1. MONDAY, DECEMBER 27
2. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 28
3. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 29
4. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 30
5. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 31
6. SATURDAY, JANUARY 1

DAY 1  MONDAY, DECEMBER 27

10am. HEALTHY IDEAS: Kaye Cheval shows how easy it is to convert your home garden/farm to biodynamics and produce healthy food full of all the nutrients we need for a healthy body. Easy to understand and questions welcome.

11am. GOURMET BUTTERFLIES: Using her own stunning images Helen Schwencke demonstrates how to enhance biodiversity while feeding ourselves. Learn which food plants will attract butterflies and promote other beneficial insects in your garden.

MEDIA MESSAGES: In an increasingly fast-paced world cluttered with more and more news, getting your message across on radio, on TV and in newspapers is a challenge. Brendan O’Malley shares a handful of simple rules that can make it easier to be noticed. 12 noon

SUSTAINABILITY TIPS: Learn about leading-edge and creative approaches to community engagement. Help your community engage with the challenges of sustainability issues; such as proposed density increases. Wendy Sarkissian will show what works and what doesn’t. She is an old hand who has tried almost everything. 1pm

BIODIVERSITY INSPIRATION: Using images and video highlights, CEO of Nature Conservation Council and former legal adviser to IUCN – Pacific Islands, Pepe Clarke, presents inspiring examples of community and government action – protecting and promoting biodiversity in Australia and around the world. 2pm

ASSISTING WILDLIFE: Humans have profoundly changed the entire planet, with scant regard for their fellow creatures. These changes are especially obvious in urban areas where nature often appears to be in retreat. But we can all help – Dr Darryl Jones, Dr Brendan Taylor and Dr Sean Fitzgibbon talk about how. 3pm

MEANINGFUL MOVIE: ‘In Transition 1.0’, compiled from footage sent in by Transition initiatives around the world, is introduced by Sonya Wallace and Janet Millington. The Transition Network is a movement of communities around the world responding creatively and proactively to peak oil and climate change. See them as an historic opportunity to build the world anew. 4pm

FIRE IN THE BELLY: Jack Mundey and Professor Ian Lowe lead the Flames of Discontent forum discussing the topic ‘Green Bans: Would they work today’. 5.30pm

DAY 2 TUESDAY, DECEMBER 28

BACKYARD BONUS: In a session titled ‘From Zone 5 to Kitchen Table’, teachers from Northey Street City Farm explain why food from your backyard is effective in global biodiversty conservation.  8.30am

EARLY INSPIRATION: Fiona O’Sullivan speaks of the power of our choices and dreams in being the change we wish to see in the world. This session, called ‘Be The Change’, which is also the name of the Australian branch of a global evolutionary movement, is part presentation part small group work. Discover inspiration in community. 10am

MAKING CONNECTIONS: The Greenhouse venue has been connecting people from all over Australia and linking them with like-minds and existing initiatives. Transition Towns experts Janet Millington and Sonya Wallace facilitate a connecting exercise, including reports about what works and what hasn’t for the past two years. 11am

SWITCHED ON: That’s co-authors Liz Minchin and Dr Donna Green who wrote the award-winning book ‘Screw Light Bulbs’. The duo will talk about their book which shows how individuals, businesses and governments in Australia can make a surprisingly big difference on climate change.  12 noon

TURNING POINT: In a session called ‘Four years. Go’, Graeme Taylor, Professor Andrew Wilford, Professor Ian Lowe discuss the point that humankind has reached a turning point in its history. It’s a time when we must, can and will leave warfare, poverty and environmental destruction behind and rapidly evolve a peaceful, just and sustainable planetary civilization. Now is the time for visionaries and heroes – are you ready? 1pm

TIME TO DEBUNK: Kelvin Thompson MP, Cr Debra Henry and Hon Sandra Kanck (with Larissa Waters chairing) will explode a few myths surrounding population growth. For instance, they will show that the notion that population growth is essential to support an aging population, is nonsense. 2pm

REPORT CARD:  Award-winning authority on solar power, wind energy and energy efficiency, Dr David Mills, presents a review of the past performance, current status and future prospects for renewable energy in Australia.  4pm

DAY 3  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 29

SOIL SOLUTIONS:  Start the day digging up some treasures with the regular permaculture gardeners from Brisbane’s Northey Street City Farm. Take simple steps to backyard abundance through understanding, forming, restoring and maintaining soil. Learn about composting, no-dig gardening, legumes and soil science. 8.30am

BACK TO BASE: Transition Decade Alliance’s Giselle Wilkinson presents an interactive session, ‘Shared Plan to Restore A Safe Climate’, enabling participants to contribute meaningfully. 12 noon

BASIN BASICS: Politician Sandra Kanck reasonably argues that Australia’s population cannot grow without the water and food to support it. The Murray-Darling Basin supports 40 per cent of Australia’s food production, but is being pushed beyond its limits with severe over-allocation of water for irrigation. The session topic is called ‘Thrashing the Murray-Darling Basin – Growing food for a growing population’. 1pm

