Australians turn to artists to help with urban blight.

Consider colonized Williamsburg, not the Commonwealth one in Virginia but the gentrified and rarified one rife with models and brunching. A few decades ago, no one but the artist would venture there, drawn by the affordable convenience of massive swathes of abandoned industrial space. It was very much artist vs. the city. Eventually commercial and nonprofit development groups took note, and sought to replicate the formula in cities like St. Louis, Detroit and Cleveland.

The formula being: artists are natural born leaders in rescuing decentralized cities from blight, even transforming them into the next hot place to call home.

Each of the aforementioned cities has succeeded in turning their industrialized wastelands around, to a varying extent. Now, our comrades down under are attempting the same.

Australia is a very big place.

And 89% of its population lives in an urban area making it one of the most urbanized countries in the world.

But the nation of 22 million+ has been steadily creeping towards an urban crisis. An over reliance on cars, economic growth bolstered by highway construction, and shortsighted solutions that are threatening a number of their cities and towns.

A spirited editorial compared Australian sprawl to a cancerous growth on one hand, to America, on the other.

“As the colony sprawls outward, consuming resources and despoiling its environment, the inner core deteriorates. This is the route taken by many older American cities…whose cores were ghetto-ised by policies of sprawl favouring automobile and oil industries.”

Fair enough.

“Why this willful denial by Australians?” the editorial continues. “Partly it might be a consequence of our historical ‘escape’ from crowded and often terrible urban conditions in Europe. Like Americans, the promise of wide open virgin lands, seemingly allowing endless expansion and a quarter acre for everyone appeared feasible and was built into a persuasive cult. But it was never true, never sustainable.”

America holds that truth to be self-evident.

As such, social enterprise group Renew Australia is seeking to bolster their city cores by pairing up artists with abandoned commercial spaces in Newcastle, Adelaide and Townsville.

Working under the premise that cities “play an integral part in bringing together diverse communities, offering an alternative to unsustainable urban sprawl and providing a real sense of public space,” they find short and long-term solutions for vacant and abandoned properties until they become viable businesses or are redeveloped.

Started in Newcastle by writer, broadcaster and arts festival director Marcus Westbury in 2008, the program bills itself as “a permanent structure for temporary things.”

Renew has since gone national, a pairing that grants property owners, caretakers and the downtown another opportunity to become cool again.

Images: Brian Costelloe; NASA; Winter for Elbows; Renew Australia; ZeHawk

My mother is a knitter and my closet is full of her chain link necklaces, soft cloche hats and chunky cowls. I love wool, but since reading an article recently sent to me, I’m reminded again of the environmental and ethical complexities of this natural fiber we so adore.

When we think of wool, it’s hard for many to think it could be anything but sustainable, growing off the back of a sweet little sheep. According to the Organic Trade Association, “In order for wool to be certified as ‘organic,’ it must be produced in accordance with federal standards for organic livestock production.”

That means no cruelty, no genetic engineering and as you might imagine, no being dipped in parasiticides (insecticides) to control external parasites. In Australia, super-soft Merino wool rules and mulesling, a painful wool shearing technique, is used on the majority of the sheep to hide-trim strips of “excess” flesh thereby maximizing wool output. This process eliminates the risk of Blowflies launching a full “flystrike,” a process by which flies nest in the folds of an animal’s skin. Feel free to feel ill. PETA narrated by singer Pink which, in traditional PETA fashion, is enough to make anyone think twice about eating lunch, much less buying a sweater.

You may have to do a little investigating to find out if the wool you are buying is mulesed or not as it’s atypical to have it appear on labels, but it will be well worth your time.

Jocelyn Tunney, of O-Wool and Tunney Wool Company, says investing in certified organic wool is comparable to how one should approach organic food.

“One would want to purchase organic wool for the same reasons as one would want to purchase organic food,” she says. “It’s a more sustainable farming solution, is kinder to the animals and is healthier for the consumer. Conventional wool is grown like conventional food – the land and sheep are sprayed and dipped in pesticides as a cheap means to increase salable product. The land organic wool comes from has to go through the same transition and certification process as the land organic food comes from.”

She’s quick to add that she’s talking about “certified” organic.

