The work on the plan, officially titled Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy Plan, is being led by Patrick who often goes overseas to find out what the rest of the world is doing to combat climate change.

Patrick Hearps

He was in Spain recently checking out solar thermal power plants with BZE’s executive director Matt Wright, wrapping the trip up with a three-week rock climbing holiday with friends on the Mediterranean south of Barcelona.

But with just two days left on the holiday he took a fall while climbing up some sea-cliffs on the Mediterranean coast.

“I’m used to falling, but this time a bolt, rusty from sea spray, broke and I hit the deck from about five metres up,” said Patrick.

He had to be rescued by helicopter, but thankfully he had no bones broken.

“I was just incredibly sore and stiff for a few weeks, but it hasn’t stopped me climbing,” he said.

“It’s my passion and that’s what you can find me doing when I am not working on the Zero Carbon plan.”

That’s the kind of never-give-up attitude Patrick has and one that BZE needs with its lofty, yet achievable aims.

“I’ve been rock climbing for a few years now. It’s an exhilarating and unique way to experience nature and I wish I had more time so I could get better,” he said.

So how did Patrick get involved in such a major project. His story goes back to childhood days.

“I grew up on a farm in Tasmania until I was 13-years-old. I loved the outdoors, and always had a keen interest in science and how things worked. I had heard about the greenhouse effect but didn’t really understand how big a deal it was,” he said.

“And while I had seen the hydro dam up the road which produced electricity just using the flowing water, the only cultural reference I had to coal was Ebenezer Scrooge’s coal heater which featured in Charles Dickens book A Christmas Carol.”

So when he eventually came to live in the Sunshine State he had a shock.

“A couple of years after moving to Queensland, I visited a coal power station and coal mine, and was absolutely amazed at both the scale of the plant, and the fact that we were still using technology and a fuel source from several centuries ago; burning vast amounts of coal in what is essentially a glorified kettle,” he said.

“Engineering was a natural path of study for me, and as I became fully aware of the scale of the climate and energy problem in my later years of uni, I knew that my role in life was to be part of solving one of the largest problems we have ever faced.

“So I took a job with ExxonMobil to gain experience with an international energy company, but frustrated by the old-fashioned views and limitations of full-time corporate work, I resigned to get more directly and immediately involved in creating a renewable future.  He says it is ‘incredibly enjoyable and satisfying’ working with the Melbourne Energy Institute and Beyond Zero Emissions on the project.

ECO put some more questions to Patrick:

ECO: How did you gather together such a wide field of expertise to develop the ZCA plan? Please give an indication of the global reach of this amazing venture and from where you have been drawing your technical knowledge and tell of the encouragement/hurdles you have experienced along the way.

PATRICK: The contributors to the Zero Carbon Plan are a diverse range of people. Key professions represented are chemical, mechanical, electrical, and environmental engineers along with physicists and others with specific qualifications and experience in renewable energy. Collectively, they have decades of experience in the energy industry and academia and understand the requirements of a rigorous study.

Furthermore, Beyond Zero Emissions through the media and research have links to institutions and companies in the global renewable energy industry. We have personally interviewed the CEOs and reps of the companies building and operating solar thermal power plants, in Spain and the US, such as SolarReserve, Torresol/SENER, Solar Millennium, Brightsource, Abengoa etc, along with researchers who have been involved in the field for decades.

For example, from the US Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories and National Renewable Energy Laboratories, the German Aerospace Centre, the UAE’s MASDAR Institute and many more.

ECO: How difficult/easy has it been, as technical director of BZE, to draw together the scientific team to take this forward? Please give a little background.

PATRICK: The ZCA Project is primarily a pro-bono effort, started by Beyond Zero Emissions, using their networks of industry contacts, media and partner organisations to find people with the skills and motivation to work on the Zero Carbon Project, with the Melbourne Energy Institute providing both staff, students and alumni.

It should be pointed out from the start that what brings them together is an understanding of the physical scale of the climate and energy challenge, and a desire to get to work fixing it, recognising that the mitigation measures currently being looked at by most industry and policymakers just isn’t going to cut it.

Recognising the disconnect between policy, reality and perhaps the limitations of their day jobs, the authors are keen and motivated to put their skills to work truly creating the future they want to see, not just getting half the job done 10 years too late.

So while I wouldn’t say it has been an easy process to guide the project, once people are involved and feel ownership I am continuously impressed by the quality of work and ideas that come together.

ECO: Your forthcoming visit to Woodford is being eagerly anticipated by many festivalgoers. What does it mean to you personally in bringing the latest news of this important development to such an event which is noted for its green ethic? Also, whether this is your first Woodford experience or you have been before, what are you looking forward to seeing and experiencing at this festival?

PATRICK: I’ve never been to Woodford before, though I’ve had it highly recommended by friends. It sounds like a great combination of good music, relaxed atmosphere and people keen to find out how to create a better future.

I enjoy different audiences for different reasons. For example, when talking to relatively conservative audiences, it is a sense of achievement to be able to blow aside many people’s misconceptions about the ability of renewables to provide energy for society at a cost and scale that is required.

For relatively progressive audiences, as I suspect Woodford will be, it can be gratifying to give people information that can be used to strengthen their own work in pushing for a safe climate.

One of the great things about the ZCA Project is that it shows how achievable 100 per cent renewable energy in a decade really could be if we choose to push for the right decisions, which is more empowering than what we usually hear about it being too hard, too expensive or infeasible.

Being armed with the right information is important. And we are also always looking for more people to contribute to our work, whether on the technical side, or aiding in communication and organising, or if you can’t donate your time then helping to fund our research is also effective and appreciated.

ECO: Please tell us of your hopes and fears regarding the further development of this plan and the continuing research. Also, what can we, the public and interested parties, do for you?

PATRICK: Our research shows that we already have the technology, the knowledge, the resources, the money, the capacity to achieve 100 per cent renewable energy in 10 years, which is a necessary timeframe if we are to give ourselves a decent chance of avoiding runaway climate change.

I think its value is that it demonstrates that such an infrastructure rollout is achievable, while also giving us a sense of the scale of the task. It will require significantly more political commitment than is being shown today, and should be used as a benchmark for proposed climate mitigation measures.

It is encouraging to see other countries around the world pushing ahead on building a renewable energy future – the first few concentrating solar thermal plants in the US for 20 years are currently breaking ground, Spain is in the flurry of their $20 billion rollout of CST, China’s wind power output is growing exponentially at phenomenal rates, Germany’s commitment to their feed-in-tariff is seeing solar and wind installed in gigawatts per year, the countries around the North Sea are investing in huge offshore wind capacity, as are South Korea, and the Desertec Industrial Initiative has commitment and funding from Europe’s leading energy companies and banks.

However, Australia is at high risk of being left behind, as our leaders pretend that a tiny diversion from business-as-usual is all that is required.

Everyone can play a role in publicly pushing for more aggressive energy policy that will actually see us re-powering the country with renewables, and holding our leaders accountable.

Patrick Hearps will be at the Woodford Folk Festival Greenhouse venue on Wednesday, December 29 at 4.30pm, Thursday, December, 30 at 4pm for his BZE sessions, Friday, December 31 at 2pm with ‘Green Mythbusters and at 4pm with ‘Green Innovators’.

Jillian Rossiter has seen the Woodford Greenhouse venue grow phenomenally as a festival attraction over the years. And it’s been mainly due to her stoic effort, commitment, creativity and networking. Now it’s time for her to slowly pass on that green baton to Ali Buckley, a hard-working Woodford staffer who also has a passion for the environment.  Brian Rickards talks to both of them.

Handing over the reins of a project that you have nurtured over many years, one that has become so much a part of you and almost a reason for being, is a hard thing to do.

That moment has arrived for Jillian Rossiter who rose to become queen of the Greenhouse venue which was launched at Maleny in 1992. She says the time has come to bow out and she is doing it with mixed emotions.

But it won’t be a sudden break for her. While she has already finalised this year’s program, the succession will be gradual. She will always be in the background somewhere with willing advice, when needed, and born of many years experience running the Greenhouse.

Jillian Rossiter (left) and Ali Buckley

The softly-spoken ‘house mother’, as she has been lovingly called, will hand over those reins to horse-lover and Woodford staffer Ali Buckley in a dove-tail operation over the next year. Ali is already getting her induction and will work closely with Jillian at this year’s festival.

