Grandiflora

This has been in bloom for the last two weeks……ummm……it’s about 2 months early! It always signified that winter was slowly giving way to spring.  This year is signifies, what the ?????. 

A plan was hatched over at Simple Reduce and Casaubon’s Book to attempt/aim for a reduction of personal greenhouse/carbon emissions. Based on something George Monbiot said about western industrialised countries needing to cut emissions by more than the IPCC’s recommendation of 60% worldwide reduction. 60% is not enough Mr Monbiot argues.

Furthermore, when you look at the issue global equity needs to be addressed. Why do we expect worldwide participation when the world’s richest countries are the ones who are the largest emitters? Don’t get me wrong, I think all countries should come on board but very simply, why should a village in Africa cease using a water pump so that someone in the Australian suburbs can use air conditioning? Need v luxury?

This week it was reported that Australia’s emissions are rising and this in no way includes the emissions of the coal we ship to the rest of the world. I find this both troubling and depressing……

So armed with a calculator and some utility bills I was on a mission. The rules/parameters are here

What is listed below are the Australian averages as best I could find them and my household’s energy usage (the baseline figures). The project aims for a 90% reduction based on national averages. Before I go into the stats, I must say whilst I knew how much we were paying for water, energy etc., I’d never really dissected use to this level of detail. Money is really not an indicator of what things cost .

Is a 90% reduction achievable…. we’ll see.

1. Petrol. Our state average is 1200 litres per person. 90% reduction would mean 120litres.

Based on our current usage we are using 780 litres per person. It’s already 35% lower but needs work! We have a very fuel efficient car ( little, little bet 4.8-6 l/100kms) and my husband car pools to work. My classes are in Sydney (24okms round trip twice a week) - train for me as a start.

2. Electricity. Average use 8000kWH per household. 90% reduction would equate to 800kWH per year.

There is a credit for green power which would allow for some increase between 2 to 4 times this amount. My green power is from a combination of sources so I’ll go for the middle - 3 times. Brings it to 2400kWH.

Our use is 7111kWH. 12% less than the national average.

I was surprised by the electrical use because I’m extremely vigilant…CFL’s, no standby power, nothing with flashing displays….. I’ll have to investigate further. More than 40% of that use is for our hot water system. We have discussed changing it but have decided to wait until it ceases to work before making any changes. Unfortunately solar hot water is not a option for us , as our site too shady so it’ll be a heat pump or less preferable option of gas.

3. Heating and cooking

For this we use natural gas. The average is between 31-42 GJs per household. I’ll pick the 36.5GJs as my figure. 90% reduction equates to 3.65Gjs.

Our use 31Gjs. This figure is an estimate as we haven’t been connected for a full year. We are about average here in our use so we will be reducing, reducing.

4 Garbage - Australian average is between 1.2 -1.6 tonnes per person I’ll make 1.4 tonnes - 1400 kgs. 90% reduction equates to 140kgs.

Us - 200 kgs per person (estimate) which is 84% of the average and near the goal…….all I can say is Compost + worms……..

5. Water. Average water use per person is between 300-900 litres per day. Given that most of the country is in drought and most cities have water restrictions I ‘ll go for the lower figure of 350 litres per person per day. 90% reduction equates to 35 litres per person.

Us- 175 litres per person. That’s a 50% reduction. We will get our use down further once our rainwater tanks have been installed (5 weeks or so). The tanks were purchased a while back and have been waiting for my husband’s holidays. The water will be used primarily for our garden. Also have a Suldi valve to install for grey water. All should cut our use substantially.

6. Consumer goods. Couldn’t find any reliable figures here, so will use the US figures posted by Miranda + Sharon.$10,000 on average per household. 90% reduction equates to $1000.

Us - We would spend about $5000.00 and a large part of that is my tuition and books. Requires some further work.

7. Food - 70% local + organic, 20% dry bulk, 10% wet/processed/travelled long distances.(AIM)

Us - 50% local/organic - this is helped in large part by our garden (and my mother’s!) 35% Dry bulk - mostly bought from the local co-op. 15% wet/processed/travelled long distances - most of this is organic dairy products.

So here we go. June 1 start for a year + the rest.

It may have been too many episodes of “The Good Life”, or the fact that I’ve been spending less time in the Big Smoke…… I’m really not sure what happened but now I can grind and bake our bread. Low tech. Earthy and definitely crunchy. So far, the things made from the flour taste great - better even.

Authentic too. With the strong arms I’m developing, who is going to argue.

Me with my dear parents.

My love of  gardening and the natural world is down to these people.  Sadly, my father passed away too early but my mother is still keeping us in line!

The house has changed, as has the garden - there are more plants but that lawn is still there. The lawn - I have a love/hate relationship with that lawn. As a child, I loved walking around on it but always managed to step on the sections that had bindii. Ouch!

Now my house doesn’t have lawn. Bush garden.  I’ve avoided the  pressure to have a nice lawn requiring a veritable arsenal of contraptions to grow the grass and to cut the grass. Noise producing machines -  so much for peaceful enjoyment! I read recently that one hour of lawn mowing produces the equivalent greenhouse emissions as driving for 500kms…..I’m still trying to verify this.  Don’t get me started on those leaf blowers.

My parents weren’t overly fond of using chemicals in the garden but even they, used some kind of phosphate on the lawn. The power of the lawn and social conformity.