“A lot of people will label things organic (particularly wool) but organic holds very little meaning unless it is listed as certified organic, which has gone through a governmental certification process,” she says. “Here in the U.S. this is through the NOP (National Organic Program), which is how food receives the green USDA certified organic label. Wool itself can be USDA certified organic, but currently there is no certification process for textiles (yarn, fabric, etc.) in the USA, so a textile product cannot be certified. If you are purchasing something that does not say ‘made from certified organic wool,’ you are getting conventional wool.”

Donna Oakes, owner of vegan boutique Cow Jones Industrials says that because of the lack of accountability when it comes to verifying sustainable standards with animal-based products like wool and leather, she’s been a vegan consumer for 22 years.

“I am not comfortable selling items made from animals for a number of reasons – the most obvious products I wouldn’t sell would be those made from fur, next comes leather items – I don’t eat animals, so why would I wear them and if I don’t wear them, I wouldn’t sell items made from them,” Oakes says. “Wool is the area that doesn’t seem clear for a number of people who come into my shop. I could go on in detail but it really comes down to a very simple issue for most vegans: do we feel comfortable using animals for our own purposes? For me, this is not only an animal ethics question but one that I respond to as a feminist, and that answer is no.”

The Organic Trade Association advises that if you want to buy wool, consider this when you balk at higher prices:

1) Organic wool producers receive a higher price at the farm gate as their costs of production are higher, primarily associated with higher labor, management, and certification costs;
2) The organic wool industry is very small relative to the overall wool industry and does not have the economies of scale and resulting efficiencies of its conventional counterpart, and
3) Federal organic standards for livestock production prohibit overgrazing.  If the price of wool is low, the difference cannot be made up by simply increasing production per unit of land, as is commonly practiced by many livestock producers.

Image: Law_Keven

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

These words, well known to most Australians, were penned over a century ago by poet Dorothea Mackellar at age 19. These days there is a scientific explanation for Australia’s infamous “droughts and flooding rains”.

It’s called the El Niño-La Niña effect – a weather phenomenon that affects other Pacific rim countries as well. El Niño brings the dry, hot weather and La Niña brings the rain – and plenty of it. It’s nothing new though scientists warn that climate change is likely to bring more extremes, making heat and droughts and floods more prevalent and more severe.

In December I moved back to Australia after nearly seven years living abroad, first in London and then San Francisco. For the past few weeks I’ve been glued to the 24-hour news channel watching the Queensland flood crisis unfold, and then further flooding in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania. While I’m safe and dry in Sydney, like many Australians, I have family and friends in Queensland. Thankfully they are all fine but thousands of others were not as lucky. We are use to “flooding rains” every so often, but the flood crisis in Queensland has been truly epic.

Three-quarters of Queensland has been declared a flood disaster zone. That is no small area – Queensland has a land mass twice the size of Texas or five times the size of the United Kingdom. Throughout the state, entire townships have been wiped out as rivers burst their banks or torrential downpours brought flash floods. In the south-eastern corner, the central business district and many suburbs of Brisbane – home to two million people – were submerged last week in the city’s worst flood since the 1970s.

Queensland grows a lot of Australia’s food but much of the produce was washed away where it lay in the fields, or sat rotting on stranded trucks. The cleanup, described by Queensland Premier Anna Bligh as of “post-war proportions”, will cost billions and economists are saying the destruction of farms and mines and tourist facilities could wipe one full percentage point off the national GDP.

The environmental cost is also huge. Large numbers of wild animals lost their lives in the floods. The floods carried away precious top soil and mixed it up with human debris and toxic chemicals, which has been dumped into waterways flowing to the southern states or out to sea. Much of it has blanketed the delicate eco-system of Great Barrier Reef, threatening the health of the coral reefs and other marine life. To prevent future floods, the state government is considering building more levees and dams to protect townships in flood zones.

Yet as bad as it’s been, I’ve never felt more proud to be an Australian. The human response has been fantastic. As I watched footage of people huddling on the roofs of their houses or clustered in evacuation centers, I recalled scenes from New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The Queensland floods were collectively bigger but in contrast to the New Orleans experience, government has played its part perfectly.

