WhatsUp Feb 2026

Welcome to issue #37 for February 2026.

I hope that you had a good Christmas/New year break, I certainly did!

I also hope that you have not been impacted by the recent bushfires and floods, and are looking forward to a pivotal year mitigating and adapting to climate change.

Around Melbourne…

This talk about a Glen Eira resident’s home electrification journey is very informative.

We should congratulate the City of Boroondara for recently adding protections for 311 new significant trees in response to a resident submission.

Similarly, we should congratulate Merri-bek Council for its new Moving Around Merri-bek Action Plan which aims to improve cycling facilities and amenities through small-scale infrastructure upgrades, focused on and around the Council’s Streets for People corridors, the state government’s Strategic Cycling Corridors network, and streets that carry higher numbers of vulnerable road users, such as those near childcare centres, schools and aged care facilities.

I watched an excellent short documentary by Melbourne University students about the pollinator corridor being developed between the Botanical Gardens and Westgate Park. And a second short interview with Emma Cutting, of Heartscapes, about the same pollinator corridor.

This very informative rider’s view of (very fast) cycling along Melbourne’s new Veloway, which is a cyclist only path connecting the Western suburbs to the CBD.

It was good to read that the City of Casey and the Balcon property developer have strong tree canopy cover goals. The comment that trees need to be treated the same as essential infrastructure, like roads, and to be planned accordingly, is particularly relevant.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.

Mohandas K. Gandhi

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.

Have Your Say

Given the recent holiday break, the City of Port Phillip has not yet fully ramped up its public consultations for 2026, but it does now have a public consultation on:

• Comment on Council’s Roadmap to Zero: Safe Travel Strategy and Action Plan 2026-31

As always, we recommend that you Have Your Say

Council is also running a series of free training workshops for community groups during February-March to help these groups prepare to submit community grant proposals in May 2026. See the community training calendar for more information.

By contrast, summer holidays are a peak period for our friends at the Port Phillip EcoCentre – you can see what is coming in their events pages.

There are also other activities that you may like to join:

• Lighter Footprints are hosting:
• • Home battery online information evening on 4 February
  • Why Forests Matter for Climate webinar, 18 February
  • SuperPower: 2026 on Wednesday 4 March at the Hawthorn Arts Centre, where Simon Holmes a Court and Reuben Finigan will talk about the extraordinary opportunities emerging for new green industries and exports
• Sweltering Cities have several activities during February, including
• • Australia needs a heatwave plan webinar on 2-3pm 4 February
  • their Summer 2026 survey, which is open over the summer, so  get your voice and ideas heard
• BeachPatrol/LoveOurStreet have a petition asking for bottle caps to be tethered
• Parents for Climate are hosting a Webinar on Engines off for our Kids, Tuesday 10 February, 8-9pm. They also have a petition about Protect our Kids with Clean Air.
• The Australian Greens, Victoria now have a petition calling on the Victorian Labor Government to make coal and gas companies pay for the damage caused by fires and floods.
• ACF Community Macnamara is helping organize a big community clean-up of Westgate Park, 9:30-13:00hrs, Sunday 1 March. Learn more and register here.

Recently seen…

Disappointingly, a banned chemical has been found in Australian blueberries, and has probably been used here for years without detection – why is it that Australian regulators are often found to be lax in protecting Australian consumers and why do Australian producers often seem to not care about their customers?

Australia still could be champions and follow Norway in properly taxing our oil and gas exports, but our past mistakes have already cost us trillions – yes trillions, not billions! Unfortunately, we seem to be making the same mistakes with rare earth minerals.

The newly launched Neoliner Origin, a 5,300 tonne sailing cargo ship built for the North Atlantic route between Baltimore and Europe is fascinating. It uses 90% less fuel than a comparable diesel-electric ship.

This video gives a good overview of the problems with concrete as it is used in residential buildings today, and a summary of the alternative (and much better) materials that are emerging to replace it.

If you have a spare 45 minutes, this presentation by the Octopus Energy CEO is well worth watching. The electrified world is coming, and as much as today’s King Canutes might want to, they cannot hold back the tide.

The data shows that sales of internal combustion engined vehicles peaked in China in 2017, and now electric cars account for over 1/3 of new sales. This article also explains the importance of the transition to electric trucks in China.

Many people love their cats, but collectively, roaming pet cats kill 546 million animals per year in Australia. Learn how to keep nature safe from your cat here.

Australia needs an Orbital Activity Treaty

There are more and more objects being put into orbit, and more and more of them falling back to Earth – around 17,500 have been launched since 1957! We desperately need much more control over what gets launched from different places around the world, and much more control over how they leave orbit, according to Melbourne University researchers.

