On the mid-slopes

We were tipped out of covid straight into Glasgow and the climate change conference. I was ready for the liberty of moving around as I pleased for a while, and doing some shopping in Melbourne, but here I was, hurried along by news and commentary to the next crisis. Survive a pandemic, and it’s back to saving the planet.

I was sceptical of what might be conjured out of slippery politicians and a world economy set in its ways, but when a friend emailed me a link to David Attenborough’s speech, I hit the link. Dear old Attenborough ascends the stage. How many times has he done this, with that rising inflection in his voice, that urgency? How long before we connect the dots and act?

David Attenborough speaks at the start of #COP26

His speech was an elaborate media event, with backing audio track and simultaneous video screens that layered data and reportage. Ordinary citizens faced the camera and said what they felt, what they wanted. With each heartfelt plea, I felt a flush of hopefulness, but it quickly drained away.

The ‘Yes we can!’ fervour was wearing me down. It’s not that we don’t need to act, but a bit of sadness would make for a more complete picture of humans in 2021, alongside this insistent drumming up of belief in ourselves as a species.

What would I have said, I wondered, in 5 seconds with the camera? Something like: ‘I will do what I can, but my heart is aching at what we have lost – time, species, wonderful natural places. It’s hard to bear, and hard to act when grief gets a grip.’

As the world argued over targets and resolutions, I walked into Barrm Birrm and found my way to the mid-slopes. It was a warm afternoon. The lomandra was in flower, along with more murnong than I remember seeing in previous years. The grasses ran away under the trees and the sun slanted across the hillside. The currawong sent its long looping cry into the valley. 

The mid-slopes of Barrm Birrm, Spring afternoon

Can Country speak to a whitefella, the way it once used to the people who managed this land? Can we get a little less human-centric in the way we see the place we live? I know we’re the problem, and the solution, but what about other voices? What does the bush have to say?

I stood and listened. I waited. I thought about parts per million ticking steadily higher and coking coal being shipped in long trains to ports in marginal Queensland electorates.

‘Shush’ said the grasses, and left me standing quiet in the sunshine.

Ross Colliver, Riddells Creek Landcare, ross.colliver@bigpond.com

The Summer Holidays

February 2020

‘Courage is the resolve to do well without the assurance of a happy ending’ 

Dr Kate Marvel, climate scientist.

The first English assignment at the start of each year in my primary school was … you guessed it: ‘The Summer Holidays’. This year, mine begins: Emergency Services app and weather app at the ready, phones and laptops charged, single bag packed, fire clothes sorted, wool blankets and water in the car. 

Texts flowing out to relatives and friends: ‘Are you alright? What’s happening there?’ Messages flowing back: ‘Our house is still standing, but our neighbour’s is gone.’ ‘We’ve lost the studio.’ Watching the news. Listening to the radio. Day after day.

I’m in a state of constant attention, a hybrid of alertness and fear, and in the background, a brooding meditation on the way things are going in the world. Learning to feel with fires, but also to look past the fires to the politics, and through the politics to the ways of thinking, to what we value. I sense that we’re learning to hold the feeling of situations alongside critical inquiry into those situations.

Situation #1: In Cabargo, the Prime Minister shakes the hand of a pregnant woman. She does not accept this; he insists. The video goes viral. Like a football incident replayed, Australians make up their own minds. No, he didn’t pay attention. No listening, no discussion. No connection to her feeling.

Situation #2: Out shopping In Woodend, with the NSW South Coast and East Gippsland burning, the shop assistant asks cheerily: ‘How are you today?’ My partner replies slowly: ‘I don’t know really ….’ The shop assistant drops into her body, and her tone shifts: ‘I know what you mean.’ A pause in the flow of normal business. Feeling shared.

Situation #3: He checks the latest advice, the facts, says there’s no reason to go. She senses the situation, feel s unsafe. They try to hear each other, through the tangle of feeling and facts. This scenario, a thousand times, between the man and the woman.

Untangling the mess we’re in, with no hope of finding heaven. 