Like Jillian, Ali is a devoted environmentalist and up for the challenge, one of many she has taken on board at Woodfordia. Effervescent Ali, pretty much a Woodford workaholic, has spent countless hours over the past few years as media organiser and managing the fund raising campaign Aspirations, plus carrying out a long list of other tasks.
But the Greenhouse challenge is a little different and somewhat daunting.

“Jillian will be leaving very big shoes to fill,” said Ali.

“She has done a fantastic job over the years. For my sake, I hope she will let go slowly and that we can work together in the next year.

“Jillian will always be my sounding board while I am doing it. Hopefully, she will be like the honorary programmer supporting me.”

In turn, Jillian has welcomed Ali’s appointment.

“Ali, as the future programmer and coordinator of the Greenhouse, brings new energy, creativity, enthusiasm, new ideas and initiatives, and a new path to take. She will be in charge of one of the greatest environmental learning institutions available to the community in this country,” said Jillian.

Jillian  says she is optimistic about the future of Greenhouse and forecasts what we might see down the track.

“I have visions of the two Davids – Suzuki and Attenborough – being streamed live to the green folks at Woodford. The technology would create opportunities for our audience to hear from other high profile environmentalists, without the need for more carbon emissions released from passenger jets which would carry them to Australia,” she said.

Ali also has plenty of ideas, ideas that broaden the influence of the Greenhouse and Woodford’s environmental policy further across the festival – even beyond.

“I have been talking to people in the Woodford area about engaging local farmers, which could lead to future partnerships with the Woodford Folk Festival, in installing wildlife corridors and future projects where, with the festival land and farmers’ land, we could work together to create a sustainable region,” said Ali.

But for the moment Ali will be happy to keep the Greenhouse moving in its present direction.

“It doesn’t need to change a lot, but hopefully I can take it further eventually. I feel so honoured to inherit all that Jillian has done, the years of hard work and experience that have brought so much credibility to the festival through the Greenhouse program,” said Ali.

While Ali feels honoured, Jillian says she feels privileged.

“Through the Greenhouse I have been able to develop skills, had the opportunity for personal growth and empowerment and in the last 10 years  been able to meet and work alongside some amazingly committed, highly-skilled, creative, talented – indeed extraordinary – people,” she said.

“I was trusted right from the beginning to deliver an environmental program and coordinate this venue. I was never censored and have always felt honoured to be able to write a program for the Woodford Folk Festival which is always forward thinking and setting the agenda – a real benchmark for other music festivals.”

Jillian has witnessed first hand the rapidly growing public awareness of environmental issues over the past decade. And she has seen the Greenhouse and its guest speakers play a significant part in that.

“As the need for concerned individuals to achieve greater awareness has grown, so has the thirst for knowledge and the importance of the Greenhouse as part of the Woodford festival program,” she said.

Soon it will be Ali’s turn to take on this huge responsibility, while Jillian takes a back seat. So who is this bubbly young woman with the beaming smile and an appetite for hard work and lots of it?

As a kid and teenager, she loved the bush and grew up in the western outskirts of Sydney spending much of her time, hours on end, either walking or horse-riding through bushland or forest.

“I have always been connected to the forest. When I finished high school I spent a year travelling through all of the NSW National Parks and many in Queensland,” she said.

“Nature and the environment has been a big part of my life.”

It was so important to her that even as a high school student she found her voice and joined marches and protests. One of those protests, in Sydney, was against the threat of development to the Daintree Rainforest.

“I really liked protesting at the time – otherwise you feel voiceless. It was great to be part of that community empowerment and social change,” she said.

“I had grown up with the daughters of two politicians. Their mothers were full-on feminists and empowered us to speak out and be strong women. They were always drilling us.”

Amazingly, Ali found herself  working in the advertising industry and she was excellent at it even if it was on the dark side of her environmental consciousness. But eventually, and at huge financial cost, she found the light.

“I worked in that industry for 10 years – the industry that promotes consumerism the most. I had to play the game,” she said.

But in 2000 she had a sea change, or maybe tree change, and went through a ‘very big cultural shift’. She moved from a really high income and a life as a relatively big consumer to having a really small income from Centrelink, while she tried to find work in a small community and having to survive on the bare minimum.

“I actually preferred that,” she mused.

“But the change was a conscious decision after a long slow-boiling epiphany which meant it took a while to finally get out of that industry. It was hard because I was also good at what I did.”

But on reflection, she said she was glad she left it all behind.

“It’s put so much more heart into what I now do, rather than just doing something for money,” she said.

Since that tumultuous career and lifestyle move Ali has been involved in her real passions – community events, community festivals and community empowerment.

While living and studying in Armidale she was involved in running the Sustainable Living Expo for two years.

“That festival really engaged  the community and grew quickly.  Apart from that I really enjoyed it,” said Ali.

Her new role at the Woodford Folk Festival is partly as an enabler, to bring people together to talk about issues and spread knowledge.

“That excites me. I love that. It was like that at the Sustainable Living Expo where we brought farmers together with government people, business people and consumers. It connected funding bodies with farmers and businesses,” she said.

But bringing people together at the Woodford Greenhouse can be tricky And it’s something that Ali admires Jillian for.

“She has done an incredible job to get the top line people that she does because, essentially, she has no budget,” said Ali.

However, Jillian’s attempts to lure Tim Flannery, one of Australia’s leading conservationists, have so far failed. Perhaps Ali will eventually have more luck, but she would prefer to bring David Suzuki – and in the flesh rather than on a big screen,  even though it might cost a few carbon points.

But Ali will have to go gangbusters to match Jillian’s Greenhouse success which has taken the average audience from about 30 to more than 400 in 18 years.

Is she up for it? Yes.

You can’t keep a good campaigner down. Drew Hutton has joined Queensland farmers in the fight with the government and the massive coal and coal seam gas industries. Brian Rickards talks to the man who fears no one in the cause for justice and a fair go.

Appearing at the GREENhouse: Mining our Food, 10am, Thursday, December 30, 2010.

Drew Hutton is a tall, lanky man with a ready smile. At first glance he seems an easy-going sort of bloke, but beneath that endearing exterior is a fighter, a man who holds social justice to his heart and is prepared to go to jail for any cause he thinks just.

He has a long history as a protester – but he was never a violent one.  He believes civil disobedience campaigns of passive resistance and non-cooperation to ‘bad laws’, regulations or policies are the most effective.

Drew remembers facing off the constabulary of former premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen on many occasions back in the 70s and 80s when many regarded Queensland as a police state if you were inside it and a target for jokes if you were outside it.

Drew Hutton

“I got thrown into prison many times for one thing or another in the Joh period. But I have been protesting since I was 21, starting with the Vietnam War when I was a student in the 60s.

But now at 63, the man who went on to co-found the Queensland Greens party, has had the calling again – and he’s joined a large group of farmers and rural residents in an alliance that is taking the fight to the Queensland State Government and Queensland Gas Company, one of the world’s biggest energy companies, over the exploration and development of coal seam gas resources.

Drew says he will draw on seasoned city-based environmental activists to join forces with the farmers and ‘blockies’ on the Western Downs in an unprecedented battle group. It will fight a determined campaign against a resource development seen as a danger to underground aquifers, rivers and community health, and a threat to the environment and one of the nation’s food bowls, by destroying huge tracts of fertile farmland and farmers’ livelihoods.

Some say much of this beautiful brigalow country, beef cattle country and strategic cropland will be reduced to a devil’s playground of well heads, pipelines, salt ponds, storage dams, massive gravel pits, compressor stations, generators, pumps, earth moving monsters, big workers camps and chemical contamination.

“This will be the biggest campaign this country has ever seen,” said Drew who has taken on the role of campaign strategist.

“It’s the biggest one I have ever been involved in, by a long way, and probably the most important. I will be happy to go to jail in this campaign and there are plenty of farmers and blockies who are prepared to so, too.”

Taking up this campaign has required Drew to drop the several official positions he had with the Greens.

“I then teamed up with the 6 degrees campaigners from Friends of the Earth organisation. They’re young and terrific. My job is to be liaison person or glue between the city and the country, keeping all the groups together, plotting the strategy and going out to hit the government as hard as I can on these issues,” he said.

Drew’s direct involvement began about nine months ago just when he was considering retirement from the political and campaigning argy bargy.

“I thought I had finished. I was getting a bit grumpy and thought it was time for me to bow out. Then I heard about some blockies out at Tara who were protesting in Dalby about coal seam gas,” he said.

At that point Drew’s wife Libby Connors, who is also Queensland Greens spokesperson, alerted him to the issue.

