With hypocrisy comes opportunity - a podcast by Anthony Gleeson, Jackie Matthews, Colin Mockett, Mik Aidt

The Sustainable Hour no 372







Today we welcome back Jackie Matthews for the first anniversary of her leaving The Sustainable Hour’s microphone for a less public, but just as important role of editing the show each week. Twelve months ago, Jackie secured a full time job which meant that she wasn’t able to continue co-hosting, but she wanted to stay involved, much to our delight. We discover what she’s been up to on the sustainability front in that time.







In The Tunnel we have Shaun Murray who is national co-ordinator of the #DontNabOurFuture campaign – a campaign aimed at encouraging the National Australian Bank to change its policy on lending to fossil fuel projects. This campaign is very important strategically right now as the NAB board are currently reviewing the bank’s policy in this area. You can find out more about the campaign on www.dontnabourfuture.com







Shaun started out as a grassroots climate community organiser in Melbourne in 2007. While in Melbourne he founded Quit Coal which is still going strong. Some time after that, Sydney and a senior community organiser job with GetUp! lured him to the harbour city.















We introduce an extract from an excellent series of educational youtube-video series called ‘The Breakdown’ by Jack Harries and Earthrise. This episode looks at what fossil fuel companies did over 50 years ago when their scientists told them just what would be the consequences if they continued to sell their toxic products .







We start off the hour with a short statement by the head of the European Union, Ursula von der Leyen, spruiking their 3,800 page roadmap to carbon neutrality, the so-called European Green Deal, which targets a 55% per cent emissions reduction by 2030. Mik Aidt then asks: is this enough? This leads him to talk about greenwashing and how a single-use plastic bag attempts to morph into being a ‘reusable’ and sustainable item simply by printing ‘Power of care’ and a green earth on it.







Colin Mockett‘s Global Outlook is dominated by carbon-induced disasters with the the giant fires in western United States, rated worst ever and floods in Europe with untold deaths through Germany, Belgium, France, Luxembourg and more.







These have occurred against a background report from UNFCCC showing that once-in a millennium events like fires, floods and disasters are likely to occur every five to eight years when the world warms 0.8 degrees, which is predicted could happen already within the next five years.







This week also revealed that vast swathes of the Amazon rainforest now emit more CO2 than they absorb. These swathes of forest have been burned in order to produce soy and beef for export.







Finally, Colin has some homely medical advice for Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro who was admitted to hospital with abdominal pains following a bout of hiccups that lasted for 10 days.















That’s it for show #372 – we’ll be back in seven days with more food for thought for solution-seekers and climate revolutionaries. Our aim is to give all our listeners active hope.

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