Anyway….I’m on lawn mowing duty this week as my mother is still away. I promise to be nice to it!

One of my sisters has bought a house in Blackheath. A 10 minute walk from house to house. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She has asked me to help her in the garden…..yeah, yeah, yeah. Did I mention that her yard is sunny and flat? Did I mention that you can use a wheel barrow with great ease? Did I mention the house and the garden are a rather large DIY project?

The front side yard and sections of the house were covered in jasmine ( Jasminum officinale) and ivy - could not tell which kind. The previous owner had removed most of the climbers that covered the house so that now little twigs and browned off remnants are all that remain. I think the real estate agent suggested she do this! These climbers were so rampant ( attached themselves to wooden floor boards, impeded window opening etc) and are not the sort of thing that do a wooden house any favours.

The gloves show the wear of hours of vine pulling. OMG! The thought of jasmine makes my back hurt. On a more positive note, there are some beautiful maples which looks marvelous at this time of year. The autumn leaves were falling on us as we wrestled with the vines. The weather was very fine. I won’t even think about why it was 2o degrees C in May……

Whilst this may describe what happens when you first start working in any kind of audio related field -when you accidentally (rather than with purpose a la countless musicians etc) send + return audio along the same channel - Eeeeeeeeeee - Ouch! You quickly learn not to do this again, especially if you don’t want to look like a techno moron and/or retain your hearing. Even after years of working in sound post production, I could never work out which one people valued more. I digress so let’s get back to the garden…..

The negative feedback loop (NFL) is a term used by David Holmgren in “Permaculture - Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability” to describe how observation of what doesn’t work in gardens, environments, life, etc. is as important, as the positives that reinforce that you are on the right trajectory. Holmgren in this book describes how permaculture principles can be applied to prepare society for a more sustainable future - a future that is shaped by climate change and energy decline. I’m a total neophyte in the area - check his website or Bill Mollison’s (there are clips of Mollison on youtube) or Rosemary Morrow’s book “Earth Users Guide to Permaculture” for authorities on permaculture. Holmgren describes the NFL as an indicator of how we’ve “stuffed up” or what mistakes we’ve made and then how we should work to not replicate them.

His use of that vernacular phrase struck me. I realized how much I love the uses of the word/s “stuff”. Briefly, in the Australian vernacular ’stuff’ is used in numerous ways; “Couldn’t give a stuff.” “Stuff it, I’m doing what I want” - both used to signal a lack of care or concern. “Go and get stuffed” - stronger than get lost but not as strong as get f….. “That is stuffed” - ruined, wrecked or not good. Again I digress so let’s get back to the garden…..

Six weeks ago we were moving plants around that had been put in the wrong spot. Read planted with no real plan. All were local, native plants that don’t take too kindly to being moved once established in a spot. Autumn, however, is the best time to move them as the soil is still warm and there is reliable (ish) rainfall. So off we went with fingers crossed. Okay, I’ll be honest here - on this occasion, I did alot of pointing and my husband did the ‘heavy lifting’. We were fortunate that all transplants but one survived. We knew that moving the little acacia was going to be risky because it was a finicky plant.

From this picture you can tell that the plant is stuffed. A clear stuff up. So what is there to learn? In realizing that it was possible that the plant may not make it, some cuttings should have been taken and propagated, so that we would have back up plants. ( Hmmm - came to that one late! ) We could have left it there, despite it not fitting with our new plans or perhaps we should have avoided the initial rush to plant without even a vague plan. Lots of options, if observation and thought are or had been applied.

However, it had crossed my mind that I could adopt the approach to error that is espoused by our federal government. I’ll use the crisis of the Murray-Darling Rivers as an example. These rivers are stuffed. 40% of Australia’s food is grown in this river basin and many towns and cities rely on the rivers for their drinking water. Now given the importance of this resource, how has the situation become so dire? Well, not many people paid enough attention to the plethora of signs that the environment was giving out, to actually change the way things were being done. I’m calling this the ’stuff it’ approach.

Recently, the PM announced that if it didn’t rain enough all irrigation would have to cease. Maybe before it got to this, the question of how much water was being used for irrigation should have been addressed. To remedy this situation, a plan to drain wetlands to increase flows to the rivers has been announced. The fact that some of these wetlands are endangered environments seems to matter little. Biodiversity - get stuffed.

All this after, the $10 billion dollar funding announcement to ‘fix’ the problem- and the resulting PR exercise that was the recent Murray Darling Summit. PM + federal minister met with the State Premiers of the catchment States and smiled for the cameras….well, not quite. Three of the four States ceded rights to the Commonwealth to manage this part of their water resources, all in exchange for a variety of financial and political reasons. The Victorian Premier (Bracks) held out, as the deal was not so good for his downstream state and farmers. The money was not enough to sign off on legislative changes that were not completed….yes there were blank pages in the documents! The PR exercise didn’t play out as successfully for the PM as he may have hoped. It didn’t take the sting out of having to announce, weeks later, the true and dire consequences of what years of in action actually meant.

What is most galling, is that nothing has been learnt from the above situation - interest will not rise, neither will inflation, mining companies will be compensated for having their water supply limited. Priorities are in order - oh lordy! The Federal government policies for managing climate change are still a joke. Put simply, they still do not understand that without an environment, there is no economy.

Politicians- the only NFL they understand is the one when voters tell them to get stuffed.

I live in hope.