“You should be doing something about it,” she told him.

And that was it!

“So Libby and I went out to Tara, sat on some one’s back verandah and were told about coal seam gas and what it was doing to their community. They showed us a map of the residential estate outside of town; at least a 1000 people were living there close to a couple of hundred experimental gas wells,” he said.

“I couldn’t believe it. Then they gave me a DVD of a documentary to view when I got home to Brisbane – it was focused on the shale gas industry in America and the devastation of communities that lived in those areas.”

Drew was aghast at what he saw and immediately had even greater concern for the Tara families, realising that CSG capture was a similar process with similar community side effects – fracking (the hydraulic fracturing of subsurface rock strata and the use of complex chemical cocktails to release the gas), the contamination of underground water and health problems caused by leaking carcinogenic chemicals such as benzene and toluene.

It wasn’t long before Drew returned to the Western Downs to form a city-country campaign alliance with farmers and blockies.

“I was taken around to see farmers in the area and spent three weeks learning about the issue. I’d had 30 years experience as a campaigner and I still had a bit left in the tank,” he said.

Years ago many farmers hated Hutton with a passion after his campaign against land clearing ended with legislation not favourable to them. But now he’s the farmers’ friend and in some ways apologetic for that land clearing decision which did not include any compensation for them.

“We are all good friends now and our alliance is a respectful one.

“I am outraged at the treatment of farmers by this government and by the companies. They’ve treated them with complete contempt.”

Drew believes the government is only concerned with being returned at the next election and jobs are the big ticket item on the agenda.

“They would like to go to it saying ‘we created all these jobs and we’ve got so much in royalties coming through’,” he said.

“This is the construction phase when most of the coal seam gas jobs are created, but in five years that figure will drop 80 per cent when it’s in the maintenance and production phase. At the next election, for instance, they can say ‘we created 10,000 jobs or whatever from coal and coal seam gas industries.

“But they won’t tell that they’ve lost so much agricultural production and some of that land will go out of production permanently. They will never be able to rehabilitate it. They they’ve lost the skills of all those farmers for the next generation.

“They don’t care. It’s just about the next election. It’s not about future generations and it’s not about farmland. Sadly, the Opposition is exactly the same.”

Already, the farmers and blockies have taken their protest beyond words, beyond the pleading for justice which falls on deaf ears. Drew and his Friends of the Earth colleagues have spurred them to action and the gloves are now off in the fight against the gas companies for a fair go.

Together, they recently launched a ‘Lock the Gate’ campaign where hundred of farmers have upped the ante and vowed to keep the gas companies off their properties by using blockades. In tandem demonstrations, representatives of eight farmers’ and residents’ organisations joined environmental protesters outside the Queensland Parliament building and on the Darling Downs.

While the gas program is in a pilot phase, the farmers are facing the prospect of up to 40,000 coal seam gas (CSG) wells and massive new coal mines devastating their rich agricultural land.

At the moment, the companies, protected by state legislation, have extraordinary rights to enter land for exploration and mining, disrupting farm operations. And in the longer term, say the farmers, mining will irreparably harm underground aquifers including the Great Artesian Basin and degrade land.

“We are going to lock the gate to all coal and gas industries; we’ll blockade them and we’ll go to jail if necessary – we’ll blockade them with people, people from the city and family farmers standing shoulder to shoulder,” said Drew.

“It is already happening. At Felton an energy company was told not to bother coming round to check bore samples; at Tara the residents told QGC not come anywhere near the estate and that if they did they would be blockaded. A seismic crew was stopped from doing tests and blockaded in for four days. The same thing is happening at Cecil Plains and Kingaroy.

“When these gas and coal companies have to engage with farmers and their wives and kids at the front gate and being barred the way, they then have to decide whether or not to take a frontloader or a bulldozer over the top of these people and on to their properties.

“They may succeed in getting on to some properties, but they’ll have to do it in full public view and the government will have to wear the opprobrium that will come from allowing multi-national corporations to bust on to family farms and  destroy them.”

Drew’s research shows that these companies are being given approvals to commit unlimited environmental harm – with no limits to how much water they can take out from the underground aquifers and that it would be the ‘biggest land clearing exercise since the 1990s.

“All this will last for just 20 years. For 20 years of coal and gas production we will lose all that agricultural productivity for ever.”

Campaigning against climate change and encouraging a whole multitude of women to join her unique action group must be a natural therapy for mother of four, Natalie Isaacs. The former natural cosmetics  business woman is simply glowing and full of energy as she strives for a target of one million female supporters to each commit to reducing CO2 pollution by one tonne per year.

Appearing at the GREENhouse: The Big Target – 2pm, Saturday, Jan 1, 2011

Natalie Isaacs remembers the time when as a young girl she and her family lost everything in the 1974 Brisbane floods.

“Water went 10 feet over the roof of our home in Fairfield,” she said. “It was devastating.”

Natalie, who since that time has travelled the world, had four children and run her own natural therapies business, is hoping that kind of disaster won’t happen again as a result of climate change.

In fact, she is presently hoping for another kind of deluge – a deluge of support for her inspirational and unique climate change campaign that has a target of mobilising one million Australian women to cut greenhouse gas pollution through individual action.

The campaign, born out of frustration at feeling detached at dinner party discussions with environmental experts, a desire to make a difference, and the urging of a close friend, is simply called ‘1million women’ .

Natalie Isaacs

It is run under the banner of Climate Coolers, a not-for-profit, non-partisan women’s action group that she co-founded with friend Michelle Grosvenor, a woman with an impressive history in environmental activism.

Natalie, using her talent as a business woman, networker and communicator, is urging women all over Australia to sign up and each commit to cutting per year one tonne of CO2 pollution, the main greenhouse gas pollutant causing global warming. It means everyone from mums, daughters, sisters and grandmothers all taking action in a small way to make a big impact together. But it’s not a strictly feminist movement and even blokes are allowed to sign up, says Natalie.

However, she does believe that women have innate skills in networking, spreading a message and have strong community and family influence.

Natalie’s ‘green awakening’ was a gradual process, in many ways influenced by her husband Murray Hogarth, a former environment editor at the Sydney Morning Herald and now an author and business environmentalist/adviser. But it wasn’t until late 2006 that she was stirred to action.

“We were surrounded by people who talked about green things,” she said.

“But I was personally detached. I could sit at a dinner table with them and discuss and debate and I could understand that the planet was in a dire situation. However, I didn’t totally engage – for me it was because of fear of appearing silly among a group of people that was so involved and knew so much.”

However, three things sparked Natalie into action. One was the media.

“From the middle to late 2006 there was a huge shift in public awareness of climate change – you couldn’t open a magazine, a newspaper, listen to the radio or watch television without there being something on climate change. It was building, building, building and right in your face,” she said.

“At the same time my husband and his business friends were putting low energy light bulbs in people’s houses. One night there was a celebration after they had replaced a million light bulbs in NSW – there were a couple of hundred people at this celebration, mostly uni students and ordinary people.

“I was the only person in that room that was doing nothing. I also realised that you didn’t have to be a climate scientist to make a contribution.

“You can make all kinds of excuses in deciding NOT to do something – for instance, Who am I? – just one person; too busy; I’m overwhelmed; It’s not my problem; what about China?, what’s the point, shouldn’t governments put in the policies; and so on.

At that time Murray was writing a book, The Third Degree, and asked Natalie to help edit and proof read.

“He wanted to see if it made sense to me and I had to be interactive,” she said.

Those were the three elements that changed Natalie.

“I literally had an epiphany. I woke up one morning and said to myself, ‘Right. It’s time to change’,” she said.

“So I got my head around the issues and started to focus on them,”

Driven to action, Natalie made some immediate differences in her own home. She did the light bulbs change and with being more vigilant on electricity use she managed to soon cut her power bill by 10 per cent. So she also saved money in the process of personally reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“Those actions empowered me and gave me the confidence to go to the next step,” she said.

The fired-up Natalie then thought “What can I do? I don’t know anything about this – I have never been an activist, but I am a passionate person and I have confidence.”

She then considered what else, in a practical sense, she could offer.

“I guess my 25 years in the cosmetics industry had given me people skills. Not everyone is going to get the point on climate change then start a campaign – that’s what I can do,” she told herself.

Then her close friend Michelle said ‘let’s start an organisation’. So they did and it had a big vision from the outset.

“We wanted it to be a women’s movement because we felt there was so much out there already catering to everybody. We asked ourselves ‘what’s missing?’ – where is there a niche where we could really communicate?’,” said Natalie.

