emerging from concerned citizens in our region. She suggested how these groups can learn from each other and cooperate while still retaining the distinct features and missions which have been at the core of their success. We are invited representatives from a number of these groups to this meeting to share with us their successes and their visions for the future.
Wednesday 19 August 2009 – Meeting postponed to November.
Wednesday 16 September 2009 - AGM (7:30pm) and a showing of the video "The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil" (8:15pm)
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Updated 23 September 2009. For more information about what's on, e-mail our office