COSTING CARBON: Sooner or later, emitting planet-warming greenhouse gases will no longer be free. Legislation imposing a price on burning fossil fuels is inevitable.  Liz Minchin, Dr Donna Green and Larissa Waters discuss the options of a cap-and-trade system, or outright tax on fossil fuels. Chair Nick Heath. 2pm

HEALING: GROWTH ALTERNATIVE: If ‘Growthmania’ won’t help us survive the 21st century what else can we do? A panel of futurists including Dr Paul Collins, Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe AO, Professor Ivana Milojevic and Dr Patricia Kelly discuss the challenges and alternatives for healthier futures. 3pm

ZERO CARBON: Is zero emissions housing possible? Beyond Zero Emissions is currently putting together the Zero Carbon Australia 2020 Buildings Plan. Join Patrick Hearps for a sneak preview of this costed blueprint for transitioning all of Australia’s residential and commercial buildings for maximum energy efficiency and zero greenhouse gas emissions. 4.30pm

PLAYBACK THEATRE:  The Green Thread invites you to share your story of your love, drive and passion for all things GREEN.  Watch as those stories are instantly played back using drama, music, metaphor and movement. What drives your passion for the environment and what keeps us going?  5.30pm

DAY 4  THURSDAY, DECEMBER 30

DOORSTEP VEGIES: Reduce food miles. Find out about easy-to-grow sub-tropical vegetables, not often seen but prolific at Brisbane’s Northey Street City Farm where permaculture is practised. 8.30am

MINING OUR FOOD: Thousands of hectares of prime farming land and precious underground water systems are to be sacrificed for an open cut coal mine on the Darling Downs and Alpha also for Coal Seam Gas extraction in Surat Basin. Drew Hutton and Rob McCreath discuss the environmental and social implications. 10am

GROWING BENEFITS: The local food movement is building broad momentum with positive impacts on the environment; also supporting local growers socially and economically. With Dr Dick Copeman, Robert Pekin, Ian Golding and Julie Shelton. Chair Susie Chapman. 11am

BIO-AG IS BETTER: Dr Maarten Stapper demonstrates how biological  agriculture leads to higher nutrient content of food and higher biodiversity on farms with greatly reduced impact on catchment environments. This process can achieve a doubling of the organic carbon content of the soil, and, if practised nationwide, could capture most CO2 released in the country and slow climate change.  12.30pm

PLEA FOR LOGIC: Professor Ian Lowe believes we must be applying science to environmental campaigns; to link reason with the passion. In his latest publication Voice of Reason – Reflections on Australia, Ian makes a plea for logic rather than fear-mongering – promoting change based on common sense. 1.30pm

TOP SOIL: Increasing soil carbon can be the solution to many land management problems.  Putting carbon back in the soil can increase productivity and fertility; also decrease impacts on global warming. Dr Ram Dalal, Dr Maartin Stapper and Ray O’Grady discuss how to turn carbon loss into carbon gain. Chair Susie Chapman. 2.30pm

ZEROING IN: Patrick Hearps presents the cutting-edge ‘Zero Carbon Australia 2020 Stationary Energy Plan’ put together by Beyond Zero Emissions and the University of Melbourne Energy Institute. It’s a detailed and costed blueprint for transitioning Australia’s stationary energy (electricity) sector to 100 per cent renewable energy, using off-the-shelf technology that is available now. 4pm

PLAYBACK THEATRE: Green stories with music and drama. 5.30pm

DAY 5   FRIDAY, DECEMBER 31

HEN PARTY: Brisbane’s Northey Street City Farmers (and the girls) will show you how chooks (the girls) help in your permaculture food garden by weeding, fertilising, tilling and much more. 8.30am

POWER OF ONE: Boost your ability to use your own skills to influence others with educator and facilitator Professor Bruce Muirhead, CEO of the Eidos Institute. Learn how collaborative partnership is the key to effective problem solving at all levels. 10am

SAVE OUR SPACESHIP: When the life-support systems on the Apollo 13 spaceship began to fail, Mission Control used design principles to analyse the problem and develop solutions that saved the crew. Graeme Taylor and Professor Andrew Wilford argue that we can apply the same principles to saving Spaceship Earth. 11am

SURVIVAL ECONOMICS: Richard Sanders exposes economics as a dangerous mythology disconnected from reality and suggests it can only result in liquidating nature; gross poverty and growing inequity. He presents ideas on how finance efficiency, allocation and distribution can be dealt with in a sustainable world. 12 noon

FAIR GO: Fair to people; fair to animals; fair to the environment. What we eat has implications for animals, climate change, forests and wildlife, water, people’s health and quality of life. Andrew Bartlett, Giselle Wilkinson and Cameron Neil chew over eating choices. 1pm