The response of the emergency services was highly effective and citizens were kept informed with clear, up-to-date information. Bligh, the state premier, gave televised press conferences every two hours for days and was on top of her game. She didn’t give the fine-sounding motherhood statements so beloved by politicians, instead delivering hard details about what had happened, what was happening and what was likely to happen. She did so without notes and usually without referring questions to the State Emergency Service or the police because she knew what was going on. The federal government also stepped in early, contributing Australian defense personnel to the crisis management and clean-up effort, and Prime Minister Julia Gillard announcing emergency welfare payments to people and businesses affected by the floods.

What impressed me most was the community spirit. We didn’t see scenes of looting but instead footage of people helping one another. Strangers came together to help move property to higher ground before it was claimed by flood waters. They turned out in their hundreds to stack sandbags in front of homes and shops in an effort to stave off the floodwaters. Our former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, himself a Brisbane-ite, mucked in just like everyone else, wading through muddy flood waters with residents’ suitcases on his head.

It’s not all rosy, of course. The determination to rebuild towns on flood plains is misguided. We’re still clearing forest and mangroves. And the long history of flooding means that no one wants to look seriously about what climate scientists are telling us about our future. There were howls of outrage when Greens leader Bob Brown sensibly suggested some of the taxes on the super-profits of the mining industry be diverted to a fund to deal with future natural disasters. Despite all this, I feel that the Australian spirit rose to the occasion beautifully.

The outpouring of concern and offers of help from around the world has been moving. But the fact is that Australia is a first-world country with a well-prepared emergency response system and enough wealth to help our citizens cope with their losses and rebuild essential infrastructure. As terrible as the floods have been, it’s impressive that our death toll stands at just 20 people. (Of course my heart goes out to the families of those 20 people but it could have been so much worse). There’s no false pride when we say we can look after our own.

It’s Brazil that needs your help right now.

Image: Kingbob86, NASA Goddard Photo and Video

Lisa Foster, a former high school English teacher in Los Angeles, was living in Australia in 2005 (while her husband worked on a film), when she had a revelation at the check-out register.

Instead of asking the typical American grocery store phrase, “Paper or plastic?” the clerk asked, “Would you like a bag?”

Foster looked at the woman in line in front of her, carrying her own reusable grocery bag and the lady behind her, with an armful of them. She realized that she was supposed to say, “Oh, I have my own.”

She wondered to herself: what’s the deal with these bags?

She went home and did some research. Five years ago, no one brought their own bags to the grocery store, but the government did a public awareness campaign. Analogously, in 2002 in Ireland, the tourist trade was hurting because plastic bags were sarcastically known as the “new national flower.” The Irish government imposed a tax on every disposable bag. Politically, Australia could not impose a tax, but they did their own public awareness campaign which proved very effective. Foster recognized that the grocery stores had shifted their perspective: they’d still carry paper and plastic bags, but they would not offer them.

“Expectation is extraordinarily powerful,” she says. “Like looking at kids in the classroom to quiet down; expecting them to quiet with a stare is much more powerful than shouting at them.”

Before she returned to Los Angeles, Foster did further research. She always thought that paper bags were the way to go because they can be more easily recycled. But she found that it takes 50 percent more emissions of global warming gases to make paper bags than plastic bags, and 20 percent of all paper bags are recycled – the rest just end up in landfills.

Upon her return to Los Angeles in June of 2005, Foster told her friends, “We have to change this.” And a friend agreed that she had to do it.

She was even more motivated when she found out that eight to ten percent of the U.S. oil supply goes to making plastic bags.

“We will kill and die for petroleum, but once we make it into plastic, we just throw it away,” she says. So she contacted a Chinese factory where a reusable bag she had bought in Australia had been manufactured, and ordered 8,000 bags to be stored in her living room. She set up her own small business, 1bagatatime. She made calls to stores and potential buyers during her free period in the high school parking lot.

“I called stores and offered them the bags for 95 cents each, plus free shipping if they ordered before November 1.” She promised her husband she wouldn’t lose money – and she was hoping to get these mounds of bags out of her living room as soon as possible.

In March 2006, she left her teaching post (after eight years) to pursue her business venture.  Upon her leaving, the headmaster of the high school connected her with the chairman of the board at Ralph’s. By the end of 2006, she sold 200,000 bags to Ralph’s and Vitamin College.

