Welcome to Issue #26 for February 2025

This is our first issue for 2025. We hope that you had a relaxing break and are energized for the coming year.

For this new year we are starting a membership recruitment drive, so please forward this issue to all your friends and family who might be interested, and encourage them to subscribe to this newsletter. As they say, it costs you nothing and helps increase the impact of our advocacy.

We are also looking for help with this email newsletter, so if you are interested in writing and/or producing it, simply reply to this email to express your interest.

The PECAN planning day will be held at the Port Phillip EcoCentre (temporarily in the Cora Graves Centre 38 Blessington Street, St Kilda) 10-12:30, Saturday 15 February. All are welcome to come and share their ideas for the year ahead.

If, like me, you are somewhat in awe of the veteran environmental campaigner Bob Brown, he will be speaking at the St Kilda Town Hall, 6-8pm, on Thursday 27 February. RSVP here.

Public EV chargers are rare as hen’s teeth in the City of Port Phillip, so that the 2 new PlugShare units installed at the Port Melbourne Woolworths are a major increase in total public charging capacity within the municipality. We need many more.

We are dismayed and disgusted by the puny $10,000 fine given to Santos for pleading guilty to releasing 25,000 litres of oil into the Indian Ocean off Western Australia. Greg Jericho has issued a call to action after yet another year of inaction on climate change by BOTH major political parties – we really need to strongly vote for climate action in upcoming elections.

Thisgood article explains why the new Victorian draft PV electricity feed-in tariffs are unfair and wrongly incentivise the market.

We are also disheartened and dismayed to learn that it is often easier to get a permit to destroy nature than to fix it! We really need to hold our politicians and other leaders to account for these problems.

Initiatives to attribute climate damage to specific organizations so that they can be held to account may be a good way to trigger faster action on climate change.

On a more positive note, the recent Electric Shock! report by the Climate Council points out that now Australia has the world’s highest PV/capita generating capacity, and how we have been using much more renewable power and energy storage for much longer than people realize. Taking the hour needed to read the whole 42 page report is well worthwhile.

Finally, we like this information on Five hard-to-recycle items that you can actually recycle.

                              The greenest electron is the one that you never use

                                                                Dave Borlace

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.

Our New Council

Congratulations to our new Mayor (Louise Crawford) and Deputy Mayor (Bryan Mears) and all our other new Councillors. We have high hopes for a more civil and productive Council.

PECAN has been meeting with new Councillors and we have been heartened by our discussions with them. There seem to be many areas where we can productively engage and work with the new Council on environmental issues.

We note with interest that Council has had the good sense to endorse a new 3,000sqm public park in Fisherman’s Bend that will be developed by Gamuda Land, we think as part of their “developer contribution”. However, we wonder about the extent of the community consultation and input regarding this proposal – we had not heard about it until the Council endorsed the proposal.

Have Your Say

The City of Port Phillip only has public consultations open about:

• Love Your Neighbourhood survey so people can tell what they love most about where they live
• Our Coastal Future so people can upload photos that capture what our coastline means for them

It is good to capture our perceptions of what we love about Port Phillip but this is a long way from a vision for how to improve our municipality and help it to cope with climate change.

As always we recommend that you Have Your Say.

Take personal action

A wide variety of environmental groups ask people to take personal actions to help combat climate change, including signing petitions, attending rallies and other community events. We recommend that people take all the personal action they can.

Friends of the Earth Melbourne are holding a Climate Adaption Fair 10am-4pm, Saturday 8 February at the Borderlands Co-Op, Footscray. It includes several very relevant workshops that need attendance registration.

The ACF Community Macnamara is having a volunteer planting day at Westgate Park, 9:30am-Noon, Saturday 15 February. Sign up to participate.

XR (extinction Rebellion) are having their annual Planning Arvo, 13:30-17:30, Saturday 15 February at The Hive 61 Church St , Abbotsford.

We recommend that you read the excellent Highway to Hell: Climate Change and Australia’s Future essay by Joelle Gergis, a lead author for the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report. We really need to seriously consider who we vote for in the upcoming Federal election.

Slick by Royce Kurmelovs, which is a non-fiction book about Australia’s toxic relationship with Big Oil, is another good read to get you energized to take climate action.