GREEN MYTHBUSTERS: The detonation and destruction of some widely-held beliefs. Myths such as: Nuclear Energy is cheaper and cleaner than renewables; Renewable energy can’t supply baseload power; Cities and biodiversity don’t mix and more. The mythbusters are Dr Darryl Jones, Dr David Mills, Professor Ivana Milojevi?, Graeme Taylor, Richard Sanders, Patrick Hearps and Tim Hollo. 2pm

AMAZING AWAKENINGS: The panel recall their moments of ecological epiphany. With S. Sorrenson, Professor Andrew Wilford and Kristina Olsen. Host Ian Mackay. 3pm

GREEN INNOVATORS: Promoting their particular brand of green in unique ways. Patrick Hearps explains how Beyond Zero Emissions launch their strategies; Maryella Hatfield uses film; David Wyatt uses commercial experience; Don Saxby uses his electric vehicle as his showpiece and Sidonie Carpenter uses her experience in landscape design to promote Green Roofs.  4pm

DAY 6   SATURDAY, JANUARY 1

COMMUNITY GARDENS: The festival’s friends from Brisbane’s Northey Street City Farm wind up the last day with a special forum. The session is titled ‘Community Gardens = Social Economy’ and explores the opportunities for community gardens to develop the social economy in their local and wider community. Learn from the presenters and share your own ideas towards developing resilience in your own community garden. 10am

ON THEIR METTLE: Paul and Dr Virginia Marshall share their knowledge of the effects of uranium mining and of indigenous water rights. They emphasise that there are better alternatives for economic stability for indigenous communities that are rich in cultural heritage and surrounded by unique environmental beauty. 11am

ENERGY TO COOK: Learn how to cook without gas or electricity, using the sun’s energy. Learn how to use minimal energy to cook when the sun doesn’t shine. With Barbara Ford see how easy it is to make your own low-tech cookers. 12 noon

ENDING AIR CONS: Our buildings can be kept comfortable (and substantial environmental and economic savings can be achieved) without need for air conditioners, by using a range of passive techniques. Marci Webster-Mannison tells the story of ecologically-led design experience and practical ways for heating and cooling buildings without the need for power. 1pm

THE BIG TARGET: 1 Million Women is a non profit organisation whose aim is to inspire 1 Million Women of Australia to take practical action on climate change. Join campaign founder Natalie Isaacs and friends to discover how this organisation is destined to become the largest women’s movement in the country taking action on climate change. By the time Natalie walks out of the festival gates she hopes to add a substantial number of ladies to the list. Make it easy for her. 2pm

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.

Following in the footsteps of a savvy prince and the founder of farming philosophy that has taken the world by storm sounds a sensible thing to do. John Burrows talks to Kaye Cheval who is spreading the word about biodynamics.

Appearing at the GREENhouse: Healthy Ideas -10 am, Monday, December 27, 2010.

Transformation — changing the ways we do things – is what the Greenhouse is all about.

Advocating big changes to the way we produce food is Kaye Cheval, the first presenter in this year’s program. Kaye is a natural therapist and educator of biodynamics, the organic farming philosophy which has adherents world-wide. The essence of the biodynamic approach is that the farm is regarded as a self-contained entity where individual elements – soil, plants and animals – are integrated into a self-nourishing whole.

There are various techniques of soil enhancement, and an astronomical calendar is used to guide planting and harvesting times. Kaye is applying the biodynamic method on her property in the rolling hills of Carters Ridge, in the Noosa hinterland. It’s a lush landscape, green after good spring rain, very different from the semi-arid plains of western Queensland where she grew up.

Kaye Cheval

“My parents ran a sheep station near Winton,” Kaye recalls.

“We were very connected with the outdoors, went horse riding, ran around barefoot and swam in the dam.

“For much of our food, we were pretty well self-reliant, we had milk and butter, fruit trees and a garden enriched with cow manure, no chemicals at all.”

Chemicals, however, did play a big part in raising sheep, but safety issues didn’t get much attention in those days.

“My father developed and died from cancer in his early 50s from his exposure to these chemicals, so I have made it my life work to pass on what I have learnt over the years from others and from real life experiences,” said Kaye.

To that end she is developing her property – Waratah Eco Farm – as a place where people can learn and experience what it’s like to be on a farm operating under biodynamics and permaculture principles.

Kaye’s journey from the western plains began with a move to Sydney to study and work as a nurse, then marriage, children and a move back to the land. This was to a place in the Northern Rivers, a mixed farm where Kaye raised cattle and pigs, and grew vegetables. Her husband was a school teacher at nearby Nimbin, and it was inevitable that Kaye would encounter different approaches to farming.

“We didn’t use chemicals from day one,” said Kaye, “But living in the area led to an understanding that modern farm practices left a lot to be desired and there was a better way of doing things.”