How self driving cars will destroy cities, if we are not careful

Watch this very well argued video to learn about the problems with self driving cars and how immature the technology is, and how they will probably lead to roads being made much more hostile to pedestrians to to keep them out of the way of self driving cars. The author says that we must proactively consider how we integrate autonomous vehicles into our cities, and the last people we want leading these changes are autonomous vehicle developers and manufacturers!

Solar panels over canals

This interesting video explains how and why they are starting to put solar panels over canals in California, USA. It is “unused” land in convenient locations that can be used to generate electrical power. As important, the shade that the panels provide reduces evaporation in the canals and slows aquatic weed growth (which reduces maintenance costs). Additionally, the water underneath them cools the panels which improves their operating efficiency. They are also doing similar projects in other countries, including India. The same rationale can be applied to put solar panels on artificial water storage lakes – see here, for example.

Are cargo ebikes really useful?

This very good video explains the results of a major UK research project about how good cargo ebikes and other micro-mobility vehicles are for shorter, local trips. And how good they are for the environment. As you might expect, they were most attractive/useful for people making deliveries and parents with young children taking local trips. The biggest barriers are lack of suitable bike paths that are separated from car traffic and a lack of parking infrastructure near trip destinations. For the wider community, they replace a lot of car trips, which reduces road congestion and roadside pollution, and encourages healthier lifestyles. It should be noted that good quality, certified batteries have no fire problems, unlike cheap, “knock-off” bikes.

And if you want some idea of what it is like to regularly ride an ebike, this video of a guy talking about how he has “ebiked” 2,500kms in London, UK, in recent years is quite informative.

Climate adaptation is a crucial complement to climate mitigation

Climate mitigation is all about reversing climate change. Unfortunately, this will not happen fast enough, so it must be complemented by climate adaptation – changing our world so we can continue to live with climate change. Climate adaptation can make the difference between the potential impacts outlined in Australia’s first National Climate Risk Assessment a more hopeful reality, according to Melbourne University researchers.

Using a Trombe Wall and circular vents as free A/C

This interesting video about a cork clad home in the country outside Barcelona in Spain explains how it uses a Trombe Wall to capture heat from sunlight and passive convection vents at the top and bottom of the wall to circulate the heat throughout the house to keep it warm in winter. During summer the vents reverse direction to passively eject heat from the house. The thick walls made from aerated concrete blocks clad in cork are also highly insulative. These kinds of passive insulation, ventilation, heating and cooling systems have been known and used for millenia, but we do not use them anywhere near enough nowadays.

Bergen, Norway, has more than just a great bike tunnel

This very good video explains how Bergen in Norway is improving the liveability of the city by prioritizing pedestrianized streets and public transport over cars. It should be noted that the bike/pedestrian tunnel (which is excellent) is actually the emergency service tunnel for the adjacent public tram tunnel, and they were just smart enough to spend a bit more money to make it a useful (and very popular) public infrastructure asset in its own right.

On the last point above, as explained out in this good video, bike infrastructure is cheap to build, if it is done alongside other needed roadworks. By contrast, if you miss these opportunities they will only come around again many, many years later so that the opportunity cost of not taking advantage of them is very high.

Given that local mobility will become increasingly valued in the future (as clearly shown by current trends), this says that the best strategy is to invest “up front” to put in bike infrastructure as each roadwork opportunity arises, even though it may initially be under-utilized.

Given all the above, I was pleased to recently read that Infrastructure Victoria’s new 2025-2055 Infrastructure Strategy urges the state government to spend $500-620 million over the next 10 years to greatly improve cycling corridors in Melbourne and another 4 corridors in each of Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo and Wangaratta. They say that “…there is a high level of demand for bike travel in Victoria that is not being properly catered for because our bike networks are disconnected, unattractive and missing entirely in some areas.” Very true!

The insane Carbon Capture scam continues

This very good video explains how Fossil Fuel Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has yet again under-delivered in 2025 when the Norwegian state oil company, Equinor, was forced to admit that its Sleipner CCS facility was capturing only about 10% of it’s claimed 1 million tonnes per year. Similar missed CCS targets are happening all over the world, including Woodside’s Gorgon project which captures only 30% of the carbon it is supposed to. And now new research has found that the amount of realistically available global carbon storage capacity is also roughly just a tenth of the amount claimed by big oil and gas companies, so even if CCS worked properly it could only capture a very small percentage of existing emissions.

A bit of fun…Where’s Wallaby?

It seems that wallabies are on the loose in Britain, having escaped from zoos and private collections. Not a good thing environmentally, but it seems reasonable payback for the foxes, deer, wild pigs, rabbits, etc that were introduced here from the “old country”.