“For me it was women. Women are powerful natural networkers. They constitute more than 51 per cent of the Australian electorate. They make 70 per cent of the consumer decisions affecting the household carbon footprint. They have powerful influences in the consumer marketplace in this country.

“It is a very powerful thing when women join forces to fight causes. Women are also better listeners and research, amazingly, shows that women want action more than men. Women also approach such matters from an incredibly emotional and passionate perspective.

“While the campaign is not to the exclusion of blokes, it is mainly harnessing the natural strengths of women – such as networking and ability to share. Women have an enormous part to play in this critical issue.”

Natalie believes in the principle that one million women will tell a million more and that you just can’t leave these issues to politicians to take action on.

“It’s easy to say ‘governments  need to put in the policies’; it’s easy to say ‘big business needs to get its act together’; it’s easy to have all these reasons why we as a community do not get involved. It needs the collective power of everyone – all need to take ownership of this problem for people to find their voices,” she said.

“Governments eventually respond to the power of the people.”

Natalie has set up a campaign website where browsers can find an ‘activities’ section which shows 55 different ways to cut pollution and each activity has an ascribed carbon value. You can build your own carbon profile and track your pollution cutting progress.

“Each small outcome builds your confidence and takes you along a road of empowerment,” she said.

Natalie says her campaign is not so much a message; the essence of it is action.

“It doesn’t matter if action comes before total awareness. Just start taking a little action in your daily life because action leads to confidence and power and finding your own voice,” she said.

“You can start saying NO when you’re out there in the consumer marketplace – for instance, ‘I am not going to buy over-packaged goods, I’ll leave them on the shelf to gather dust.’

“When you start taking action you’ll find you can change behaviour in absolutely every aspect of your life. I have done that right through from the politicians I now vote for to what brands I support and buy.”

The campaign, which was launched in mid-2009 after a two-year planning period and has set a three-year challenge of enlisting one million women,  has already drawn in some high profile people as ambassadors – even some unlikely ones with not the most glowing climate change credentials. At this stage the total is quickly approaching 35,000, still a long way from the ultimate target, but Natalie believes it is achievable as the women’s network ramps up into overdrive.

The campaign train will be hitting the Woodford Folk Festival where Natalie hopes to bring on board another couple of thousand.

“I think we have had a fantastic start,” she said.

“We are trying to attract women from all walks of life in Australia. This apolitical campaign is not about ticking a box and you are done; it’s not about sending a letter to a politician and you’ve had your say. You have to do something and keep at it.

“We are not a green group or environmental organisation – it’s a big group of women getting active in creating a new sustainable way of life.”

But it hasn’t been easy for Natalie as a campaign leader and under the spotlight. She has had to adapt and abandon former habits – in the way she shops, in the way she travels, in the way her home is run.

“But climate change is real and transforming the way we live is essential. We all have a big challenge,” she said.

BZE, stands for Beyond Zero Emissions, and is an organisation that has been going since 2006 and is committed to providing a real, comprehensive, technically and financially feasible blueprint for Australia to slash its carbon emissions to zero by 2020.

They believe their 10-year target is attainable and it has meant coming up with a plan to transition Australia to 100 per cent renewable energy sources using existing proven technologies. It’s a plan that promises to ensure the nation’s future energy security.

Already, BZE, led by its driving force Matthew Wright, 31, has come up with the first stage. With the help of post graduate students from the University of Melbourne Energy Research Institute they have this year launched the Zero Carbon Australia 2020 Stationary Energy Plan.

It’s a comprehensive, detailed plan, documented in 170 pages of reasoned argument, heaps of facts and figures, graphs, charts and photographs. And it is very persuasive – already endorsed by enlightened politicians, leading conservationists and environmentalists.

“Not only do politicians support the Zero Carbon Australia initiative, but so do leading academics, energy experts, business people, and community leaders,” said Matthew,  the executive director and founder of BZE.

Solar Power towers -- set to create zero-emission, baseload-solar electricity in Australia.

“I found that I just couldn’t stand by as climate action progressed at such a glacial pace – I soon got addicted to the momentum we were building.”

It has taken four years to assemble the team, do the research, come up with some solutions to this massive planetary dilemma of carbon emissions and climate change, and then compile the first report. And now the momentum is with them to take the project to the next stage in 2011. So what is the Zero Carbon Australia plan?

The BZE researchers say they propose a 60/40 mix of large-scale solar thermal power plants with storage and wind farms to provide the bulk of Australia’s energy needs as part of a national energy grid.

“It will allow for geographically dispersed solar and wind power installations, with our existing hydroelectric capacity and small amount of biomass used for back-up generation,” said BZE’s 24-year-old technical director, Patrick Hearps, a chemical engineer and co-author of the ZCA plan.

Patrick will be attending the Woodford Folk Festival (December 27 – January 1 inclusive) as a speaker at the Greenhouse venue. There, he will present the plan and tell of the organisation’s incredible journey to develop and promote the plan, including a trip to Europe, touring solar thermal storage and wind power plants and attending an international solar conference.

Patrick says a combination of wide-spread large-scale concentrated solar thermal plants with molten salt storage (otherwise known as ‘baseload solar’) and wind farms can power Australia 24 hours a day, every day of the year.

Concentrating solar thermal plants use mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto a receiver ZCA2020 proposes the use of ‘solar power towers’. The sunlight heats molten salt. The hot molten salt is safely stored in insulated tanks. At any time of day or night, the hot molten salt is used to generate steam for the turbine, creating zero-emission, baseload-solar electricity.

According to US Department of Energy projections, solar thermal will soon be cost-competitive with coal and gas power, as the solar thermal industry scales up to an installed capacity in the thousands of megawatts around the world. The ZCA2020 Plan has 12 solar regions across the country, consisting of 3500MW of power tower units. These would supply 60 per cent of Australia’s electricity in 2020.

The other 40 per cent of Australia’s electricity would come from wind ? 6400 gearless Enercon 7.5 MW turbines would be distributed across 23 sites around the country.

“We’ve completed the research that no Australian government or organisation has been prepared to investigate,” said Matthew, who was voted ‘Australia’s Young Environmentalist of the Year’ at the 2010 Banksia awards.

“We really seek to debunk the myth that renewables can’t cover baseload power needs and dispel concerns that it’s going to be too expensive.

“The projected investment is around 3 per cent of GDP over 10 years, or $370 billion. This is about as much as we spend on insurance over the same time.

“For an average household this would mean an increase to their electricity bill of $8 per week, which isn’t bad when you consider Australians spend over $30 billion on imported new cars each year. And after the initial decade of set-up costs, we should remember that the fuel is free from the sun to help pay for upgrades and maintenance.”

So, now it’s into the next phase.

“After the success of the Stationary Energy plan and new volunteers on board, we will develop transition plans for buildings, transport, steel, cement and other industrial sectors,” said Matthew.

The expected publication date for the ZCA2020 Buildings Plan is August 2011. Potential contributors to the buildings and transport plans can help provide content for the research database by getting in touch with BZE.

The projects already involve expert contributions in many areas relating to BZE’s specific calculations and forecasting, but they say more help is needed and that there are many different roles on offer.

“Though we first set up BZE back in 2006 it feels like we’ve only just begun,” said Matthew as he rolled up his sleeves for the next round.

But while he rolls up his sleeves he will also need to tighten his belt. For Matthew must continue to work part-time in radio to help him survive life in the penny-pinching world of an unfunded not-for-profit organisation.

However, it’s all worth it, he says. And the donors are starting to dig into their pockets and bank accounts to fund this massive project. The two front men, Patrick and Matthew, and their growing team of expert volunteers have shown that no other initiative has generated such excitement in Australia’s quest to address climate change or provided such a practical, scientifically-based solution to transition Australia to a zero carbon economy.

“The growing wave of support is at times overwhelming. Every week, our in-boxes are filled with messages of support and requests to join the Beyond Zero Emissions team and address climate change, so we wonder if the average Aussie knows just how strong this force of grassroots action is becoming,” said Matthew.

At Woodford they will be able to spread the word even further and, hopefully, attract some strong support. This time, it’s Patrick’s turn to deliver the message. He will be telling many Queenslanders that while their state might be leading the world on carbon emissions per capita at the present time, all of that could be reversed within a decade.