Kaye also studied natural therapies and after moving to the Sunshine Coast, set up the Natural Therapy Centre in Cooroy. Here, for 10 years, she had a very successful practice; it was a no pills and no potions approach, more about advocating lifestyle changes, particularly regarding food. Her interest in biodynamics was sparked by a course she attended in 2002. It was run by Lynette West from the Biodynamic Education Centre. Lynette was the biodynamics consultant to the Mullon Creek Natural Farm.

This is the largest biodynamic farm in Australia and caught the interest of Prince Charles, who invited Lynette to run a foundation course on biodynamics at his organic farm in England.

Lynette died recently, and is an inspiration to Kaye, who is aiming to continue Lynette’s work of spreading the biodynamics philosophy on her property.

Kaye grows fruit and vegies, and there are the animals – chooks, ducks and goats which supply milk and cheese. Grevilleas mingle with fruit trees and attract birds, keeping insects under control. There are swales to conserve ground moisture. One corner of the property is devoted to forest.

Kaye says that biodynamics is viable for both large and small-scale farming. The principles can be applied to a backyard or even a small courtyard. She cites the case of a friend in her 80s, living in a retirement home.

“Space is tight, but my friend grows bananas, vegetables, herbs, and various fruit trees in pots, as well as keeping bees and making biodynamic preparations. She is a good example of someone doing it on a small scale.”

The use of preparations is an intriguing part of the biodynamics method. They’re made by packing a cow’s horn with cow manure, burying it deep in the ground in the autumn, recovering it in the spring and further treating the fermented material by mixing with water and stirring in a certain way. The preparation can then be used as a compost additive, or more commonly used to spray on fields – a little goes a long way – to increase soil nutrition and fertility.

It’s an important part of the biodynamics philosophy, which was developed in the 1920s by Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian who also founded a new spiritual movement – Anthroposophy – and the Steiner education system.

He believed that the preparations imparted cosmic forces into the soil. His methods must have results, if the growth of biodynamic farming is any guide. It’s practised in more than 50 countries.

New Zealand proponent Peter Proctor has taken the concept to India, where he has worked with marginal farmers across the country to conserve soil and save communities. A film of his work, One Man, One Cow, One Planet, has won awards world-wide.

Kaye is spreading the word at the local level, and concentrates on the practical steps that everyone can take.

“We need to avoid dead food,”  said Kaye.

“That’s why the soil used for growing food must be healthy and able to supply the nutrients needed in our diet. We can then expect to have healthy bodies.”

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.

Happy cyclist at the Woodford Folk Festival

Surveys show that driving is easily the most popular way of getting there, with 86.3 per cent of patrons arriving by motor vehicle. There are a host of problems caused by all that traffic – congestion, the need for parking space, dusty conditions if it’s dry, and mud if there’s been rain. So it makes sense to encourage patrons to find an alternative.

Public transport is a good choice for many. There are up to 10 express bus services a day out to the festival site from Caboolture train station, taking patrons right to the ticketing gate.

The bus services don’t start until Boxing Day, by which time many of the prime campsites have been taken by motoring patrons who arrive the day before. So organisers are providing ‘bus travellers’ camping – car free camping space exclusively for those arriving by bus.

It’s an attractive camping area – level and well drained ground with trees for shade, and close to the ticketing gate and welcome gate. Car-pooling to the festival is another way to keep cars to a minimum. It saves money and is great for making new friends. On the festival website, you can find a link to Car Pool Australia, which connects patrons seeking a ride with those who have space in their cars.

Alternatively, find the notice board on the website, there’s a ‘ride share’  section where you can seek or offer a ride.

Cycling patrons are very welcome at Woodford, a free luggage service being a major incentive.  Together with sponsors Epic Cycles and the Sunshine Coast Environment Council, the festival arranges for luggage to be collected from pick-up points in Paddington in Brisbane (the Epic Cycle shop), and from Nambour (SCEC’ s office in Porters Lane).

The luggage is collected before Christmas and is waiting for patrons when they arrive. It’s then delivered back to the pick-up points on January 2.

Some cyclists ride incredible distances to reach the festival, but most take their bikes on the train to Beerwah or Beerburrum stations, and cycle from there. It’s a relaxed ride through forest and farmland along mostly quiet roads.

Cyclists are encouraged to jump the queue at the ticketing gate – push bikes may push in! They, too, have dedicated camping space. Cyclist camping is nestled along a creek bank lined with rainforest. There’s a marquee for secure bicycle parking and socialising, and, if needed, a mechanical service provided by Epic Cycles.

More details about cycling to Woodford can be found on the festival website.

• Woodford Folk Festival: the Greenhouse
• Cycling to the Woodford Folk Festival
• Denying climate change
• Exploring the Past
• Traveston Dam: looking behind the lens
• Up Close: reconnecting with nature
• Christmas reading list

Woodford Folk Festival: the Greenhouse

About the Greenhouse, interviews with: Hans Baer, Sohail Inayatullah, Andrew Wilford, Graeme Taylor, Jillian Rossiter. Read the interviews here. Brought to you by Brian Rickards.

