• A truly sustainable council would run for the exit away from its unsustainable self
“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived, and dishonest - but the myth, persistent, pervasive, and unrealistic.”
- John F Kennedy
A truly sustainable council would do the twenty five things in this list in the next two years, by 2025.
Why by 2025?
If we’re to survive 2025 is the latest year by which we humans have to stop new pollution; the U.N. has made this clear, most recently in its March 2023 report.
The list suggests actions to reduce the most polluting human activities destroying Earth’s climate; food, water, energy, transport.
Twenty five things listed here can be done in the next two years
Money – 3 Recommendations
1. Move all investments from oil, coal, gas to renewable energy investments - eg divest from bonds, superannuation, banks which invest in coal, oil, gas;
2. Divest from all carbon credit options as they don’t help and most are fraudulent;
3. Pay financial incentives each month to staff rewarding high achievements in the solutions listed here and others a council identifies this year.
Food – 7 Recommendations
Ending food waste is the most effective and easiest way for us to cut climate pollution.
• When graphed as a country food waste is the most damaging to Earth’s climate after China and the U.S.
When graphed as a country the pollution from food waste is the third most polluting country after first and second place winners, China and the U.S.
Most Australians eat three times a day. Each day we get three chances at home and work to end our food waste.
1. Compost all council waste food including in properties council leases to or from others;
2. Implement a policy allowing planting of fruit trees and edible plants in footpath gardens without council approval;
3. Grow local food in footpath gardens;
4. Buy all food for council events from local farmers and farmers’ markets, mandate this for use of council properties, and provide at least 50% lease and hire fee reductions for events in council properties as part of the agreements;
5. Implement a policy reducing garbage rates to $nil where property owners compost all food and apply the proven, successful U.S. policy of ‘pay as you throw’.
6. Buy only Murray River salt (to help reduce salt in it restore the river water to a quality acceptable to farmers and communities using the water).
7. End all Food Organics and Garden Organics - FOGO - projects and implement the ‘pay as you throw’ pricing for food waste.
• Composting grows soil, avoids garbage pollution, the 100k garbage truck trip
Comment:
Sydney City Council may be the leader in Australia with its policy allowing residents to garden in the footpath without approval. Thank you and respect to Councillors and council staff.
Water and energy - 2 Recommendations
Why are water and energy together?
Some actions both cool cities and cut energy use, particularly keeping rain where it falls and planting trees.
1. Offer financial incentives, including rate rebates, to all existing buildings which install leaky drains to direct rain to subsoil in the road verge by the end of 2023.
2. Plant thousands of trees with passive subsoil irrigation such as leaky drains, leaky wells.
Comment:
Sydney City Council (where I live) claims to be sustainable but is not and is dragging the chain because it is:
• Not increasing green cover to 40% across the local area until 2050*
• Australia’s wealthiest council
• not speeding up its tree planting programme of about 700 trees a year
• planting trees poorly and stunting their growth
• not installing passive irrigation to water new or existing trees with run-on rain to irrigate the subsoil roots and speed up tree growth
* “We will increase our overall green cover to 40% across the local area, including a minimum of 27% tree canopy by 2050. — Greening Sydney strategy”
Water - 3 Recommendations
In Australian cities typically more water falls as rain – for free - and is wasted than is imported as town water. Pumping town water takes so much energy just pumping it puts town water suppliers in the top 10 or so climate polluters in each state.
1. Mandate all new buildings have at least 5,000 litre rain water storage for use in the house or garden.
2. Offer financial incentives, including rate rebates, to all existing buildings which install rain tanks and which use the water by the end of 2023.
3. Install absorption pipes at the boundary of footpaths and garden beds in roads and parks to divert rain to the roots of plants and trees.
Energy – 7 Recommendations
1. Mandate all new buildings have solar power, pale roofs, and install solar panels on all Council buildings and parks.
2. Offer financial incentives, including rate rebates, to all existing buildings which install solar power by the end of 2023 and / or which paint their roofs a pale colour.
3. Replace parking spaces with trees with rate reductions for properties which volunteer to both plant a tree provided by council and to plant it outside their house in the street in the former parking place.
4. Put solar panels over car parks and street parking.
5. Replace all fuel-powered cars, trucks, air blowers, buses + with solar generated power for batteries.
6. Use and buy only energy from solar and wind.
7. Specify in building approvals, and use in council projects, least energy intensive concrete, cement.
Transport – 3 Recommendations
1. Free bicycles for staff with a transport energy savings pay bonus for staff who accept the offer and use the bikes.
2. Only electric vehicles for council vehicles.
3. Nil car parks in new residential flat projects.
Is any council truly sustainable?
I know of no Australian council which does most of these 25 things; most do less than 5 or so.
My top four?
“1. Offer financial incentives, including rate rebates, to all existing buildings which install leaky drains to direct rain to subsoil in the road verge by the end of 2023.“
“1. Compost all council waste food including in properties council leases to or from others;
2. Implement a policy allowing planting of fruit trees and edible plants in footpath gardens without council approval;
5. Implement a policy reducing garbage rates to $nil where property owners compost all food and apply the proven, successful U.S. policy of ‘pay as you throw’.“
A true response to the emergency
My sense of Earth’s climate is her never-before storms, floods, droughts that were recently once a year or so are now daily.
I am now alarmed.
When I went off grid with my inner city house in 1996, and disconnected from town water and sewer and installed solar panels, perhaps the first in a western city, I was seen by many as a curiosity.
Today I pay nothing for energy or water. Twenty seven years later that action seems to my eyes to have been an example which, had it been mandated by Australian councils, would have meant most Australians today would have household bills several thousand dollars lower than they are now.
But household bills, whilst breaking households apart and stressing many of us, are now a political and human distraction from the breaking apart of Earth’s climate.
• Deep ocean currents make the seasons; the currents are disappearing and with them, the seasons and food
Looking sideways at this or that while I race towards my end does not mean I may avoid my end.
Food growing depends on the seasons but seasons are disappearing and when they’re gone there will be little food.
Clouds are expected to disappear in the next 50 or so years; imagine that. No clouds.
My guess is Earth’s seasons will be mostly gone by 2030, and food, too. No seasons means no food.
Imagine that.
Michael
NOTE:
Please comment with your views, disagreements, questions, suggestions, and thoughts - I welcome any feedback.