I just spent the weekend at the Sustainable Living Festival held at Federation Square in Melbourne, Victoria. It was truly inspiring to see just how much our southern state is doing on sustainability issues, particularly climate. They are clearly leading the country in terms of the mainstreaming of sustainability and there seem to be many more grass roots initiatives for climate related social change as well as larger scale projects than i have seen here in Sydney.
I wouldn’t call Victoria the Green State just yet with all of those dirty coal fired power stations (and sadly it may never be called the Garden state again with it’s climate change driven 12 year drought and subsequent bushfires) but its clearly got a strong community that is pushing the agenda forward.
Matt Wright at Beyond Zero Emissions gave a fantastic presentation on what we need to do to move Australia towards a target of 100 % renewables by 2020. (inspired by Al Gore’s We Can Solve it Campaign (100 % renewables in 10 years). Beyond Zero are providing visionary leadership and inspiring targets for people and Matts presentation showed the way we need to be thinking (and talking!) when it comes to the big shifts needed. They do a radio show on 3CR and its podcast so get into it!
He was joined by Elliot Fishman from the Institute of Sensible Transport for a panel afterwards who also displayed a strong grasp of the issues and gave the crowd clear and logical transport solutions that involved serious bike usage that you could immediately see would work if only the political will existed for this to happen. The message was loud and clear .. this is is not rocket science, its simply smarter ways of moving people.
One of the highlights included Tim Cotter’s excellent presentation on behaviour change and sustainability (his approach is deceptively simple and completely spot on, don’t try to change people’s values (they are in the most part just fine and it’s almost impossible to do anyway!) but instead convince them of the need for change (through education), empower them (give them the tools) and (most importantly) make the connection between their values and the sustainable things you want them to do. People will then most likely act in their own enlightened self interest. Simple!
I left the festival inspired by our southern cousins and the work they’ve been doing to move us in the right direction. I’ve returned to Sydney invigorated and excited by the challenge of bringing the city of sin in line with her greener sister. We have about 10 years to get the job done. All aboard!
