I gave this speech in the NSW Parliament on 21 June 2012:

We live in a world where iPhone cases can be bought for $US2,680 for raw titanium, or $US3,810 for gold, or $US4,430 for something called black carbon, while more people go hungry every day than the populations of the United States, Canada and the European Union combined. We live in a world where, for every Altruistic Precision iPhone case sold, the company Brikk will donate one metric ton of rice to “those in need through select NGOs.”

iPhone ‘Altruistic Precision’ case

We live in a world where people who buy a phone cover for $US4,430 can feel that they are making the world a better place. According to Oxfam, the number of people in the world without enough to eat could soon top one billion. That is one in seven of us. The World Resources Institute states that some 1.3 billion people are living on less than $US1.25 per day with 900 million facing hunger.

Here in Australia, the Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS] Australian Social Trends for March 2012 found that in 2009-10 1.6 million children aged 0 to 14 years—38 per cent—lived in low economic resource households, with 3.3 million people aged 15 years and over—19 per cent. And conditions are getting worse, not better, for people from low socioeconomic households. After adjusting for inflation, the net worth of low economic resource households had not increased significantly since 2003-04, while the average net worth across all other households had increased by 29 per cent.

Meanwhile, you can buy a Magic Mushroom USB key by Swiss jeweller Swawish with white gold, emeralds and white diamonds for $36,900—if you can afford it.

Or a dessert in a New York restaurant described as: “A fine blend of 28 cocoas, including 14 of the most expensive and exotic from all around the world with five grams of edible 23-karat gold dished up in a goblet lined with edible gold, the base of which is an 18-karat gold bracelet with one carat of white diamonds, all eaten with a gold spoon decorated with white and chocolate-coloured diamonds, which can also be taken home.” And it will cost you is $25,000.

Or you could buy a toilet encrusted with Swarovski crystals—72,000 pieces of them—for $130,000, while one in seven people in the world go to bed hungry tonight.

When one person can buy a dessert for $25,000 while almost one billion people do not have enough to eat, it is time to admit that things have gone seriously wrong.

According to the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the average total remuneration of a chief executive officer of a top 50 company listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in 2010 was $6.4 million, or almost 100 times that of the average worker. Meanwhile, company profits as a share of national income are now back to the record levels of 2008, while the wages share is the lowest since 1964.

One measure to address inequality is capping chief executive officers’ salaries. The Australian Greens have suggested capping them to 30 times that of the average wage paid to that company’s employees and for a top marginal tax rate of 50 per cent on salaries over $1 million a year.

Other measures that could be implemented right now if governments were courageous enough would be an estate tax, increasing taxes for higher income earners, increasing the unemployment benefit and other welfare payments and increasing taxes on multinational coal and oil companies so that they begin to pay their fair share of the common resources they exploit.

We all know that, with multibillionaires in this country in charge of traditional media or taking on those that do not agree with them, it would be a brave government that takes genuine measures to address just some of the worst excesses of inequality. But they will need to very soon and for that to happen the nation needs to have a conversation about growth, and we need to have it now.

We need to have a conversation about growth if we are to have any hope of making a significant dent in the gap between the rich and poor. As Economics Commissioner at the Sustainable Development Commission and author of the excellent report, “Prosperity without growth? The transition to a sustainable economy”, Professor Tim Jackman, writes:

The global economy is almost five times the size it was half a century ago. If it continues to grow at the same rate the economy will be 80 times that size by the year 2100.

An economy 80 times the size it was in 1960 would be a disaster for the majority of humanity and would mean irreparable damage to our planet. So we must have a conversation about growth.

We are seeing the earth ripped apart, species wiped out and the earth’s delicate climatic system wrecked so that multimillionaires can become billionaires and so that billionaires can top the most rich lists.

This is happening to support our houses with five bathrooms and too many clothes and too big waistlines, while 1.3 billion people are earning less than $1.25 a day.

The Occupy Movement is one response to the displays of obscene wealth we are witnessing across the globe. So too is the rapidly growing movement of resisting consumer culture, buying local and reconnecting with local communities.

