This year we have elections coming up for the New South Wales State and Federal Parliaments. Obviously, our voting in these elections will be influenced by many factors but the need for urgent action on climate change by our governments does bring into focus the question of how might we use these elections to vote for action on climate change.
Elections serve several purposes

• To elect people to Parliaments to represent the views and needs of all people in local (lower house) and state (upper house) electorates
• To elect Members of Parliaments who will decide on legislative proposals and oversee the work of Executive Governments
• Indirectly, through our representative Members, to decide who will be Ministers in these Executive Governments

Unfortunately, in the hype that has become politics, it has become increasingly difficult for people generally to have their views and needs recognised, not to mention the difficulties for us of judging (on the basis of brief appearances on television or in the barnyards of Parliaments) the potential competencies of candidates as legislators or as Ministerial heads of government departments.
Increasingly, political parties dominate elections with marketing exercises aimed at ‘selling’ packages of promises. Also increasingly, much of what we ‘know’ about our current representatives and Ministers is based on what the media shows us of their grandstanding both in Parliaments and on tours that have little to do with the real work of either Members or Ministers.
We don’t have to be taken in by all of this. Elections are about far more than simply deciding who will be in Governments. Deciding between candidates for the major parties is only part of what we should be doing when we cast our votes. Elections give us a real opportunity to express our views and needs and to make parliamentary elections the ultimate opinion polls.
One strength of our preferential electoral systems is that they allow us to give our first preferences to candidates and/or policies that we feel best represent our way of thinking. Our preferred candidate may not get elected but our electoral systems allow also for our votes to be transferred to the candidate and his or her policies and party that we regard as next best (and so on).
Eventually, even if we have voted initially for minor candidates, our vote still can have an influence over who actually gets elected – and, indirectly on who forms Government – when it transfers to candidates from the larger parties .
Of course this may require us to number all squares on a ballot papers but there are two very good reasons for us to think about doing this:

• To show elected representatives and governments what we really want of them
• To promote to the health of our democracy, by ensuring that minorities are heard

On the last point, a proportion of electoral funding goes to parties that in a local or state electorate win more than four per cent of primary (first preference) votes. Political parties and not just elections cost money to run. By voting according to your values you are helping to ensure that discussion is maintained in our community.
What has all of this got to do with climate change? If we are to get leadership and vision out of governments on climate change then we need to show that we want these things in both candidates and their parties. The only effective way for us to do that is by voting our first preferences for candidates who have a rational understanding of what must be done both to mitigate climate change and to manage the consequences of climate change.
This is not a time to be voting for vague promises or for things that might come to pass in some distant future.

Ian Bowie General

Below are details of what appears to be an excellent food security conference coming up in Melbourne.  The web site is http://www.communitygarden.org.au/ and the programs and flyers can be downloaded from there.  I feel inspired to go.

4th Annual Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network Conference
(incorporating the 19th Annual Seed Savers’ Network Conference)

WHEN: 20-25 March 2007
WHERE: Collingwood Town Hall, Melbourne

Keynote speakers:
Dr. Vandana Shiva & Helena Norberg-Hodge
International perspectives on food security

David Holmgren
Permaculture, energy descent and food security

Mick Marston
UK Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens

Malaika Edwards
Co-founder People’s Grocery, Oakland USA

Jude & Michel Fanton
Seed Savers’ Network

Gardening Australia presenter Jerry Coleby-Williams
Sustainable urban gardening

Conference themes across four days include:

• School Gardens
• Seed Savers
• Food Security
• City Farms & Community Gardens

Andy General

This is to draw your attention to the draft that is posted on the Lobbying/Advocacy working group page. Some of the material is not relevant to the state policy environment and will be edited out before the finalised  statement goes to candidates once they have declared for the Southern Highlands seat for the 24 March state election.

Ian Bowie General

 

Human-induced climate change is fundamentally linked to the ways in which we use energy, including energy embodied in the goods and services that we consume. Eighty per cent of all energy consumed globally is derived from fossil fuels (all of which cause greenhouse gas emission). Most of the rest is derived from renewable as well as non-renewable sources that have other dirty and/or dangerous by-products as well (data from energy tables for 2001 in www.earthtrends/wri/org). 
 

While the vast majority of the energy produced in Australia is exported we use a great deal of energy within Australia. Energy accounting is very difficult but data from the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics (Energy in Australia, Canberra, 2006) and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (Energy and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Accounts, CAT 4604.0, Canberra, 2001) suggests how we use energy here..
 

Fossil fuels account for almost all of the energy used in Australia. If we look beyond intermediate stages of production and distribution to where goods and services end up, almost thirty per cent of all the energy used in our country ends up in processed goods and services that are exported. About three quarters of the remainder is used directly or indirectly by households.
 

Less than a quarter of the energy used by households is energy consumed in homes in the form of electricity, gas and the like. Rather more is energy used by households for personal transport (much of which is by private motor vehicles). Half is energy that has been used in the production or distribution of goods and services that are consumed by household members, such as buildings, vehicles, food and the like (our consumption of imports is not included in this reckoning).
 

What this boils down to is that most of Australia’s use of greenhouse-gas-emitting fossil fuels ends up as our own personal consumption. While nationally we must harness renewable sources of energy and become more efficient in converting and moving energy around our country, and while our governments and businesses need to cut their own use of energy, we as individuals must reduce our own consumption of energy.
 

As individuals we have to do more than just reduce our consumption of gas and electricity. We have to reduce our personal travel and our consumption of goods and services. Can we do this? Well, many people around the world live in comfort on much less energy than we consume in Australia (though many more in the world live in very little comfort for lack of access to energy).
 

The big question is: can we do this voluntarily and quickly? I don’t think so. The behavioural change needed is too big. We need leaders (rather than politicians) whom we can trust to bring about fundamental changes necessary to enable us to change, such as ensuring  that energy pricing reflects the full life-cycle costs to our environment of our using energy.
 

Ian Bowie

Ian Bowie General