Cycling to the Woodford Folk Festival

Find out how to make the most of your trip to the festival

Denying climate change

When faced with tragedy, atrocities or grief we humans, it appears, have a wonderful way of dealing with it. Denial. Read more.

Exploring the past

Another selection by Dr Deborah Jordan and taken from a newspaper cutting held in the Palmer Papers. This piece, Caloundra: reasons for being there was first published in the Brisbane Telegraph, 28 January 1928.

Nettie Palmer was born and bred in Melbourne and alive to the differences between the Sunshine and the south. She, too, was city reared so conscious in the process of attunement when she moved to Caloundra in 1925 with her husband and children. She like him, lived by her pen and wrote much about the region. Here she reflects.

Traveston Dam: looking behind the lens

It’s often said that a picture paints a thousand words. Photographs of faces of anguish after the initial announcement, beautiful natural scenes that were so close to being lost forever and finally faces of joy and relief after the simple word, ‘no’ echoed throughout the Mary Valley.

Arkin Mackay’s images made the issue personal. They spawned far more than a thousand words. They brought us face to face with the product of government decisions.

And most importantly they reminded us that although a river can physically divide communities, rivers can also bring people together in a way not often seen before.

Ian Mackay, Arkin’s father, proudly reminds us about the importance of her work. Read more.

Up Close: Reconnecting with nature

Paul and Sally Johnson have both had a long experience with nature through their personal and professional lives. Along with their two daughters, Elly and Jessie, they have been quietly and modestly working towards a sustainable existence.

In this edition we take an Up Close look at their lifestyle and why they decided to home-school their daughters. Read more.

Christmas reading list

Crunch Time: using and abusing Keynes to fight the twin crises of our era (Tony Kevin)

Sustainable Innovators: agents of change on the Sunshine Coast (Dana Thomsen)

The Clean Industrial Revolution: growing Australian prosperity in a greenhouse age (Ben McNeil)

See you in 2009

Thank you to all our readers, online subscribers and contributors. We hope you have a great Christmas and we look forward to bringing you more Eco news in 2010. Have a safe and peaceful holiday.

It’s a place where conversions take place, where ordinary festivalgoers with no previous environmental commitment to live sustainably suddenly see that lifestyle changes are necessary if this planet can continue to support us all.

Every year, the crowds grow at the Greenhouse. More people are concerned about climate change, extreme population pressures, our built environment, our forests, our food and the way we grow it, our resources, the greed, self-interest and over-consumption in western society as if there’s no tomorrow and the planet was an infinite resource, the loss of wildlife habitat, carbon emissions and the looming energy crisis, and peak oil.

They are asking how do we get out of this mess while governments and oppositions haven’t got the guts, the gumption or the get-up-and-go to do that for us. They will be asking how they can make a contribution.

At the Greenhouse they will find many answers and be able to meet the people with the brainpower, willpower and inspiration to make a real difference.

In the end, many say, it will be people power that will be the necessary force to turn the tide of self-interest, willful ignorance, complacency or plain numbskull indifference. In our supposedly democratic society, it seems votes are the only basic that politicians seem to understand.

That’s why the messages from the Woodford Greenhouse and several other venues are important and ones to be spread convincingly and with fervour to all corners beyond the festival, during and after the festivities.

At this year’s festival there’s a wealth of knowledge and wisdom on tap. Men and women with no axe to grind other than to save our planet for humankind and countless other species before it’s too late.

Over the six days of the festival there will be more than 60 Greenhouse stage speakers, many of them at the top level of their field of interest, taking part over 40 sessions. Added to that, the Greenhouse is the meeting place for bird and butterfly walks, bushfood walks and home for various information stalls and workshops.

Also, because the Greenhouse venue is not large enough, the Great Green Debate will be held at the Concert stage as will a major panel discussion called ‘Climate Change: the Science and the Politics’, starring Greens senator Christine Milne, Clive Hamilton and Greenhouse stalwart Professor Ian Lowe.

Greenhouse organiser Jillian Rossiter had glowing words for the professor.

“The one person that spreads the word the most and has been responsible for the credibility of the Greenhouse is Professor Ian Lowe.

“He has been part of the Greenhouse program from its beginning in 1992 and has a vast network of connections. He has assisted me enormously.”

Asked about this year’s program, Jillian said she was really proud of the line-up.

“It has variety, going right through the hands-on such as permaculture workshops to the more academic scientists talking about the heavy issues such as climate change,” she said.

Jillian also praised the festival organisers for their foresight back in 1992 when it was the Maleny Folk Festival and the Greenhouse venue was introduced.

“They were just so far ahead of any other festival and they still are,” she said.