Since she started, she has sold over 10 million bags. But as her business grows, she stays committed to her conscious intentions; by the third year of business – as the biggest buyer of the Chinese factory two hours outside of Shanghai – she demanded fair wages and made sure they did not higher children. When she recruited Verite to check on the factory, the wife of the factory owner who was also the bookkeeper, showed a book with scribbles and numbers. Since then, they have instated proper accounting techniques (pay slips), protective smocks, name tags, and a formal complaint system that has been mutually beneficial.

“The factory owners actually thanked me, because the migrant workforce has become more stable, and the workers don’t leave because they know they are getting a good deal.”

She says that bags purported to be made out of recycled material are not possible, since they would be poor quality and could not be dyed. However, she reasons that each bag she sells (still made out of plastic), require the resources of 11 plastic bags, but when consumers use and reuse them, they replace 1,000 bags. She says her bags appeal to U.S. consumers because of their trendy designs, colors, and thoughtful text.

Next month 1bagatatime will take part in the Portraits of Hope project in Santa Monica. For this project, blind and hospitalized children will paint art panels to mount on the Santa Monica beach lifeguard stations. 1bagatatime will use Portraits of Hope art on a messenger style bag and donate a percentage of proceeds.

Other than Foster’s success of launching a viable business catered to eco-friendly consciousness, what I find most compelling is that Foster’s personal career trajectory challenges the traditional linear thinking that the modern college-educated woman would do best to find her calling in her early 20′s and stick with it until retirement. Foster pursued her PhD in English literature for nine years, taught high school for eight years, and at a time when her daughters are out of the nest, she struck out on her own entrepreneurial venture. With 1bagatatime, Foster found a niche that became an outlet for her wisdom, independent thinking, and ethics.

Could breeding burpless sheep help a country reduce its greenhouse gas emissions?

According to an article in the Herald Sun, Australian scientists at the Sheep Co-operative Research Center are planning on finding out. They are in the process of testing 700 sheep with 20 different genetic lines in the hope of discovering, if not a burpless sheep, at least which ones will  burp less methane into the atmosphere than others.

So how do you measure the methane in a sheep’s belch?

Fairly simply, according to study leader John Goody. First you feed them. And then you accommodate them in specially designed booths capable of calculating the amount of methane gas per belch.

Given that agriculture, and in particular grazing livestock, accounts for at least 16 percent of Australia’s greenhouse emissions, the ability to selectively breed sheep genetically less predisposed to belching methane could possibly be a plausible way of helping to reduce Australia’s total emissions.

Woolly thinking or major scientific breakthrough? You decide.

Image: brew ha ha

The terrible bushfires that ripped through the heart of rural Victoria in southern Australia last week are still burning, though firefighters are hopeful the worst is over.

In Australia’s worst natural disaster, at least 200 people have died and thousands left homeless. People around the world – including musician Pink – have opened their hearts and wallets to help the victims rebuild their lives – and closer to home people have opened their veins as well, with record numbers flocking to donate blood. The Australian Red Cross is continuing to accept donations from around the world for its Victorian Bushfire Appeal Fund.

While it’s clearly a traumatic time for many families, please also spare a thought for the other victims of the bushfire – all the animals left homeless as the forest burnt down around them. Koalas, which are already under threat from disease, habitat destruction and climate change, have been found sitting dazed and thirsty on the forest floor. Koalas are slow moving and they do not breed prolifically. Wildlife rescue centres in Victoria are calling for donations to help them treat the overflow of sick and injured animals and release them back to the wild. Here’s a full round-up of ways to donate to help the animal victims of the bushfire.

As Australian children are taught in school, fire is a natural part of the eco-system in eucalyptus forests. Many plant species require fire to germinate and the regular cleansing effect of fire is what keeps the forest from turning into rainforest, as found in the wetter parts of Australia such as the subtropical rainforest of the north and the cool temperate rainforest of Tasmania. There is evidence that the Australian Aborigines who lived before the arrival of white people understood this and undertook controlled burning to keep the forest in the optimal condition for hunting.