And that will be an easy job compared to his tough task of overseeing the growing team of pro bono engineers and scientists now involved with BZE. But neither of this dynamic duo ever really switch off message. Matt uses his previous experience and skills from working in the provision of financial information and news to corporates, energy and commodity markets, banks and other financial institutions, to lead the development of further ZCA plans across a range of priority areas.

Their diligence and brilliance has resulted in plaudits and encouragement across the spectrum. The various launches around the nation of the first part of the Zero Carbon Australia 2020 plan has drawn packed audiences over the past several months.

These launches have not only seen Australians turn out in their thousands, but have also featured endorsements from politicians as diverse as the past Premier of NSW Bob Carr, independent MP Senator Nick Xenophon, Australian Greens deputy leader Senator Christine Milne, and Federal Shadow Minister for Communications, Malcolm Turnbull.

In Brisbane, the forum of speakers even included Queensland Premier Anna Bligh, who recommended the plan. However, she did turn up late, leave early and gave a plug for the coal industry while she was at it.

But the attention given to BZE is not just from within Australia’s shores. There has been considerable international interest shown such as from luminaries at the International Energy Agency and the director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford University, USA.

At home, there has been a welter of encouragement including that from leading conservationist and former Australian of the Year, Tim Flannery, who described the plan as “an ambitious, technically feasible plan that should be looked at seriously”.

The Woodford Greenhouse crew and hundreds of festivalgoers are looking forward to Patrick’s sessions.

“We at the Greenhouse are enormously excited and feel honoured to host this young, resourceful visionary from Beyond Zero Emissions to our festival. His team’s cutting-edge research is inspiring and fills us with optimism and hope that a carbon-free future is truly possible,” said Greenhouse programmer and coordinator Jillian Rossiter.

“At last, Australia has an energy plan that demonstrates that renewables CAN provide baseload power; so no longer are there valid arguments for mining our farmland for fossil fuels or nuclear energy power plants.

“Let society lead our governments towards the Transition!”

Patrick Hearps will be at the Woodford Folk Festival Greenhouse venue on Wednesday, December 29 at 4.30pm, Thursday, December, 30 at 4pm for his BZE sessions, Friday, December 31 at 2pm with ‘Green Mythbusters and at 4pm with ‘Green Innovators’.

To learn more or donate visit Beyond Zero Emissions.

Dr Ben McNeil

The passion is palpable, so is the sense of frustration and underlying anger. Yet like a seam of silver there’s healthy gleam of humour occasionally exposed.

To assay Dr Ben McNeil is an interesting task. He’s in the stop strata of the academic rocks of intelligence that deal with climate change research and he has an urgent job at hand.

But Ben is different from most of his research colleagues. He doesn’t shun the limelight and shut himself away in the halls and laboratories of academia. He has a message to spread and he gets it out there whether through writing a book or speaking at community forums.

His message, while targeted at anyone who wants to listen, is essentially a come-on to politicians and business people to understand that in his view building environmental sustainability promotes economic prosperity at the same time. He writes in depth about it in his acclaimed book Clean Industrial Revolution.

“I can’t just be an academic. I have to be on the ground with it to do things.” Ben confesses as we meet at his mum’s place on the Gold Coast.

For him, it’s one of his visits back from his work as a Senior Fellow at the Climate Change Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. It’s back briefly to his old stamping ground, having grown up in Southport and been a student at the highly-regarded The Southport School.

While it was seen as a very conservative school, Ben says he was one of the rebels, and it was there that he became inspired and motivated by his geography teacher who was ‘of the environmental world’. Ben became known as ‘The Greenie’.

He even formed a group to push for cleaning agents that the school cleaners used to be replaced with more biodegradable and less harmful ones. “We got things done at that school,” said Ben.

It was while he was in Year 9 that the Exxon Valdez oil spill catastrophe took place off Alaska’s coastline. It was a moment in history that affected Ben and spurred him to take a greater interest in environmental matters.

“I saw how human action – inappropriate action could severely damage ecosystems through pollution or wasteful use of resources,” he said.

“It encouraged my belief in why it’s important for us to conserve the environment generally and resources for future generations.”

And so Ben put his head down studying, even though he loved sport and had heaps of friends to distract him, and won a place at Griffith University to do an environmental engineering degree. His qualification eventually led him to Hobart to work with the CSIRO at the University of Tasmania. He was there for four years doing oceanography research, particularly looking at ‘greenhouse cycling’ in the ocean.

His broad base of friends meant that many of them did not share his core environmental beliefs. Indeed, his best man, a solid Liberal voter, became a derivatives trader in the City of London.

“I am always trying to persuade people, but I think having such friends gives you a better perspective on how others think,” he said. “You can talk about an issue like the environment in ways in which they can respond to.”

Ben said that there’s a host of opportunities for businesses to make a buck in investing in or providing innovative technologies and environmental solutions. “I call these people accidental environmentalists,” he said.

“They may not have the environmental ethos or upbringing or thinking that I had. It’s not necessarily their core thinking, but they make some money and it’s not in conflict with ensuring a good environment.

“I don’t like the old thinking of left, right and environment versus economy. It’s nonsense and gets nowhere.” Ben’s life alternates between hope and despair, but hope is gaining ground.

“Even though we can be pessimistic about our federal leaders and politicians, there’s a lot of stuff happening that hives me optimism,” he said.

Ben and his wife Nathalie have a young family of littlies – two sons and a daughter. It means he has had to reduce his profile on the ‘climate change’ speaking circuit for a while, but he is now gearing up for another educational onslaught and perhaps to convert a few more sceptics.

However, he finds it too tough a battle with hardcore denialists.
“You can’t reason with them. It’s like Bin Laden. You can’t argue with Bin Laden that there are some good things about Australia. He thinks we’re all infidels all should die. It’s a similar thing with these sceptics – you can’t argue with a closed mind,” he said.

Once Ben is in full flow, you know he’s one of the people who can make a difference. He knows his subject intimately and is able to identify some real solutions to get the planet back on track. He also has a wealth of energy and commitment His book also brilliantly puts the argument on how to make a huge positive out of perceived negatives.

But he can get wound up when some people try to take a poke at the climate science community.

“There’s this nonsense being promoted out there that there’s some grand conspiracy among thousands of scientists to dupe the world. It’s all been politicised. It’s frustrating – their type of thinking is like that of the Flat Earth society, or else they just don’t want to believe things,” said Ben.

He is not happy with much of the mainstream media either, including some TV channels, which give air time and space to sceptics under the pretence of an evenly-balanced debate.

“When you have some non-scientists coming on talking about climate change, for example, and how it’s somehow wrong. That is an affront to every element of reason. It’s like your plumber coming to diagnose your brain tumour,” he said.

“The mainstream media are just like politicians. They thrive on sensationalism. The media also don’t want to be viewed as one-sided.

“Even the ABC doesn’t want to be seen as one-eyed, even though the science is compelling and all evidence-based and reasoned. But the other side – the denialists, non science, non climate science voices — want to have a voice. So the upper two echelons of the ABC think ‘isn’t there a debate about this?’

“Well, actually there’s not in the climate change community. There’s just a debate on the magnitude – whether the temperatures will rise 2 degrees, 4 degrees or 7 degrees and how soon. On the fundamentals there is no debate.

“Also, on the policy side there is debate – is it better to go for a carbon tax or the ETS? How do we best achieve the best outcomes of reducing emissions? That’s a valid debate.”

But back to the media. Ben says the way much of television and radio reduces everything, including the complexity of the climate change issue, down to sound bites, short timeframes and within media cycles, makes getting the truth out really difficult.

He also refers to the time earlier this year when, at the last minute, Channel 7’s Sunrise breakfast program brought him face to face with one of Britain’s leading sceptics, Lord Monckton, in what they labeled a ‘debate’. It was a mistake, Ben having been persuaded to fill in for Penny Wong.

“It was a lose situation, because people expected a debate. And there wasn’t a debate. There was no perspective of the intricacies — it was simplicity versus complexity and it was in the wrong format,” said Ben.

“To discuss such a subject you would need six hours – even Ian Plimer could do a spiel of nonsense for six hours. Apart from that, all of my senior colleagues would never have tried to debate some non-climate scientist.

“I had already taken the view that I was not going to talk about my research or any of the science.”

Ben had reasoned that if he went into detail, it would go over most viewers’ heads, especially at that time of morning when people were getting ready for work. Also a ‘snapshot of palatable nonsense’ was hardly going to be meaningful. It wasn’t the forum to talk about something so serious.

“All you could say was ‘No, the science has not changed, but the evidence has got worse’,” said Ben.