Of course, the Woodford Folk Festival is far more than the Greenhouse stage. There are more than 20 venues offering a wide range of entertainment including song, dance, theatre, ceremony, circus, film, folklore, vaudeville, visual arts, the spoken word, indigenous acts, comedy, workshops of all kinds plus a long line-up of spectacular street theatre.

Making this all happen are about 3000 performers at nearly 600 acts over the six days. Added to this are the many food outlets, which include some great restaurant settings, plus a bevy of bars and other drinks outlets. And if you have time for shopping, it’s hard to go by the street stalls stacked with colourful craft and clothing in the village-like festival precinct.

Hans Baer

Eco: What drew you into the field of anthropology back in your student days? Were you inspired by anyone. Please outline?

Hans: I worked as an engineer during the 1960s, a period of social ferment around much of the world. I wanted to understand what was going on and thus studied anthropology. My politicisation started in the corporate world and ever since I have moved ever leftward.

Eco: How urgent is your call to action regarding the affects of climate change on the health of the human species? Please expand.

Hans: I believe that a systematic program of climate change mitigation is extremely crucial, not only in terms of the fate of humanity and the planet up until 2100 but beyond. We humans have been on the face of this planet for some five to six million years. Climate change is the most profound problem that humanity faces and one that is related to many other issues, including the global economy with its treadmill of production and consumption, which is heavily reliant upon fossil fuels; the distribution of resources in the world; what we eat; how we house ourselves; how we get around; and our relationship between with other species and the environment.  In terms of health per se, I along with Merrill Singer in our book Global Warming and the Political Ecology of Health (2009) apply critical medical anthropology in addressing the role of anthropogenic or human-created climate change on health.

Eco: How do you respond to the challenges on your findings by the sceptics?

Hans: As far as I know, no climate sceptics have responded to our work. I do not purport to be a climate scientist. This would entail years of academic study, just as becoming an anthropologist takes years of study. While I have read several excellent overviews of climate science, I accept the general conclusions of the vast majority of climate scientists that climate change is in large part due to human-related activities. Indeed, many climate scientists, including Barrie Pittock and David Karoly in Australia and James Hansen in the US, argue that the observations in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report are on the conservative side and that dangerous climatic changes are occurring faster than predicted in the report’s worst-case scenarios.

Eco: What’s your prognosis for the planet if politicians and decision makers put the environmental concerns of most of the scientific community on the back burner?

Hans: While I do not want to be a doomsday prophet, if politicians and decisions makers put the environmental concerns of most of the scientific community on the back burner, the world is going to become a much nastier place than it already is. Unfortunately, the people who will be the most adversely affected by climate change will be the poor who have contributed the least to it. In addition to the loss of millions, perhaps even billions of lives, many who will seek to migrate to more developed societies. There is the strong possibility that the developed countries will develop an even more profound fortress mentality than they already have. The Pentagon and other security entities have issued reports that express concern about the impact of climate change on geopolitics.

Eco: What kind of negative health implications, in general and even specific in Australia’s case, are you discovering as the planet warms?

Hans: More frequent heat waves, particularly in urban areas, threaten the health and lives of vulnerable populations, such as the elderly and the sick. The estimated mortality of some 35,000 people during the heat wave of summer 2003 were associated not only from the high temperatures but also the fact that night-time temperatures have been rising nearly twice as fast as day-time temperatures. The lingering night-time warmth deprived people of normal relief from blistering day-time temperatures and the opportunity to recuperate from heat stress. Air pollution linked to longer, warmer summers particularly affects those suffering from respiratory problems, such as asthma. Heat waves in recent years in Australia have been implicated in 100s of deaths.

Climate change has also been implicated in the resurgence of numerous epidemics, including malaria, cholera, dengue (which has started to appear in Queensland) , and West Nile yellow fever. While climate change is not the only factor involved, it is estimated that there are 300-500 million cases of malaria in Africa alone, resulting in between 1.5 and 2.7 million deaths, more than 90 percent among children under five years of age. We can speak of the diseases of climate change. These include any ‘tropical disease’ that spreads to new places and peoples, but also includes failing nutrition and fresh water supplies because of desertification of pastoral areas or flooding of agricultural areas.

Eco: What kind of socio-political and other system changes do countries need to make to counter these health threats? Please give an outline of the remaining window of opportunity to address these real and potential health crises

Hans: Anthropologists have long recognised that social systems, whether local, regional, or global do not last forever. Global capitalism has been around for some 500 years but I believe that it must be transcended if humanity and other forms of life are going to survive in some reasonable fashion. These contradictions include the growing gap between the rich and poor within nation-states and between nation-states thanks for corporate globalisation and ongoing conflicts in many parts of the world. The latter can be related in part of various governments, led by the United States but including the United Kingdom and Australia, which are willing to do the bidding of global corporate interests. The treadmill of production and consumption associated with the drive for profits contributes not only to the depletion of natural resources but also to environmental degradation, the most profound of which is climate change. While energy renewable sources are crucial in climate change mitigation, ultimately humanity needs to start thinking about creating an alternative world system committed to social equity, democratic processes in all walks of life, and environmental sustainability. We cannot expect the system that created the problem to solve the problem with simple market mechanisms, such as carbon trading.