However, the natural bushfires of yore bear scant resemblance to the monster fires that are currently taking Victoria hostage. Part of this is because, without the indigenous people to regularly burn the undergrowth, the forests are more densely vegetated, providing more fuel for the fires. There’s also the fact that police believe many of these fires were deliberately lit – in the middle of a heat wave that saw temperatures climb to the mid forties (120 Fahrenheit). Australia already has an infamously harsh climate marked by extreme weather – as a traditional Australian folk song puts it, the “creeks run dry or 10-foot high”. Unfortunately, climatologists predict Australian weather will become even hotter and drier as global climate change progresses.

In the mean time, research into Australia’s unique ecology and wildlife is essential if we are to give them a fighting chance against climate change. The Australian Koala Foundation is a scientific organisation devoted to koala research and spreading awareness and understanding of how to support Australia’s cuddliest national icon.

Image: tiny froglet

Wildfires are a fact of life in Australia, owing to the country’s extremely dry climate and highly combustible vegetation (oil-rich eucalyptus forests). Australia’s history is unfortunately dotted with wildfire events such as Black Friday (1939) and Ash Wednesday (1983) that resulted in death and destruction.

But this week, Australia was hit with its most intense and deadly wildfires yet. Sweeping through towns in the state of Victoria, the wildfires left trails of soot, ashes and rubble. At last count, 173 people perished, thousands of families have lost their homes, and Australians around the country are stunned by the ferociousness and intensity of this latest round of wildfires.

While ordinary Australians are counting the toll of these latest fires, experts are turning to climate change to explain the altered nature, ferocity, and duration of the wildfires. Highlighting a once-in-a-century heatwave that sent temperatures soaring to 46 degrees Celsius (115 Fahrenheit), University of Sydney bushfire expert Mark Adams said he had -¦never seen weather and other conditions as extreme as they were on Saturday, the fire weather was unprecedented.”

Unfortunately these conditions, which we consider unusual, might become commonplace as climate change continues. If that happens, Australia will be at risk of becoming even drier, with more frequent droughts and consistently higher temperatures.

(source)

Image: pagedooley

There are less than two weeks remaining to apply for what Tourism Queensland is billing as the Best Job in the World. Have you applied?

For anyone interested in travel and nature, it probably is the best job in the world.

It’s a six-month posting to the Great Barrier Reef in Australia – the largest living being on Earth, larger than the United Kingdom in area, and one of the seven natural wonders of the world. Living on beautiful Hamilton Island, your job would involve some light caretaking duties – about 12 hours a month – and the rest of your time would be dedicated to exploring the many islands scattered along the thousands of kilometres (2,600km or 1,600 miles to be precise) of reef and telling the world about it through blogging. For this you would be paid $AUS150,000 (nearly $97,000), on top of a rent-free three-bedroom villa.

It sounds like a hoax but it’s actually just a very clever marketing campaign – it’s given Tourism Queensland media coverage all over the world and masses of word of mouth. You have to do a 60-second video to apply and they’ve received nearly 10,000 applications so far. (I’m one of them – though I’ll refrain from posting the link here).

I hope the campaign does bring more tourists to the Great Barrier Reef. It’s a stunning example of the beauty of our planet and what is at stake as we strive to heal the environment. Talk about “last chance to see” tourism – the Great Barrier Reef itself is officially in deep trouble.

Coral reefs are under threat globally from climate change warming the temperature of the sea and causing bleaching and the increasing CO2 in the ocean raising the acidity of the water. Seventy per cent of the world is covered by water, yet the oceans are not clearly understood at all. The more people experience the beauty of the ocean and the more they care, the more policy makers will take it into account.

Tourism helps fund upkeep of the reef and you can even assist with the conservation efforts. A third of the reef is a marine park where not even recreational fishing is allowed. Tourists do need to be careful not to damage the reef (especially by anchoring and mooring boats, polluting the water, walking on the reef or breaking off bits as souvenirs). However, the biggest threats come from global warming and run-off from cane sugar farmers on the mainland, not tourism.

Of course, it’s important to consider the environmental impact of flying to Queensland but if you are planning to travel long haul anyway, it’s a viable option. It’s a 13-hour flight from Los Angeles to Brisbane – a long way but shorter than, say, Los Angeles to Rome. And if you’re Australian, there’s really no excuse!

