On Line Exhibition 2023

OUR OCEANS OUR EARTH

"For 15 years as bushfires ravaged Australia's summers, scientists urged successive federal governments to officially acknowledge fire as a key threat to the plants & animals living in the nation's forests.

Three billion animals were harmed in Victoria's 2009 Black Saturday disaster and the catastrophic fires of 2019 - 20 in New South Wales. Land - clearing, predation & invasive species are also a serious threat."



A Concert at Bondi Beach consisted of Midnight Oil, Dragon, Noiseworks, Rose Tattoo & others.

The concert marked a turning point of sorts as governments promised to deliver cleaner beaches. A bigger transformation in the way we treat water will be needed. We know hotter days & tougher drought will hit the continent hard.Community sentiment peaked on that day in 1989. Secondary water treatments became the norm & rubbish traps were installed at the end of the giant stormwater drains that emptied straight into the sea up & down the New South Wales coast. More water should be captured & recycled for the future when it will be more precious than ever before.

With greenhouse pollution continuing to increase, coral reefs - those wondrous, multicoloured reservoirs of ocean life - would be the first entire ecosystem to be destroyed by climate change, & it could happen in our lifetime."

- Peter Garrett, "Big Blue Sky", a memoir. 2016.

Peter Garrett is a member of Australian rock band Midnight Oil, and was a minister for the environment in two Labor governments.

A clean-energy revolution is under way that will drive scientists around the globe to a low carbon existence. This will rival in significance the Industrial Revolution, which was driven by fossil fuels - coal fired power, and petrol & diesel engines. Unfortunately, this advance was characterised by governments & businesses pursuing growth, ignoring the economic & social consequences of the pollution they created & ignoring the related demands on the Earth's capacity. The most significant consequence has been human-driven climate change.

The world now finds itself in the unenviable situation of having to deal with these consequences as a matter of urgency, of dramatically reducing dependence on fossil fuels in the hope of containing global warming to manageable levels - 1.5 - 2 degrees Celsius by mid-century to ensure things don't get any worse.

Australia is uniquely placed to show true global leadership in the transition to renewables and clean energy , transport and agriculture. We have ample sun and wind power and the technologies to store and transmit them.

We have key minerals such as graphite, lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper and rare earths of importance to the battery industries, solar panels and so on. We have highly trained scientists and engineers, strong research capabilities and standing as well as investors and the capacity to marshal the necessary private-sector finance."

John Hewson, The Saturday Paper, July 22, 2022.


"In many places across the continent the so-called frontier mentality has at last yielded to science, and farmers are finding that the values of conservation sit well enough with their own.

Close examination might reveal that the bush is not a dangerous neurotic, that drought and all the other defects in the country are really defects in our thinking, and even that mateship, which is built and exercised less on our love of the bush than on our fight with it, is half humbug and baloney.

While we're at it, we may as well own up to all the carnage: a bit of truth and reconciliation will help us to grow up."

Reasonable prices on application.

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