Ben says that it’s the older generation people who are sceptics and are more fearful of social change in bringing solutions to the climate problem. Most are white males. However, Ben does draw comfort from the younger generation especially school students, a group where environmentalism is not on the fringe as it was when he was growing up.

“It’s actually part of their core belief, so it’s not something that is seen to be weird. It means that with social awareness issues and social changes issues, the baseline change will be generational,” he said.
In other words, better things to come.

But Ben’s message is primarily aimed at the ‘swingers’. He says preaching to the converted is fine to create enthusiasm, it’s virtually a waste of effort talking to the unreasoning ultra sceptics, but climate change campaigners can have a reasoned dialogue with the swingers, the people who are still thinking ‘what’s the truth?’.

The most difficult argument concerns perceived loss in the standard of living.

“That’s the biggest change inhibitor,” said Ben. “It’s a perception that is nonsense.”

His argument is that when tariffs on manufacturing and textiles were reduced in the 1980s, there was a growth in other sectors of the economy. He said that people thought the industry was going to die and there would be fewer jobs in the Australian economy. However, other sectors grew and provided even more jobs.?“It’s the same argument now in the carbon-intensive part of the economy which will decline if we put a value on carbon. Other sectors will grow at a greater rate – whether it will be energy efficiency, water conservation or renewable energies,” is Ben’s assertion. So what’s on Ben’s agenda now?

“I wrote Clean Industrial Revolution to really try to promote what’s been happening around the world in terms of clean energy, environmental products and services and the boom in the low carbon economy that’s happening now. There are a lot of figures in it,” said Ben.

“We highlight the fact that while Barack Obama has set aside $60 billion to promote low carbon energy solutions and the Chinese invested $90 billion to shake off their coal dependency, Australia is still firmly sticking to coal, a carbon intense commodity.

“It’s like us producing a lot of VHS cassettes and trying to export them to a world that is moving to iPods. It’s a stupid strategy.” Ben’s aspirations are to keep promoting the argument ‘what’s good for the environment is good for the economy’.

“If we keep making that argument over the coming 10 years we’re going to be in a place that’s very different to where we are today,” he said.

Greens Senator-elect Larrisa Waters

Queensland’s first Greens senator Larissa Waters, while all fired up after her recent election success, now has to be patient as she faces a long wait before she can take her Senate seat in Canberra.

While she can’t take office until the new Senate term starts next July, senator-elect Larissa will be keeping busy by going back to her old job part-time as an environmental lawyer in Brisbane.

She’s jubilant at the Greens great results after a campaign that won her party 14 per cent of the vote, increased the number of Green senators to nine and introduced the first Green member to the lower house.

It’s a result that essentially, from next July, tips the balance of legislative power to Bob Brown’s Green team. As part of that team, Larissa is now making preparations. It’s not as hectic as full-on campaigning, but the passion and optimism is still there.

“It’s still sinking in,” said Larissa who has won a Senate seat at her second attempt, having narrowly missed out in 2007. For now she will be dovetailing her work with the Environmental Defenders Office with some unpaid senator-elect tasks.

“Unfortunately, being the Greens, we don’t have as much in resources as the major parties. So I don’t have a wage or any staff until next July and my ability to do parliamentary work is pretty constrained until then,” she said.

“As an environmental lawyer I can still be helping the community. However, in terms of my senator-elect work I’ll be doing a little media work and the occasional public speech and trying to help with people’s inquiries.

“The enormity of the task ahead is sinking in; the responsibility of being the only Green elected in Queensland – the first and certainly not the last. We’ll be working hard for that.”

In the weeks and months ahead Larissa will be having many meetings with her fellow senators and senators-elect to establish portfolio agreements and establish how they will work together now that the team has doubled in size.?”It’s looking really positive – having to adjust my frame of reference and preparing myself for six years of hard slog,” she said.

“A lot of it is mental preparation. But my work as an environmental lawyer is similar to the work that I’ll be doing in the actual parliament itself. It will be a natural progression.

“The preparation will include finding some good staff and having my ear to the ground for Queenslanders and what their issues are. I obviously have a good idea of that already, but there’s a need to set up those mechanisms to ensure that I am still finding out about new issues.”

But Larissa already has a busy agenda and policy list. Her campaign literature says she will push for new jobs in renewable energy, affordable housing, action on climate change, protect food growing land from coal mining and gas fields, high quality public health and education, a fair go for indigenous communities and new Australians.

As an environmental lawyer says she has been close to people who have been disadvantage because some community and property rights and environmental protection has been lacking.

“I asked myself ‘how can you change that?’ The answer was ‘you need to be in parliament making those laws,” she said.

“I think the system’s rules need to change and I hope to have the opportunity to do that once I take office in July.”

Larissa says it’s a vital time for the Greens because it’s a vital time for the planet. She hopes she and her colleagues can take advantage of the political momentum to get action taken on climate change sooner than later.

“The science now says we have less than a decade to turn around our greenhouse emissions. If the Greens can be part of that through our role in the balance of power then it would be such a great honour to be part of that,” she said.

For the moment, she said, senators-elect don’t have a formal role to play.

“But we will be involved behind the scenes. We will be performing our roles within our home states. As senator-elect for Queensland, I’ve still got a lot of responsibilities here that I will continue to discharge.”

Noosa Landcare natural resources manager Phil Moran. Image: Brian Rickards

Phil Moran is so passionate about the environment that he admits to hugging every tree he can.

In his youth he had ideas of pursuing a career in the legal profession, but it wouldn’t have been as satisfying for this man who instead grew to love the bush.

Phil is the natural resource manager for Noosa and District Landcare Group which is based in the Sunshine Coast hinterland town of Pomona. And his personal journey to that point has been a long and winding one.

While he now oversees this not-for-profit organisation that works with the community to deliver hands-on environmental solutions, he sees it as a life blessing.

“I am very fortunate to be able to a job that I love,” he said as we talked on the verandah of the Futures Centre nursery where Phil and his team work.

This is a man who worked in the tourist industry starting at the Tangalooma resort on Moreton Island and later becoming a trainee manager at Brisbane’s biggest hotel at the time. At 21 he became catering manager and stayed there for another nine years in a role he enjoyed and which eventually inspired him to open his own catering business.

“But always I had the bush in the back of my mind I had,” Phil said.

He had a friend who owned a piece of land on the outer limits of Brisbane and he went there when he could to learn about the bush. Later they took a trip to Malaysia, Sumatra and Thailand where Phil got a thrill from looking at the jungle.

That trip took place while he was running his business at Ashgrove where he catered to the Brisbane glitterati and had begun planting trees in at the back of the premises, starting his own small jungle which exists to this day.

But it was the end of another nine-year cycle when his sister became ill and he decided  to sell and move up to Cooroy where he bought himself 5 acres.

His real passion for the bush and its fauna and flora was awoken as he established a small wholesale nursery. At the same time he joined the Landcare group as a volunteer and helped out in its riparian nursery.

It began to take over his life. At first he worked one day a week for Landcare, then two days until eventually he was given paid work.
Since then he has seen the twin nurseries of Landcare grow steadily; the riparian nursery now producing nearly 90,000 tubestock a year and the Futures Centre performing similarly.

Phil was picking up a lot of tree planting knowledge as well as learning about the bush. One of his mentors at Landcare was Dave Burrows who left to eventually work as a  senior manager for Land for Wildlife.

When Phil was given a day a week killing off camphor laurel and privet on one of the council reserves at Yellowbelly hole he found he really enjoyed it – no mobile phone reception and he just got on with it, working in the wild.

He was also involved in some funded land projects such as Corridors of Green which linking riparian zones.

“I was paid as a labourer and I loved it,” said Phil.

One thing led to another. The group went through many changes and as more work became available Phil climbed up the ladder and was offered more work where eventually he was able to employ his past business acumen.

Burrows, who was the project officer for the Corridors of Green, moved on to a council position and it left a hole at Landcare which Phil was able to fill and get work for five days a week with them. Now Phil has climbed his personal tree to become the natural resources manager, responsible for 31 staff of which 24 are employed full-time. Of those 10 are the Green Army – a state government employment project.

“In fact, we are now the second biggest employer in Pomona,” said Phil.

He said another thrill he gets is to see kids he has trained move on and perform brilliantly at places such as the Sunshine Coast Regional Council. At a school talk about the environment two of his former ‘students’ who had made the big leap forward joined him.

“They were there in their council uniforms and stood out front with me, teaching that second generation of kids what they had been taught by the old bloke. I though it was a lovely circle and happy that I had infected them with that passion for the environment.