Responsible Travel is one of the many travel companies offering sustainable holidays to the Great Barrier Reef. If you can’t go in person, check it out on the newly launched oceans feature of Google Earth (or watch a wildlife documentary).

Image: Eulinky

The Sunshine Coast north of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia is a popular holiday destination. It’s easy to see the appeal, with lovely beaches and national parks alongside good restaurants and boutique shops. Perhaps most famously, it’s home to Australia Zoo, made popular by Steve Irwin the “Crocodile Hunter”. It’s an area that is gorgeous in its natural beauty and although it has avoided the high-rise monstrosities of the Gold Coast south of Brisbane, it’s hardly an undeveloped paradise.

In the hinterland it’s a different story. As you travel inland, you leave the beautiful beaches behind but also the suburban shopping malls and resorts. Instead you trade it for the breathtaking sight of the Glasshouse Mountains and eco-villages such as Crystal Waters Permaculture Village near Maleny.

Permaculture is a system of sustainable farming – or gardening, depending on the scale – that combines regular organic principles with an extra design layer. The key is to design the garden so that it works as an eco-system and is self-balancing and self-sustaining. Permaculture principles can be applied as effectively in an urban garden as a family farm.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should say that I lived in Crystal Waters for a year when I was in high school and I have several family members there. To me, it’s not a tourist destination but part of my family heritage.

However, it’s certainly open to visitors. It’s best to make contact in advance as it’s difficult to see what’s going on without a tour. But it’s worth the effort. You can stay in the visitor’s area as a paying guest and it’s a wonderful place to relax for a few days – swimming in the waterholes or “billabongs” in the Mary River, watching wallabies feed at dawn and dusk, visiting the monthly markets in the village area, and exploring the surrounding rainforest. Or, if you want to learn more about permaculture you can exchange volunteer labor in return for lodging and board as a WWOOFer or “willing worker on organic farms”.

Of course, you don’t have to go all the way to Australia to learn about permaculture – it’s a worldwide movement and wherever you are living, from Costa Rica to Cardiff, Wales, there are plenty of opportunities to learn.

Image: britannica

Camel: it’s what’s for dinner? Fraid so, mate. Aussies are being told that tossing camel steaks on the barbie can reduce global warming and save the fragile ecosystems and water resources of the desert where the wild herd is out of control.

The Desert Knowledge Cooperative Research Center released a three-year study of the environmental threat and what to do about it. The scientists observed that the million-plus camel population inflicts major damage on rare plants, animals and indigenous sites. Adding insult to injury, they make climate change worse by emitting greenhouse gases and turning landscapes into desert.

The study has concluded the best way to bring down the quickly multiplying population is to add the one-humped ferals to the human food chain. This comes shortly after the Australian people were encouraged to eat their friend, the kangaroo, to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Just how exotic can the cuisine get?

“It’s a bit like beef – it’s as lean as lean, and it’s an excellent health food,” agribusiness lecturer Murray McGregor tells the New Zealand Herald in his push to cook camel.

Many Persian Gulf countries concur, gobbling up camel kebabs which reportedly resemble filet mignon with a lower fat content. According to ABC News, the Camel Gathering Place, a popular restaurant in Damascus, Syria, sells meat from one camel a week, which is a lot of steak (they weight up to 1,000 pounds). Word has it (and I will just take their word for it) that the hump is the tastiest part; so delicious is the mound of fatty tissue that some people prefer it raw. I know, it’s a bit hard to swallow, but this is what the gourmet camel crowd says.

The camel explosion in Australia dates back to 1840, when the first camel was imported from the Canary islands. Between that year and 1907, a thousand feral dromedary camels were herded into the western outback and used for riding, draft and packing, and exploration. They carried critical goods to new settlements and mines. By 1930, these beasts of burden had done their work and were no longer needed. They bred ferociously across the Northwest Territory, Western and South Australia and into parts of Queensland. Some estimate the population at one million.

The Australian government has allocated $854,000 to control the feral camel problem over the last five years. Now, scientists are cooking up more drastic measures. “If you can’t beat them, eat them,” proposes J.M. Franke in his study: The Invasive Species Cookbook: Conservation Through Gastronomy.

Image: Angeloux