You may want to make a submission to the Victorian government engagement on getting off gas. It is being coordinated by our friends at BCCAG. Generally, PECAN feels that the quicker Victoria can completely get off gas, the better.

The Australia Institute is asking people to sign a petition recommending that Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek acts to stop salmon farming in Macquarie Harbour to save the Maugean skate, one of our most endangered fish species.

WWF has a new Earth Hour Challenge 60 – sign up to commit to spending 60 minutes of time in nature each day, however, and wherever you want, all in the name of regenerating nature.

Parents for Climate have launched their Protect What You Love Campaign which we encourage you to get involved in – host a yard sign, make a donation or join the working team.

If you are an avid cyclist, the Bicycle Network have several challenging cycling events coming up that might help you meet climate minded people.

The City of Port Phillip is hosting a clean-up event at Marine Reserve, St Kilda on Sunday 2 March, starting at 10am as part of Clean Up Australia day. Register here.

If your home is a good example of sustainable design, applications are now open for you to showcase it as part of Sustainable House Day 2025, which will be on Sunday 4 May.

Devastating Los Angeles bushfires

Our hearts and best wishes go out to everyone in Los Angeles for the devastating bushfires they have experienced. Seeing famous places from movies, TV shows and other media destroyed brings home the real impact of climate change.

The latest Australian State of the Climate report paints a sobering picture of harsher fire seasons, more heatwaves and sea-level rise. Learn more. This means that we need to be much better prepared – see this very useful extreme weather preparation guide.

Also, this very interesting video explains how a house can be designed in LA to survive the fires. And this article says that they should be “building up, not out” when LA is rebuilt, which seems a good idea.

In related news, there is an excellent Australia Institute podcast on how climate change is pricing people out of home insurance – this is especially relevant for the City of Port Phillip.

To help track Australia’s progress in combating climate change, the Climate Council has launched a Climate Momentum Monitor. We see this as a crucial initiative for cutting through the abundant misinformation around us.

Locally, Melbourne University researchers are warning that a ‘do nothing’ approach won’t help Australia deal with bushfires as the climate gets hotter.

Tiny Forests: Australia’s Green Revolution in Urban Spaces

As Australian cities turn into heat islands due to rising temperatures and urban development, a quiet green revolution is happening in the suburbs. Learn more.

Sand mining – a dangerous world addiction

Globally, humans mine a lot of sand to make concrete, glass, electronics, etc. But we are running out of it, and it is causing lots of damage to the river systems where we get most of it. (We only really want fresh river sand because the salt in seawater is too corrosive.) Learn more here.

Regenerative farming is…

Regenerative agriculture is a conservation and rehabilitation approach to food and farming systems. It focuses on topsoil regeneration, increasing biodiversity, improving the water cycle, enhancing ecosystem services, supporting bio-sequestration, increasing resilience to climate change, and strengthening the health and vitality of farm soil. Watch this very good video about it to learn more.

Also, if you have a spare hour, this video is an excellent discussion of the under-estimated importance of the landscape and agriculture in minimizing climate change and the damage it causes – it points out the importance of maximizing of micro water evaporation cycles on land for moderating local climate conditions.

Climate-proofing our cities

While it has its quirks, the development of Singapore since the 1970’s has been very impressive, and it is a good place to visit. However, sitting near the equator, Singapore is very exposed to problems from climate change, especially rising average temperatures. This is a very interesting video about how Singapore is trying to climate-proof itself.

Our big Asia-Pacific financial institutions must do better…

Unfortunately, large financial institutions in the Asia-Pacific fall well behind their European and North American counterparts in their climate goals and transition plans, according to new analysis. This is very disappointing.

This excellent video explains why it is crucial for banks to stop facilitating fossil fuels investment. It also explains how you can signal your displeasure by moving your own financial affairs to a bank that does minimal fossil fuel financing.

A bit of fun…

According to Chris Armstrong, “just about the most environmentally irresponsible thing one human can do is own a super-yacht”! The 6,000+ super yachts said to now float around in the world’s seas are estimated to cause 0.3% of global marine pollution. One super-yacht can generate up to 7,020 tonnes of CO2 a year – more than 1,500 times that of a typical family car. The industry is trying to clean up its act, but sinking them all might be a better solution.