Just perhaps an honorable life.

Ross Colliver, Riddells Creek Landcare

 

 

Dear Greta

Dear Greta

You tell us again to wake up, and to act. You speak to the adults, blithely consuming the planet. It is an old story, the young berating their elders. Some get furious and tell you to go back to school; I feel the need to explain our situation.  

Coming to be an adult is a slow thing. Learning how to get the baby to sleep, how to go to work each day, settling for less that you imagined, how to keep the kitchen bench tidy, stay friends with your partner. Being adult means coming to terms with the world as it is.

We made it to 50 yours, 60 years, 70 years and more. We thought we were getting on top of things. Now we find ourselves complicit in an economic system that feeds and infatuates us while eroding the life of the earth. Single use plastics. Those handsome cuts of meat in the supermarket. The good feeling as the car accelerates on an open road. Everything is suspect. 

Your fury wakes us up. You are bold, which is what the young must be, and what the times demand. Many of us are with you in spirit, but we start with a burden you don’t have, to challenge the prosperity we thought was progress.

We have to break apart the way we live and somehow make something else, with no blueprint, and not much influence. On bad days, everything aches, the joints and the heart. If there’s something new brewing in human consciousness, like genuine care for living things, it sure is taking a while to show up in the mainstream. 

Dear Greta, Google News tells me you are sailing now from the USA to Madrid, live streaming the four-week journey. There’s another UN Climate Change Conference, and there will be more plain speaking. It is your time.

We older ones are coming to terms with having been so mistaken and so slow, and that too is quite some journey. But we will shape up to the world as it is, because that’s what adults do. 

Ross Colliver, Riddells Creek Landcare

 

Big Shifts: Governance

 

‘I won’t be putting pen to paper.’ 

He’s old, grizzled, and disaffected. 

‘I’ve been ‘commenting’ for years, and it doesn’t make any difference.’ 

Steve has driven into town to be part of thinking how to protect the health of the rivers of the Barwon. It’s the same examination of governance arrangements that is underway now for the Waterways of the West – our Maribrynong River, the Werribee and the smaller creeks that run directly to Port Phillip Bay.

The room swarms with government employees. They are bringing government decision making into the public realm. Around the walls are the objectives and process for each study: water availability, water allocation for the next 10 years, the coming 50 years of water supply in the region – these are big topics.

The machinery of government is on display. I’m sitting with the Ministerial Advisory Committee that will recommend ways to improve government regulation and planning that affects the rivers, creeks and wetlands of this region. 

Steve says he's disappointed that there’s been no mention in the just released discussion paper about educating young people about the rivers and catchment. ‘It’s the quickest way to change attitudes, and that’s what we need,’ he says. 

I have to agree. Here we are, talking with the few good souls who have turned up on a Wednesday evening, but collectively, we guzzle our way through cheap water while the real cost of that water is born by rivers choked by weeds and stagnant in summer, without their natural flow. 

We use the water that rivers need for their life. Costs are kept low for consumers, politicians deliver on their promises, but as a society, we choose human use over environmental use, and low cost over the full cost of caring for waterways. The government agencies whose job it is to look after rivers are under-funded; community groups do what they can to fill the gaps. Most of us are in ignorance of how badly the collective effort falls short of proper care for living rivers.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Smart technical experts were going to get the facts, and guide governments. We the general public were to leave them to it, trusting that government would do what was needed. But things are not so good, and it turns out that the facts of science may tell a story that politicians find hard to act on. 

Informed public opinion can make a difference, but what are we doing to bring these dilemmas to our children? How well-equipped are they to live responsibly in the natural world? 

This is a big shift, to participate in decisions that were once left to government, and our children’s education could do more to prepare them to be part of decision making. 

If we did, perhaps when the next Ministerial Advisory Committee holds meetings, in 2030 let's say, these children will arrive at their local hall to say what they think, to hear what others think, and to work out what is to be done. 

That’s what Steve thinks, and while he says he's not putting pen to paper, I’m happy to pass it on.