Welcome to Issue #23 

To restore the stability of our planet we must restore its biodiversity, the very thing that we have removed. It is the only way out of this crisis that we ourselves have created. We must re-wild the world.

Sir David Attenborough

We are living and working on the unceded lands of the Yalukit Willam people. We pay our respects to the traditional owners of the land and their ongoing connection to land, waters, sky and culture.

From 7 October, ballot packs will be hitting Port Phillip for the crucial upcoming council election. For the last four years, a hung council (equally divided between progressive and conservative members) has slowed climate action in the area. The next four years represent a narrowing window to prepare Port Phillip for climate change. Your vote is important! 

An excellent group of 22 Candidates (out of the 48 running) have committed to the PECAN Climate Pledge and completed the PECAN Candidate Survey. You can find the candidate PECAN survey responses here. Their responses, records and vision have formed the basis for our candidate recommendations, laid out in the map above.

Voting is compulsory. The new council will be decided by your preferences – so make sure your vote counts by numbering every box in your preferred order. Mail back your completed ballot before 25 October. Contact the Victorian Electoral Commission if you plan to be away.

For completeness, all the ward candidates and their affiliations are as follows.

Have Your Say

The City of Port Phillip is pausing all community engagement during the caretaker period while the new Council is being elected. Get ready to have your say, both at the polls and after the caretaker period ends. Meanwhile, here are some things to do around Port Phillip. 

The wonderful City of Port Phillip Seniors Festival 2024 is on from 1 to 14 October. Learn all about it

The Council is also hosting a Zoom training event on Proactive and Effective Social Media for Community Groups on Thursday 17 October, starting at 7pm. Learn more and book your free place

Drop into the Port Phillip Ecocentre’s Climate Cafe on 17 October to share a cuppa and your thoughts about the climate crisis with like-minded people. It’s healing! 

The latest from around the country 

Have you been keeping track of the Snowy Hydro 2.0 mess? They’re now having to buy a fourth tunnel-boring machine to try and catch up on their drilling! Learn more

The Climate Council have issued a new and very interesting report on Australia’s Race to Renewables. Find out which State is leading.

A more frightening report by Zurich Insurance and Mandala (an economic analysis group) suggests that 68% of Australia’s tourism assets are in danger because of climate change.

If you want to understand how Australia’s toxic relationships with big international oil and gas companies evolved, Slick is a good new book about it. Learn about the book

In very disappointing news, the Federal Environment Minister approved major extensions to three thermal coal mines on 25 September. Many of us were hoping for much stronger climate action under this Labor Government, but we’ve yet to see it.

Ending on a brighter note, we really liked this story on the benefits that renewable wind and solar farms are bringing to the Hay Plains in NSW.

Campaigns we’re supporting

Mothers, grandmothers, aunties, sisters, daughters, carers and allies of all kinds: come along to Extinction Rebellion’s Mothers’ Rebellion for Climate Change action from 11am on Saturday 19 October at the National Gallery of Victoria forecourt. It’s family-friendly and peaceful. 

Solar Citizens are running a survey about electrifying Australian homes to help shape their campaign for the upcoming federal election. Complete the survey here. And they have a petition asking the federal government to support the roll-out of affordable home-energy storage solutions.

Environment Victoria is asking people to contact their MPs to get Victoria households off gas. Learn more and act

The Climate Council is running an open-letter campaign asking the government to double Australia’s rooftop solar capacity by 2030. Learn more and sign

The AYCC is running a petition asking Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek to stop fracking in the Beetaloo Basin while the water trigger assessment is being done. Learn more and sign

If you haven’t already, tell Coles and Woolworths to go deforestation-free here. And you can see the Greenpeace company deforestation scorecard and contact CEOs here.

Sign the petition to stop drilling around WA’s Scott Reef.

The Australian Marine Conservation Society is running a petition to help secure strong protection for the Christmas and Cocos (Keeling) Islands Marine Parks. Learn more and sign

You can also learn about, show your support for and get involved in the Victorian Government’s electrification plans.

