Dear reader,
Let’s start with something uncontroversial: good decisions start with good information. Managing your finances starts with gathering information in a budget. If you’re playing a sport you seek out feedback from a coach. Nutritional information on food packages makes it easier to decide what to eat. But there is one area of life where the link between good information and good decisions has broken down: climate change.
There are many theories as to why this is the case. Some blame the melodramatic messaging of climate campaigners. Some say our political system isn’t set up to address a truly global challenge. Some even say the information basis for making decisions to address climate change is flawed, that there is still a lack of scientific evidence that global warming is created by human activity, or that the rapidly changing climate is not going to do untold damage.
The doubts cast on the warning of climate scientists are demonstrably false, but their persistence is evidence of a serious problem. If the scientific consensus on global heating is as clear as anything in science can ever be – and it is – why do so many people still feel compelled to minimise, delay, nitpick and quibble?
The problem is not the quality of scientific information itself, it’s the inability of the media to convey the level of certainty and the gravity of the problem. It is a failure of journalists and journalism, of those who see climate stories as a turn-off; of those who confuse impartiality with repeating false claims. It’s a failure fuelled by cynical social media companies that use algorithms to drive division and make money out of muddying the waters.
To put it simply, we are stuck because our flawed information ecosystem has so far proved unable to communicate a clear and urgent message based on science.
We need to build a better form of media, a trusted source that communicates complexity to a wide audience. The Conversation was created to do just that. We only publish academic experts who are writing in their area of expertise. We team them with professional journalists who are committed to upholding
high ethical stands, and who also know how to communicate effectively to a wide audience.
We work with colleagues across the media and in libraries and schools and government to ensure that students and citizens have access to the most up to date information presented in a way that is easy to understand. One example: we recently published an article by the scientist and IPCC author Joëlle Gergis. She wrote that if current policies are continued, with no increase in ambition, there is a 90% chance that the Earth will warm between 2.3°C and 4.5°C, with a best estimate of 3.5°C. She concluded that, despite what you hear on the news, the scientific reality is that the planet is still on track for catastrophic levels of warming and an “intergenerational crime against humanity.”
For there to be any hope policy-makers will make better decisions, we first need to arm them with reliable information from bona fide experts. And to do that, we need your help.
The Conversation exists to provide the vital information we need to make better decisions, for free, for whoever needs it. You can help us by making a donation of whatever you can afford so we can ensure that everyone has access to the information they need to make better decisions.
Environment report 2023/24
The environment team, Lucy Hob-Good Brown, Doug Vincent, Ross Johnson and Judy Charnaud, have been busy this Rotary year pursuing our environmental plan; to raise awareness of the natural environment and reduce the causes and impacts of environmental degradation by implementing easily achievable environmental targets and encouraging all members, their family and friends to engage in environmentally friendly behaviours.
To this end we have:
1. Planted over 500 trees in conjunction with Rotary-Adopt-a-Tree. Money was donated in the memory of Maurie Schockman and the trees were planted on the boundaries of the Western Sydney Airport.
2. Another tree planting is in the planning stages. Marilyn Mercer has been working with the Myall Koala and Environment group in Tea Gardens regarding a tree planting in Dudley’s name, plus a “buddy bench” for quiet contemplation along the walkway where the trees will be planted. Donations from our club members are currently coming in for this project.
3. Our club was awarded the Gold Environment Award at the beginning of this Rotary term, having previously attained Bronze and Silver. This award is not easy to come by, one of the reasons our club received it is due to the fifteen Aid projects we run globally through RAWCS, the majority of these projects include environmental aspects.
4. Rotarians for Bees is a group of Rotarians from a variety of Rotary Clubs who are very concerned about the dangerous decline in bee and other pollinator populations worldwide and are taking action to help reverse this trend. Our club has three members in this group, one Lucy Hobgood brown is on the executive committee. Several members include support for bees in their overseas projects in the Congo, Timor leste and Kenya.
5. End Plastic Soup. Our club has recently supported the implementation of the Oceania Chapter of End Plastic Soup. See https://endplasticsoup.org/ , (Areas, Oceania), for an article on cleaning up plastic in Oecusse, Timor leste.
Our Board has set up the bank account for the Oceania Chapter, this has three paid up members with many more clubs from across the region expressing their interest in joining after attending the Singapore Convention.
6. Eco Poles. We have settled on the design of the pole and its Bee Hotel. The Northern Beaches Council is supportive of this project so through them and the Coastal Environment Centre we will have access to schools on the Northern Beaches of Sydney. A local Men’s Shed has offered to build the hotels and poles for us. It is intended to install these poles in local parks, business centres and schools. Once the first pole has been installed other club members who wish to can have Eco Poles installed in their communities. The full costing for this will be under $150 dollars.
7. Making our meetings carbon neutral. A ZOOM meeting produces 2 grms of CO2 per person per hour, obviously due to the use of electricity. General calculation for our club - 20 people per meeting, 24 times a year = 960 grms, almost 1kg of CO2 per year for the club.
According to the carbon calculator, (Calculate your Carbon Emissions, Carbon Positive Australia), our club should plant .017 trees per year to offset this! Our Environment Committee decided that we would be well in front if we planted a tree a year, which we will do via Rotary-Adopt-A-Tree.
8. Individual Activities. Members are encouraged to carry out environmentally friendly activities on a regular basis, appropriate articles are posted in our fortnightly newsletter, The Phoenix, giving members ideas of how they can easily reduce their carbon footprint, one step at a time.