It has become extremely urgent for governments to be open to new economic and societal models, ones that recognise the value of community wellbeing and health over increasing shareholder dividends and wealth creation. Governments should be leading the debate in this regard, but they are not.

Perhaps, like climate change, they will scoff, delay, deny and delay some more. In the meantime all of us who are comfortable now need to challenge how we have become so and we need to start thinking of ways we can give away much more than one ton of rice.

Children scavenge in a plastic wasteland in the Philippines, by J. Tanodra, UNEP

I’ve just been in Vietnam for a little over three weeks and wanted to avoid buying bottled water as much as I could. Of course trips to some parts of the world, including south east Asia, almost always mean the obligatory purchase of  about 2 litres of bottled water per person per day because of the health risks of much of the developing world’s drinking water.

The last few times I’ve travelled overseas- to Bali, India, Thailand – I easily consumed about 2 litres of water a day. So I figured that a couple on a 3-week holiday in Vietnam would expect to generate more than 100 330ml water bottles as waste, or 42 one-litre bottles. Considering I avoid buying bottled water at home because of its environmental impacts, the amount I was consuming when I travelled overseas was bothering me.

Continue Reading

Yesterday, I spoke at the 2009 NSW Sustainable Development conference. Here’s an excerpt:

How many State of the Environment Reports will it take before we start acting to ensure healthy ecosystems, fresh water, clean air and a safe climate are guaranteed for future generations? Why are we commissioning State of the Environment Reports if this isn’t what we want to do? From where I sit it appears that governments have an unhealthy obsession with monitoring environmental decline.

and

It’s time for all levels of government and responsible business leaders to tackle the growth and consumption issue head on. Getting sustainable development truly sustainable is the challenge of our lifetimes.

Let’s return to that statement in the 2006 NSW State of the Environment Report: “continued growth is not sustainable over an extended period.” When does the stop or slow button get pushed? Because there’s no doubt that one day it will have to and the sooner it does, the less severely it will need to be.

Download my full speech here

The 2009 recipients of the Goldman Prize are inspirational to all campaigners that have been doing the hard slog for months/years/decades for a better earth. Check out this year’s recipients here. One recipient that particularly struck a chord with me is Maria Gunnoe from the USA region of Appalachia who has fought the might of the coal mining industry for years. Fighting the coal industry in this area is no mean feat because coal mining is wiping out entire mountains and killing rivers. In fact, more than 470 Appalachian mountains have been destroyed. Not only does this method of coal mining destroy entire mountains and their associated ecosystems and communities, but they also destroy jobs, as the system to remove mountains is highly mechanised. Here’s what Gunnoe has been fighting:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpSDY6r2BVc]

This is not ok! This is not ok! This is not ok! Continue Reading

I’ve just spent a couple of hours with Maude Barlow, the Canadian water activist and Senior Adviser on Water to the President of the United Nations General Assembly. Maude was in town to give the Keynote address for the Australian Water Summit, a conference with such outrageously expensive attendance fees it effectively excludes everyone but government and private companies. Thankfully Maude was given the opportunity to share her wisdom on the state of the global water supply and recommendations around its long-term sustainability to this crowd.

Maude is a strong advocate for ensuring water remains a public good, in public control and not privatised. You can download her speech here: maudebarlow_awsaddress – a required read for all concerned not only about global water security, but also about Australia’s environment and long-term sustainability. Continue Reading

Honeybee

The decline in bee populations the world over has worried me for some time and I’m not alone. Bees are vital pollinators, but the use of pesticides and genetically modified organisms (GMOs) as well as mites and disease are blamed for an alarming decline in their numbers. The US and Europe are both experiencing declines that have decision makers worried. The website peopleandplanet.net describes the situation in Europe and Advocacy for Animals has an indepth article on what they bill the ‘honeybee crisis’.

One thing’s for sure, we are messing with this planet big time. In fact, I am often surprised at the resilience of nature, given how much we are punching and kicking and actively destroying it. Resilient in some ways, yet incredibly fragile in others.

Back home in Australia, there is concern about the impact of imported honeybees on our native bee populations, though they haven’t seemed to have suffered the same as their US or European counterparts yet.