“That keeps me going as well as keeping me grounded.”

Phil says he certainly doesn’t do it for the money, saying it’s really caring about how we all live.

“I now live on 33 acres of land on the far west of the old Noosa council region. It was the first refuge to be declared in the shire. So my heart is there,” he said.

At first he lived in a tin shed on that property, but it was more than your ordinary tin shed. It was part of his continuing education.
“My place is rough country – quite steep, spotted gum country with basalt and phyllite. But I think of it as a university without the sandstone. You never stop learning – if I go for a walk I’ll see a plant I haven’t seen before,” he said.

“I have already identified 240 different species on my place so far.”

Phil’s attachment to the environment has led him to also be appointed as a board member for the UNESCO-recognised Noosa Biosphere. In 2007, the old Noosa Shire boundary was designated as a biosphere region – a first for Queensland.

A biosphere reserve is an international conservation listing awarded to an area with innovative approaches to conservation and sustainable development. Biosphere reserves promote a balanced relationship between humans and the biosphere.

Phil is also hands-on with the biosphere project, organising the Landcare team to help maintain and environmentally improve parts of the area with weed removal and tree plantings. He also does a blog for the biosphere.

Then Phil gets philosophical.

“Our biggest problem these days is the disconnect between day to day life and the environment,” he said.

“When I lived in the city, you’d get out of bed, have brekkie on the run, jump into air-conditioned car, join others in a traffic jam, get into a lift. You don’t even get to walk on grass. The only nature you see is a token one, on a computer screensaver.

“So it’s really hard to teach people about biodiversity — because they don’t get to experience it. But if I can give them little stories about how the way these things are all inter-related, hopefully the lights will come on.

“When I was a kid I’d be squatting down on the ground playing with ants and little lizards and things, but then you’d grow up and start going out to nightclubs and meeting girls. Then things like the environment might take a back seat.”

So Phil’s idea is to instill such a passion for the environment into kids, that they will never forget it and retain that connection.

“I have son who is almost 18. He grew up with me in my shed. Because I lived in it for 12 years out there with no power for four of those years, no TV or anything, we’d go out in the bush and we’d make cubbies, kill weeds and do stuff,” he said.

“My son can still walk around now and tell me that that’s a white-headed pigeon or that plant is looking sick, It’s amazing what ticks in kids’ minds. When his mates come up from Brisbane now, I hear him talking to them – he even told one not to whack a white ants nest. He’d say ‘no, leave them alone – that’s not the type that eats the house, it’s the one that cleans up the bush’.

“I never tried to force this environment stuff down his throat, It’s a symbiosis thing – kids tend to pick it up from you if you have that passion.”

He said Landcare likes to work with the schools.

“I go out to them to talk about weeds and I’ll help them with tree planting,” he said.

While Phil is encouraged by the kids, there are many things in the adult world of developers and governments that upset him – especially in his own region. The Cooroy-Curra bypass was a project he fought against as was the Traveston dam.
But successful or not, Phil has a belief that when the fight is over, it’s over. His way is ‘to work like hell’ in the initial stages to persuade authorities not to go ahead with a bad project and to try to get the best outcome for the environment.

“I’ll always work with people to get the best result. If I fail, I fail but I’ll give it a good shot. Once the law is passed I am not going to stand in front of a bulldozer – that’s not my area. I prefer to do the work beforehand.”

One of Phil’s other major environmental roles, they seem to cling to him like lawyer vines, is as vice-president of the National Aquatic Weeds Management Group. It means he gets around Australia identifying the weeds and helping with action plans to get rid of them. But in his region there are significant water weed problems – cabomba, water hyacinth and salvinia being just a few examples.

However, it’s the education side of environmental matters that really gets his juices flowing. He loves to give advice to people who might have moved into the Sunshine Coast area and are looking how to best look after their properties.

“The year before last I did more than 90 property visits. I go out to their newly-acquired and identify the weeds and the native plants, erosion issues etcetera. It’s great to see the thrill they get when I say ‘Wow, look at this wonderful plant. Or even that’s bad, you need to get rid of that’.

“They’re really keen – they’ve actually reached out and sought advice – that’s encouraging. We’re even getting to real estate agents to get the message out there.”

Phil is also pleased that the local tourism industry is coming on board as many players are doing much to reduce their ecological footprint.

“They now recognise that they have a goose here with a golden egg that is the environment. I tell them they wouldn’t have their business without that healthy environment,” added Phil.

His message in this Year of Biodiversity is ‘to get out there and have a look. Go for a walk. Learn something that’s outside the square. Get involved with the Biosphere, your local catchment group, the local Landcare group, even a P&C group with school environment activities’.

“Go to the World Environment Day event at the Sunshine Coast university, go to the Festival of Water at Lake McDonald. Just get out to have a look at your environment and get a real feel for it,” he added.

And finally, some timely advice from this man who loves the land: ‘If you want to be involved in bush regeneration, it’s not neat and it will take a while. Nature’s the best –SHE is the teacher and we need to learn from her before it’s too late.

Paul Summers relaxes at his 8-acre hideaway near Cooroy. Image: Brian Rickards

Paul Summers is a jolly sort of bloke – laidback, big smile, dressed for a barbie but with a brain as sharp as a tack.

Immediately, you’d hazard a guess that Paul isn’t your normal stereotypical urban planner hunched over a drawing board on level 33 of a shiny office block in the heart of Brisbane. Yet a planner he is, and with an impressive CV.

And you might hazard a guess that this warm character is just the bloke you’d have confidence in to bring a special kind of creativity and a comfortable lifestyle to any project put his way. You would be right.

Paul, who works from home just a few Ks outside of Cooroy, was one of the luminaries that in the mid-90s brought together the cutting edge Noosa town plan – one that set development limits and by default a population limit. It was a plan that essentially preserved the unique character of Noosa.

Before we got down to a serious chat, Paul just had to show me the lush 8-acre property he is restoring to environmental soundness. He’s also got plans to renovate the old house, something he likes to do to keep hands-on and to occasionally swap his computer and draughting tools for a hammer and saw.

With chooks at feet, he surveys his dam and tells how he is gradually helping the place to recover from a previous owner’s inappropriate maintenance practice.

So, from this idyllic smallholding, Paul starts our formal interview looking at the big picture of the population issue.

“The big problem for all of Australia is our love affair with the seaboard and how we are driven to these edges, such as Noosa which is really close to us. Overpopulating these areas will irrevocably alter the character of the locations,” said Paul.

“Many of the locations are part of our major tourism drawcard and a lot of the work I did in Noosa was designed to try to maintain a tourism outcome because that was our dominant employment area.

“To maintain the area’s character and our niche in the market we had to control the level of development which in turn controlled the level of population. There are very few places doing that in Australia.

“So, the result is, because of the baby boom, the attraction of the seaboard areas and the climate, everybody wants to move to these locations. However, there’s another driving factor – it’s jobs and the fact that most of our economy is directed to those areas.”

Paul then lamented that we don’t do anything to balance our population and attract more people to rural areas.

He says that many of these areas, which are quite attractive and would be nice places to live, could be transformed with new business opportunities.

“Our problem is that we’ve got this major growth mostly in our cities where we inject huge amounts of capital into providing for infrastructure such as roads, freeways and tunnels just to get people from one side of town to the other,” said Paul.

“It’s just a commuter arrangement – instead of living closer to the places they work at, they live on the opposite side, or closer to the sea and burn fossil fuel going backwards and forwards across the city.

“So we spend a lot of money on that sort of infrastructure. Meanwhile in our rural areas we have declining population because there are no jobs and no opportunities.

“We could change the policy position and start creating opportunities for growth in those areas.”

Paul then remembers how his team was ridiculed for their bold new ideas for Noosa.

“I’d walk into a room full of planners and politicians and talk to them about our work on population, and they would laugh at us as if we were crazy,” he said.

“We talked to them about why it was necessary to gear your population to your capacity to supply infrastructure, to your capacity to pay for that infrastructure.”

He believes proper planning looks at the resources available – financial resources and physical resources that allow you to deliver the infrastructure. You also should look at what your community wants to achieve.

Paul is not too impressed with most of our politicians. “They seem to be somewhat loath to describe or bring to the community what their decision-making really means,” he said.

“For instance, the Federal Government talks about a population of 35 million but you don’t see anything about how that population is going to be accommodated across Australia, what that means to the cities across Australia or how that might impact on or change those areas.”