Eco: Please briefly outline the scientific processes you use to reveal these threats to humankind

Hans: Thus far, the physical sciences and mainstream economics, in contrast to political economy, have been privileged in terms of addressing climate change, but it is imperative that other disciplines be considered climate change. Thus the social sciences and   humanities should play a crucial role in elucidating the role of political-economic systems in creating climate change and how social systems need to be restructured not only in adapting to climate change but far more crucial mitigating it.

Eco: Describe briefly the early days of your anthropological studies and how it gradually developed into a mission to alert our society leaders to the present looming planetary crisis.

Hans: My initial work in anthropology focused on various U.S. religious groups  that sought in various ways to challenge social inequality, either class or racial or both, in US society. I also became quickly involved in medical anthropology and coined, with Merrill Singer, coined the term ‘critical medical anthropology’ which entailed bringing bring political economy of health into medical anthropology. I have for long been interested in alternatives to global capitalism and read a great deal about post-revolutionary societies, such as the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba. Based upon my reading and experiences in what was the German Democratic Republic, I came to the conclusion that these various post-revolutionary societies were at best transitions between capitalism and socialism that generally aborted in their efforts to create socialism for complex historical and social structural reasons, both internal and external. For me, socialism remains a vision that has not yet been achieved. While much of my initial research focused on issues of social justice and inequality, since the early 1990s I have sought to couple these concerns with environmental ones, both in terms of health issues and climate change ones.

Sohail Inayatullah is a man of vision, peace and good sense

Brainstorming with Sohail Inayatullah is an experience where you are taken on a journey to future horizons, to a limitless array of possibilities and social scenarios – whatever he can bring your mind to imagine.

To some people they might be mirages never to be grasped, for others with a different mindset it’s like a door being opened not only to the potential of real global change but also a ray of light on one’s inner self.

Sohail, only if you want him to be, is the gentle guide to changes for the better. This humble man with an aura of wisdom and peace opens up in the heads of his clients vistas for alternate, more sustainable futures. Some times the opening vista is featureless, requiring Sohail’s soothing encouragement to form a picture, to form an idea.

This engaging man who spent  the first six years of his life in Pakistan, then travelled the world, first with his family as a boy and then by himself as young man, studied at the University of Hawaii where he did a PhD in political science focusing on macro-history and the ‘grand patterns of change’. He also became deeply interested in the thoughts of Indian philosopher PR Sarkar, the founder of Ananda Marga..

He was especially taken by Sarkar’s theories of time, change and the future.

Because of his father’s work with the United Nations, he’d had an early grounding as a boy in global affairs, having lived also in the US, Switzerland and Malaysia. But that was just a taster for Sohail who beyond his early formal studies is now recognised as one of the planet’s great thinkers and futurists and is in demand worldwide with his ‘foresight workshops’, travelling widely.

In Hawaii, where like many other young men he found a love for the surf, he spent 10 years working with the justice system, looking at the future of law, future of mediation and the future of robotics. He also set up the court’s foresight program in one of his earlier challenges.

At that time he had not anticipated his own change, his own future. While travelling, a chance meeting in a Finland sauna with a QUT academic led to a working association where they held courses in Fiji and Thailand. But from that point he was destined to live in Australia and become an Australian citizen.

It wasn’t long after that  that a position became available at the Brisbane tertiary institution where he worked for nearly four years. But the old call of the surf was strong and in 1999 he moved up to the Sunshine Coast.

He now lives at Mooloolaba in a comfortable home with his wife Ivana, who he met in Barcelona in 1993, and two teenage children, just a two minute walk to the beach and, of course, the surf.

At first glance, his lifestyle would appear to be very laid-back, but this very fit 51-year-old guru of future thinking possesses a CV that is exhausting just to read, let alone enact.

Although Sohail maintains a massive workload, he seems to carry it effortlessly on his shoulders. There’s hardly a line on his face from contemplating future solutions at a time when the planet is in so much chaos and argument.

While meeting many groups from big business, politics and local communities who are either searching for real future answers or going through the motions of the exercise, he maintains an inner peace with himself, although he does admit that some unseeing people can mildly rankle him on a bad day. But in the big picture he can look past that.

In his long list of commitments, Sohail has one which is important to him and that is to attend this year’s Woodford Folk Festival. It’s a place where he sees some of his ideals in practice, where the stiff wall of formal protocol and business bullshit has been swept away with enlightenment, social acceptance, plain good fun, hugs and smiles – not to mention some great entertainment and the delicious dandelion drink that Sohail searches out.

Indeed, Woodford’s famous festival transports Professor Sohail Inayatullah back to his childhood and his place of birth.