Things to do

After all that learning and signing, treat yourself to the ACF’s Night Out for Nature Challenge, which will be on 19 October.

You can also blow the cobwebs out by getting involved in Biketober Victoria, where you can hop on your bike, join a community, learn new bike skills, and even win prizes. Learn more and sign up

Agriculture: wasteful and inefficient

The numbers indicate that farming, and especially the raising of animals for food, is an incredibly wasteful way to feed humanity. On average, people need 2,350 kcals per day of food energy and 50 grams per day of protein, but we grow several times these amounts: we waste a lot of it and distribute the rest inequitably. For example, only about 10% of the plant mass that we feed to animals ends up as meat and dairy products that we can consume. The always excellent “Just Have a Think” YouTube channel gives lots more detail here. Watching it is sure to make you angry, and hopefully will change your eating habits to greatly reduce your red-meat consumption.

We really do need to improve farming in Australia, so this National Vegetable and Onion Growers benchmarking program is a great initiative: there is a very big difference between the productivity of the best and the average growers.

Finally, watch the 4 corners expose of the NT’s reckless water-rights giveaway for cotton farmers, which is already being abused.

Some thoughts on batteries

Lithium ion batteries may be the highest energy density form of energy storage we have, but the liquid electrolytes they use are highly flammable, and dendrite growth leads to internal sparks. This combination results in lots of explosions and fires. Learn more

There is also increasing concern about EV car batteries after the vehicles reach the end of their working lives. Clearly, it would be a huge waste for these large battery packs to go to landfill (as well as having the potential to cause catastrophic fires within that landfill) and vehicle makers should be required to support extensive recycling. Nonetheless, the problem is reasonably distant given that car batteries can have a long second life as home-electricity storage. 

At the other end of the scale, experts say we currently have 200GW of grid-scale battery storage, but we’ll need 5TW by 2050. That is 25 times the current capacity! Learn more.

A Solar Citizens report highlights the huge amount of battery capacity coming with the uptake of electric vehicles and how we can take advantage of all these batteries on wheels to stabilise our electricity grid using vehicle-to-grid technologies

The amount of VOCs emitted by Darwin’s LNG plant is a travesty

There are concerns the Northern Territory government isn’t monitoring the health impacts of a large increase in toxic chemicals (linked to cancer and respiratory problems) from Inpex’s Ichthys LNG facility, which operates on Darwin’s harbour. In 2022, the facility emitted more toxic chemicals than the Gorgon project off the coast of Western Australia, which is one of the biggest gas fields in the world. Learn more

Smart electricity meters are changing everything

The demand and time-of-use charges that come with smart meters are good for people who can afford solar panels and home batteries, but not for the people who can’t. We need to ensure that everybody can enjoy the benefits of more resilient, lower-cost energy grids. Learn more

“The greenest electron is the one you do not use!” says Dave Borlace in a recent video on his Just Have a Think YouTube channel about improving our energy-use efficiency – a very good watch. We particularly like the idea of switching to using low-voltage DC electrical power distribution within buildings to reduce the amounts of copper needed.

We need more bee-friendly farming

Pollinators play a key role in all kinds of agriculture, but traditional farm management that emphasises chemical pesticides is very hostile to these important insects. We must do better. Learn more.

The time has come for zero-emissions cargo handling

Moving cargo through ports is big business, and most of the equipment – ships, cranes, trucks and trains – is fossil-fuel powered. This needs to change. Learn how here.

Calling out the Minerals Council of Australia

The Minerals Council of Australia mostly seems to represent coal-mining companies. (Technically, coal is not even a mineral, it’s a sedimentary rock.) The Council says it cares about the Australian people, but its track record shows it to be amongst the largest of the lobbyists denying climate change. Also, its members mostly only ‘dig and ship’ Australia’s natural resources, paying minimal taxes and royalties, employing few people, doing little to improve local facilities and leaving toxic wastelands for Australian communities to clean up, at great expense. To paraphrase Senator David Pocock, they really are “leeches on this country”. Learn more

This What’s Up? newsletter is Authorised by P. Moraitis, P.O. Box 1142 Elwood 3184