This urban planner, sitting quietly in his cottage far from inner-city pollution, while a good number of fellow Queenslanders are probably sitting in a traffic jam somewhere,  doesn’t have much time for the way we are dealing with city living.

“We don’t have a sensible approach to doing things — we keep growing our cities and just treat the symptoms of the problems. Meanwhile, in the rural areas we try to prop up economies by investing small amounts of money in small ventures,” he said.

“What really makes places attractive to live in for families, apart from the usual physical features, is the opportunity for jobs.”

Paul points to the Western Corridor, between Brisbane and Ipswich, as a success story in steering people away from coastal areas and as a guide for increasing the growth potential in corridor areas and regional locations. He had been a strong advocate of that process in the time of the Goss Government despite people saying it would   never work.

“Less than 20 years later it’s now the primary policy position of the SEQ Regional Plan and the Western Corridor is probably the largest in Australia. And it has all worked because of jobs created through government decision-making at that time which had earmarked land for industrial and commercial development as well as putting in infrastructure in advance,” said Paul.

Paul is not a believer in the idea of official population caps, preferring instead to set limits through controlled and locked-in development.

“It’s impossible to put in place. A cap implies you put in place something that can’t be changed – that’s not possible because community values can change.”

When it comes to planning, Paul says you never have a blank canvas. There is always something that was there previously.
He said planners first have to look at the resources, the values that are in place and the capacity to supply infrastructure and to talk to the community about what they want to achieve. Then they should analyse obligations to the environment, obligations to the community – it’s a marriage of those things.

Paul tells of the dramatic changes in the processes of forming a regional plan. He’s not happy about them and shows how the grassroots checks and balances have been effectively reduced to nothing. It’s a worrying scenario.

“We used to have a cooperative model driven from the bottom up. All the local governments got together coordinated by the state or state agencies and pooled resources and this gave them the opportunity to consider cross-boundary issues,” said Paul.

“The process was fed from the bottom and done largely by professional local government planners at regional level.
“What we have today is the state doing all that work. It takes all of the data that came to local government previously, so it becomes armed with a lot of information.

“So, these days, the state dictates and controls that process. I don’t know what happens internally within the state or how much political interference occurs through that process. I have to say that I believe some occurs.

“So what was a good idea and working quite well was stopped. Now we have a Department of Infrastructure and Planning that dictates what is going to happen and uses a flat-line, straight-curve population projection that has no regard to the capacity of the region to support that population.

“What we’re doing now is changing the regional plan every time a new set of population projections come out. The population projections drive everything. You have a curve that goes out – you add another five years to it and then you’ve got extra fertility and a lower rate of mortality and a massive immigration intake so the curve can keep going up.

“The question for Australia is not about a cap but about how we should be spacially distributing our population. The other is about size and sustainability. To date neither question has been answered.”

“And the level of consultation with the state is now ‘Here’s our plan, what do you think of it?’”

And if you don’t like it?

Paul’s sunny countenance clouds over a little.

“Even the community has a feeling of powerlessness at the present time. So many decisions are being made regardless of their opinion.”

But there’s always an election, Paul is reminded – that’s when his face lights up again.

Simon Baltais busy doing some field work

There has been a series of important stepping stones that have led Simon Baltais to his position as one of Queensland’s leading and most passionate environmentalists.

His early life was spent with his brothers and a sister in the Adelaide Hills, which back in the 60s was ‘very much in the sticks’, according to Simon.

“I was lucky to grow up in a unique environment in South Australia, with lots of trees,” he said..

“I spent a great deal of my time wandering through the scrub just outside Hahndorf.”

The stepfather and mother of his father, a refugee from World War II, had set up the property which had an orchard. The house backed on to creeks and the property had open paddocks and forest.

His mother’s father, a bushie, also captivated Simon. He told his grandsons of his life in the bush; stories about camping and trapping. But most significantly it was a book grandfather treasured that spurred the young Simon to think more about the environment and eventually to have a love of rainforests and a deep care for Australia’s diverse species.

That book was Green Mountains written by Bernard O’Reilly, the farmer and bushie who famously found and brought out survivors of the Stinson airliner crash back in 1937 in what is now the Gold Coast hinterland.

“I used to flick through that book, fascinated by the description of the rainforest, because we had nothing like that in South Australia,” said Simon.

He also said his interest in the environment, which came from being part of a family that valued social justice, was reinforced by his primary school teacher ‘who was very much a greenie’.

“He used to take the whole school – only 60 kids all up – each year to places around South Australia such as Cooper Creek. He was even talking about climate change back then,” said Simon.

“He also used to take us bushwalking once a week. I was lucky, we had scrub next to the school and used to talk about the animals and plants we used to see.

“Our teacher was environmentally focused and so was my grandfather who also liked going out into the open space.  I guess I lived in the perfect environment. I could walk out of my back door and there would be a host of bushland birds and animals.”
When Simon left senior school he joined the army and, rather than picking a trade such as surveying, he decided to go into the infantry. After a year of intensive training he got his first posting, to Townsville.  Most of the training in north Queensland was in jungle warfare and the keen-eyed Simon found his skill as a sniper with the 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment. It was in the ranges behind Ingham, Tully and Cairns that he was drawn even closer to the rainforest he loves so much.

“I loved the rainforest. It was great coming across cassowaries and the like. I wouldn’t say I was a raving greenie, but I did have a passion for the environment,” he said.

“But you can only live in the mud for so long, so I looked to advance my career and joined the Queensland Police Force where I stayed for six years.”

That time covered much of the term of the Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen government in Queensland through to the Fitzgerald Inquiry. While Simon spent much time in Brisbane he did get posted back up to Innisfail where he was reunited with the spectacular northern rainforests.

“It was fantastic. My first job was to chase horses back to East Innisfail while driving a police car; my second job was chasing cassowaries out of people’s backyards,” he laughed.

But it wasn’t all fun. It was where he first came upon green activists and he had to arrest or serve summonses on some of them. He soon realised it was all very political.

“They were all quite peaceful; it was a nice community and I almost felt ashamed at what I was duty-bound to do. They were only trying to do the right thing and save the rainforest – which I totally agreed with,” said Simon.

So was that a moment of epiphany?

“It was I guess. I certainly started questioning some of the things we were doing. I wasn’t terribly happy with some of the things I saw. Policing then was like this – if you were a good copper you got more paperwork and got bogged down; if you just took it as a bit of a joke then you’d probably have a wonderful time not doing much at all.

“You either did the job or gave it away – which I did. After six years I had had enough, so I put myself through external university studies, initially in business then into computers.”

It wasn’t long before seniors officers in the police computer branch noticed Simon’s interest and brought him back to Brisbane to work in their computer centre. It was there that he discovered that public servants were looking after the computers – and in those days it was for security and to make sure the public servants were doing the right thing that they brought in police officers.

“Part of our job was to put up tapes, and process emails and files during the Fitzgerald Inquiry,” he said.

A lot of valuable information was stripped off the tapes by the Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC), revealing communication between some people in authority ‘doing their own thing’.

“Many police at that stage didn’t really understand what computing was all about and didn’t have any computer skills – they didn’t understand that emails were kept forever,” said Simon.

Simon was soon able to broaden his skills. Some government computer specialists working at the same centre encouraged him to apply for a job in their section. This he did successfully and it was at a time when he and his family moved house to the Redlands.

It was this move that finally led him to his true passion.

Firstly, the new home sat next to a creek with a koala habit alongside. Secondly, after reading about a forthcoming talk on squirrel gliders, he found that only a couple of blocks away was the meeting place for the Wildlife Preservation Society Bayside branch.

“So I wandered off for the night to have a listen and found these amazing people,” said Simon.

“I soon thought, Gee – these guys are doing an incredible amount of work.”

And guess who was sucked in? So Simon took his first steps into the environment movement.

“They were asking for help. I said I lived locally and I knew bureaucracy quite well and perhaps I could help out with submissions. That was the start of it – it was a very steep learning curve,” he said.

Simon’s expertise in moving easily through the bureaucratic maze of political processes has been invaluable and he is now Queensland’s state president of the Wildlife Preservation Society as well as secretary of Queensland Conservation.

And like the well-trained sniper that he used to be, he still has several targets in the metaphorical cross-hairs, but this time to help save life rather than kill and to make sure the environment we live in is sustainable.

When it comes to the planning battlefield, Simon is certainly the man who knows how to fire the telling shot.

And that’s why has the population issue right in his sights.