“It has a Pakistani feel about it – village environment, people sharing, exchanging goods and ideas, a special colourful vibrancy,” he said while stirring the tasty smoothies he was making for us.

“Woodford is a great example in showing that play is important in creating a better society.

“In my formal work I try to bring in play. But in play there needs to be a structure. The foresight workshops people love the most involve scenarios and drama and where we find a way to play with ideas, to play in the space and see what emerges.”

At the festival, he will also be putting on his thinker’s hat, to get the Greenhouse house audience to consider the topic ‘Spirituality – The Quadruple Bottom Line’. He will also take part in a forum alongside intellectual and environmental heavyweights Clive Hamilton, Professor Ian Lowe and Dr Patricia Kelly. Their discussion, which invites questions from the audience, addresses the topic ‘Can Humankind Make the Change?’

His topic on adding a fourth condition of spirituality to a business’s triple bottom line of financial, social and environmental responsibility to make it economically sustainable should bring lively response.

“We have learned from the Green movement that you can’t talk about economic progress without Gaia as the base,” he said.

“At nearly every workshop come the questions ‘Why am I on this planet? What is my purpose?’ It all leads to a spiritual question – but I don’t see it as a religious issue.

“A spiritual issue is one of the social technologies which allow us, firstly, to be more inclusive; secondly; to allow us to create a better world in terms of justice; and thirdly, to lead us into more inner bliss that comes from yoga, prayer, tai chi, meditation etcetera.”

Sohail, says his role as a futurist is not as a planner or consultant dealing in detail, but as one with a sense of trends and with methods and tools that can help people make different and wiser decisions – to explore different pathways to different futures.

“At a time of global transition it’s hard for many people because there isn’t certainty and they feel insecure. It’s hard for people to make that jump,” he said.

“Our role, and the work at Woodford, is how to create the imagination first that makes a different world possible. Then it’s into conceptual theories and all the practical examples – real live things we can hang our hats on.”

In his work of finding alternate pathways to the future for any organisation, Sohail persuades people to look closely at their inner selves. In terms of ego there may be multiple sub-personalities in all of us, he says.

“There might be an 18-year-old self, a wise self, a hurt self and others all driving us,” he said.

“The first thing I do is get people to have a dialogue with their sub-personalities. Once I can find out what their inner story is and which of their inner selves is active we try to find ways to speak to the self that’s more future-oriented, that’s more wise and can think through the changes that are happening.

“A leader could be operating, not from their wise self but from an immature self .

“With those in leadership positions, it takes the successful pusher/achiever self to get there, but in doing so it disowns other selves such as the emotional self, the child self, the creative self, the spiritual self. This disownment process and the lack of integration within the mind can lead to bad effects

“If you look at the past 500 years the collective world ego nature has been disowned. Now it’s fighting back as global warming.”

So Sohail always asks leaders what they have disowned.

“Hopefully, what they’ve disowned will come back in a positive way and help them change, but if they’ve totally disowned it, it could come back in pathological, evil way and strike them on the head,” he said.

To bring about positive change, Sohail says it requires firstly a conversation of selves then a conversation of outer scenarios.

“With any group, it’s how to integrate different sub-personalities and use that integration to create a different future. If there’s not that inner questioning of the future, the questioning of oneself, it’s the same old default future, the unquestioned future,” he said..

“The core of my work is questioning the future so we can change the present.”

Sohail says that in his foresight workshops he gets people to first consider their inner story, the shared history from their particular community and try to create a map for its future and how it might look, what are the trends and drivers.

The next part is to consider how that map might be disturbed by a range of inputs, such as climate change or even artificial intelligence. Out of this, more robust maps are created and a rescripting for the desired future.

“Once we’ve done that we do scenarios for alternate futures and then do a closed-eye visualisation of what they want the world to look like. It’s very personal, emotive, whole brain stuff,” he said.

“Once we can define the vision, the last question I ask is ‘what happened to get there?’

“I don’t do strategic planning, such as saying it’s now 2010 and what three things need to happen to get to your 2020. It’s more like you are in 2020 in your preferred future, what does it feel like, what does it look like? Now tell me the three things it took to get here.

Sohail said he was not looking at a masterplan approach, but back casting to find ways to achieve a vision.

Into his own future, he hopes to continue linking the global and personal.

“My vision is to continue to ?play a role in creating a different planetary future,” he said.

This man says he tries to live up to his first name which means ‘from the star’ and his second name which means ‘one who gets the benefits of God’; implied expectations but which he readily and generously passes as gifts to the future.

Professor Sohail Inayatullah has been and continues to be in great demand worldwide. As well as holding a number of academic positions such as adjunct professor at the University of the Sunshine Coast, professor at Tamkang University in Taiwan, and visiting academic at QUT.

He has authored/edited twenty nine books, journal special issues and cdroms.He has held countless ‘foresight workshops’ with major business, political and community groups around the globe.